In the essay Screen Time by Mark Bauerlein, he discusses the consequences that arise from young generations obsession with online life, specifically in their maturity. This obsession causes the young generations to be wrapped up in a generational cocoon and when the gifts only lead to social joys, not intellectual labor, the minds of the young plateau at age 8. Young people tend to enjoy their online life way too much so that they are no longer gaining knowledge and developing their mental capacity, causing them to get trapped or stuck in their own generation. Maturity is prevented by online life because it encourages more horizontal modeling, where youth are not looking up to others who are older and more experienced than them, but rather looking up to those who are in the same position as them, a wise generation. According to Mark Bauerlein, this causes them to be in a a reflexive surrounding&a Daily Me, where the screen becomes not a vein of truth but a mirror of desire. On their screens, young generations see what they have planned to sho
w themselves, whether it be a certain type of news, games, posts, music, etc., not what is shown to them by default. The consequence of this is that their reality is personalized, where their horizon ends with their friends, music, TV shows, games, and virtual contacts. They put reality and the real world on hold, such as world news, and only see what is convenient to them, what they enjoy and like the most. In the long run, all of this ends with younger generations being intellectually handicapped, where the rewards are immediate and the intellectual and social barriers are low, youth become trapped in their screens and their generations, so that they can no longer expand their mental capacity or horizon. All of these reasons are what Bauerlein speaks about in terms of online life preventing younger generations maturity.
As Bauerlein convincingly states, I believe that the younger generations obsession with online life prevents maturity because this obsession causes them to not want to confront the real world beyond their concern and intellect.