In 2013, TIME Magazine published a cover story titled Millennials: The Me Me Me Generation by Joel Stein. The cover showed the words “Millennials are lazy, entitled narcissists who still live with their parents” right above a picture of a young woman taking a selfie. The article went on to describe millennials as selfish, narcissistic, and entitled, and blamed everything from selfies, social media, and reality TV for these traits. This article represents a commonly held disdain of the new, rising generation by the older “baby boomers” who criticize millennials for “constantly interacting” but “entirely through a screen” saying this is ruining social interaction (Stein). While millennials begin to shift cultural norms, older generations tend…show more content… Let’s Talk, as she links together the growing presence of technology to a loss of meaningful conversation, and ultimately leading to a less empathetic generation. Turkle sees social interaction changing as phones are increasingly “dividing our attention” so “conversations are kept relatively light” (1). Because people always have their phones with them, they alternate between their phones and the conversation, never letting themselves be truly focused what others are saying. This new norm for social interaction results in meaningless conversations, and people are not learning to “be fully present and vulnerable” when talking to others. Even if phones give the illusion of hyper-connectivity, as they give people the ability to constantly communicate with others, they are hurting social interaction as it takes away from meaningful connections that cannot be replaced with…show more content… Wayne does acknowledge the same study as Turkle, which found empathy to drop considerably in college students since the year 2000. Wayne, however, believes there are “different interpretations” of that data, taking into consideration that young people have a greater “tolerance…for lifestyles and values not their own” (Wayne). He doesn’t deny that phones are changing the way people interact, but he doesn’t think empathy is disappearing as a result. A study done by California State University found “virtual empathy was positively correlated with real-world empathy” (Wayne). He uses the example of the increase in support for same-sex marriage among younger generations to demonstrate this study. While older generations tended to judge homosexuality “more harshly”, the “sharp rise in support” of same-sex marriage is largely attributed to the shifting acceptance and support among young people. Because more people are aware, through Facebook or other social media sites, that people they know are in same-sex relationships, they feel more personally attached to the issue of same-sex marriage. Social media allows “more of an opportunity to build up a feeling of fairness and equality” because we are “exposed to much more of everybody’s lives now” (Wayne). Because
