Like most pre-internet Eight Miles High/Get Smart “folx” who didn’t know what a “tech bro” was decades ago, I’m glad there were no cell phones when I was a teenager and younger man. It’s hard to imagine the paranoia of receiving a text at 10 p.m. (“Do you know where your children are?” as the PSA on WNEW-TV ominously intoned in the NYC metro area), when, blitzed on this or that, from one of my parents wondering where I was. No (non-public domain) digital footprint, my man, exists for this alternately studious and rambunctious fellow.
But the coin flips through the years and I like the iPhone that’s on my desk right now, although I’m not a nut who keeps it in the bedroom—even though our landline’s ditched, I figure four a.m. calls are never good and can be returned a few hours later—and obeys the common courtesy of silencing and stashing it in a pocket at theaters and restaurants. For most of my adult life when riding in a cab (now Uber/Lyft) I read a newspaper, but since they barely exist now (even the print editions of functioning dailies like The New York Times or Wall Street Journal are mostly useless, a repetition of the previous day’s stories posted online), I scroll Twitter for links to “breaking” stories and the ripostes of friends like J.D. King, Crispin Sartwell and Oliver Bateman. And it’s a lifesaver when I watch Red Sox games, as I can block out the commercials and check out the score of the Yankees game, holding my breath, and see how my son Booker’s fantasy team is doing.
My older son Nicky, 32, is vehement in his not-uncommon view that smartphones have irrevocably made Americans stupider than they already were, and supports a ban on cells in schools, kindergarten through college. He’d prefer—quixotically/Howard Beale—that social media sites disappear and that phones were used only for conversations, occasional texts and taking pictures. Because I’m older this is mostly an intellectual issue (meaning the abysmal education students receive, and their own lack of curiosity about history and art because it’s dull compared to a “saucy” TikTok snippet) but not emotional. I agree that almost every aspect of popular culture has declined this century—films, music, novels, the media—but I’ve given up on the outrage since there’s nothing I can do about it. I read a “news” story with anonymous sources and wonder if it’s true. I remember reading the Times or The New Republic in the 1980s, and even though the bias wasn’t disguised, at least the reporter or essayist included “on the record” (anachronism) quotes.
On the other hand, it’s disheartening to read articles about the isolation of young men and women. In a Financial Times dispatch (reading time: four minutes)—the FT, like The Economist, once regarded as “gold-standard,” is pretty shitty now, but on occasion there’s a fat acorn to be found—John Burn-Murdoch writes: “People in their teens and twenties now hang out about as much as someone 10 years older than they did in the past. Not so much a case of 20 being the new 20, as 20 being the new 30. Less hanging out and less partying means less sex and less drinking. Both are developments that have been welcomed by the public health community, but they mask a darker side… The last decade is a story of young people retreating from the pursuits that bring them the most fulfilment, and replacing them—consciously or otherwise—with pale imitations.”
That’s dark, all right, and likely not ephemeral. It’s not entirely unique, since parents always found something to carp about. In my own case—and that of friends—my mom would chastise me for watching too much TV on summer mornings. “Get out of the house and play!,” she’d say, and, when good and ready, I would. Pick-up baseball, Yankees vs. Rebels war games, chucking firecrackers into the sky, swimming at the local beach and so on.
I wonder if college students today embark on week-long road trips during breaks. Probably, to a degree, but it could be another ritual that’s gone by the boards. In the accompanying picture, taken at Dartmouth University, there’s my friends Howie, Mark and Bobby, prior to a two-car jaunt to Vermont. Howie and I had taken an Amtrak from Baltimore up to Yale, where we hung out and picked up Mark (who took us to New Haven’s legendary pizza joints), and then split for Boston and finally New Hampshire. The only splotch on the boozy/smoke-filled diversion was when Mark and Bobby drag-raced on the turnpike, which was very weird, but it was a hell of a week.
Take a look at the clues to figure out the year: Franco Harris is the Super Bowl’s MVP; Bernard Thevenet wins the Tour de France; Bjorn Borg takes the French Open; Cabaret Voltaire make their live debut; What's My Line? ends for the last time; the Carousel of Progress moves from Disneyland to Walt Disney World; the Rockefeller Commission issues a report on CIA abuses; Jimmy Hoffa is reported missing (Bob Dylan, to my knowledge, never wrote a song about Jimmy); Tobey Maguire is born and Fredric March dies; Donald Barthelme’s The Dead Father and Rex Stout’s A Family Affair are published; and the Texas Senate declares July 4th as “Willie Nelson Day.”
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023