Ross Kent

“Imagine that you fell into a deep sleep on June 28, 2007—the day before the iPhone was released. Like Rip Van Winkle, the protagonist in an 1819 story by Washington Irving, you wake up 10 years later and look around. The physical world looks largely the same to you, but people are behaving strangely. Nearly all of them are clutching a small glass and metal rectangle, and anytime they stop moving, they assume a hunched position and stare at it. They do this the moment they sit down on a train, or enter an elevator, or stand in line. There is an eerie quiet in public places—even babies are silent, mesmerized by these rectangles. When you do hear people talking, they usually seem to be talking to themselves while wearing white earplugs.”
― Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness