George Saunders Quotes

There's something really terrible about having your BlackBerry next to your bed or having your laptop in the living room when you're talking to someone. The biggest source of stress in my life is the screen, the blogging.

Texting is addicting. Once you get emotionally involved with constant outside stimulation assaulting your brain, it is hard to stop looking at your machine every two minutes. Without rapid fire words appearing on a screen, you feel bored, not part of the action.

The iPad is becoming the babysitter… Silicon Valley programs these things to be addictive.

On street corners everywhere, people are looking at their cell phones, and it's easy to dismiss this as some sort of bad trend in human culture. But the truth is life is being lived there.

Some people fear that technology will become more engaging than live human interactions. That's silly; technology is already way more interesting than other people.

As the father of six children, I know very well the challenges technology poses to our families.

I do not trust technology. I mean, I don't think we're in any danger of kids, you know, doing without video games in the future, but I am saying that their lives are largely out of balance.

Television has changed the American child from an irresistable force to an immovable object.

I have a grandson who is 20. He's a computer guy. I'm worried that he can't communicate without his machine. They have no personal contact with people. That's the bad part of technology.

I spend so much time on the screen when I am writing, the last thing you want to do is spend more time on the Internet looking at a screen. That's what I hate about all this technology.

One thing that I notice that is changing, you don't see kids on Sunday. Most of them are home. The kids are having much more virtual childhoods instead of childhoods. They don't play ball or hang out with the wrong people or get in fistfights, all the things that once made childhood. I don't know how it's going to turn out.

I sound like an old man when I talk about the Internet, but I am actually worried about what it's doing to our brains and our sense of connection.

I get concerned when I see kids on their phones. They don't read enough anymore, anything longer than a tweet.

I just think technology is pretty amazing. Like all things that are great, you have to be responsible about how much you use it.

Kids are on their keyboards so much, between their smartphones and laptops, no one writes anything anymore. It's atrocious.

Stand in my lobby at 5:30 P.M., and there is no one who gets out of the lift who is not on a gadget. No one is talking to each other. I get in the lift and say, 'Hello,' and everyone's head is down tapping on a screen.

Kids are growing up with a bombardment of information through technology.

From techies to film stars and kids, everyone is addicted to technology in different ways.

We tend to crib about kids being addicted to phones all the time, but the truth is that it is the parents who are the root cause of such behavior, because they are usually the original addicts.

It's terrifying, social media. It terrifies me.

The Tamagotchi, I have realized, is everything that is wrong with our smartphone era. Is this what went wrong with millennials?

I see a lot of moms and dads frustrated because their kids have their devices at the dinner table and they can't seem to get their attention as much as they used to.

Our attention spans have been reduced by the immediate gratification provided by smartphones and social media.

It's not a surprise that the mental health epidemic is affecting so many people because we can't escape this bubble from being on our phones and tablets.

Look around you in any restaurant, and you will see couples, families, and friends glued to their phones.