Teens on their phones: two interpretations

On the one hand, as a ‘Millennial’ who uses his phone too much, I’m sympathetic toward teens who seem to have something of a phone addiction. On the other hand, as a teacher, I’m grateful to our school’s administration for banning phone use in the classroom (unless the teacher gives permission to use it for something related to class). Teens on their phones can be learning more, faster, than most of us could at their age. Teens on their phones can also be zombies who fell into the rabbit hole of YouTube, Tik Tok, or Snapchat. Because of this, I got a kick out of two tweets commenting on a picture of teens sitting in a museum using their phones. (FWIW, these two tweets reinforce the ongoing Boomer v. Millennial battle.)

Tweet #1

What’s wrong with this picture? pic.twitter.com/JbD8iqo5M3

— bettemidler (@BetteMidler) December 8, 2019

Tweet #2

That the Boomer doesn't realize the museum in question has an app that teaches the history of all the works in the museum because they can't afford staff members to teach people anymore due to budget cuts since museums are a "waste of taxpayer money" according to Boomers. https://t.co/g5NSAjkNk3

— Darryl Mott (@Abstruse) December 8, 2019

Interestingly, a side-by-side comparison of these tweets invites us to do something similar to what a walk through an art gallery does: it invites us to experience to subjectivity of our own interpretation and to reinterpret it in light of the interpretation of other.

I’ve heard it said ‘everything is ethics’ but I prose ‘everything is hermeneutics’.