Editorial

Kids Raised In Cities Are Socially Isolated, And It Really Shows

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Kay Smythe News and Commentary Writer
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A study published in mid-January found that children who reside in the largest cities are actually the most isolated.

Using extremely weird data from your children’s (students) personal devices, a group of researchers recently found large cities have very high levels of racial and income segregation. It turns out that our kids don’t really have any social skills anymore, and tend to band together along racial lines when they live in big cities for their schooling — we assume this means for higher education as the study authors didn’t actually bother to define their participant demographic in their paper.

But let’s just say, for argument’s sake, the study was well conducted and the data is as accurate as can be: does it surprise you? With the current economic crisis ensuring all of us are poorer than we were a year ago, and rampant rates of crime in large cities, surely the fact kids are spending more time inside shouldn’t surprise you. But it is a huge issue for their social development.

Have you had a conversation with a young person recently? They often behave like they’ve never spent time around other people. If you don’t believe me, just ask your kid’s teachers.

The creepiest part of this entire study is actually the research it was based upon. The authors mimicked the methodology put forward in an earlier study, where “anonymous location data from mobile applications on users’ smartphones” were analyzed to find the results. In the original study, some 17 million devices were pinged over the course of four months in 2017. (RELATED: Joe Rogan Seems As Disgusted With This Video Of Young Americans As We Are)

I’m not entirely sure, but I’m 99% certain that most, if not all of those 17 million people didn’t knowingly consent to be part of these papers. Personally, I think these authors have done absolutely nothing to move the science forward. Of course, young people stay at home and don’t spend money like adults; they have less money and the world is full of danger right now, duh. But more so, I feel they breached some creepy ethical and moral lines no stranger should be able to cross by using individual GPS data.

Are you okay with a bunch of faceless scientists being able to ping your children’s phone location, even if your kids are over the age of 18? I know I wouldn’t be.