an essay about someone who changed your life

Essays About Life-changing Experiences: 5 Examples

Discover our guide for writing essays about life-changing experiences that combine three different elements: narrative, description, and self-reflection. 

Each of us has gone through life-changing experiences that shaped us into the individuals we are today. Because of how powerful they are, these events make for fascinating topics in writing. This subject doesn’t only let us tell our life stories, and it also pushes us to evaluate our behavior and reflect on why an incident happened.

Attract your readers by creating an excellent introduction and choosing a unique or exciting encounter. Paint a picture of the events that describe your experience vividly and finish with a strong conclusion.

5 Essay Examples

1. long essay on experience that changed my life by prasanna, 2. life-changing events: personal experience by anonymous on studycorgi.com, 3. my example of a life-changing experience by anonymous on gradesfixer.com, 4. life-changing experience: death essay by writer annie, 5. a life-changing experience during the holiday season by anonymous on studymoose.com, 1. life-changing experience: defined, 2. the experience that changed my life, 3. life-changing events and how they impact lives, 4. everyday events that change a person’s life, 5. the person who change my life, 6. books or movies that changed my life, 7. a life-changing quote.

“Experiences can be good and sometimes terrible that results in a positive or negative impact on one’s life. Life is full of many unexpected challenges and unknown turning points that will come along any time. People must learn and grow from every experience that they go through in life rather than losing yourself.”

In this essay, Prasanna discusses her father’s death as her most challenging life-changing experience. She was cheerful, immature, and carefree when her father was still alive. However, when her father left, she became the decision-maker of their family because her mother was unable to.

Prasanna mentions that she lost not only a father but also a friend, motivator, and mentor. That sad and unexpected experience turned her into an introverted, mature, and responsible head of the family. Ultimately, she thanks her father for making her a better person, and because of the devastating incident, she realizes who she can trust and how she should handle the real world. You might also be interested in these essays about choice .

“In life, certain experiences present challenges that change the way people relate to themselves and their families. Certain life events mark life-changing moments that alter lives either positively or negatively. It matters how people handle their relationships at such critical moments.”

This essay contains two life events that helped the author become a better person. These events taught them to trust and appreciate people, be responsible, and value family. The first event is when their best friend passes away, leading to stress, loss of appetite, and depression. The second circumstance happened when the author postponed their studies because they were afraid to grow up and be accountable for their decisions and actions.

The writer’s family showed them love, support, and understanding through these events. These events changed their behavior, attitude, and perspective on life and guided them to strengthen family relationships.

For help picking your next essay topic, check out our 20 engaging essay topics about family .

“I thought it was awkward because he looked and acted very professional. In that moment I thought to myself, ‘this person is going to have a great impact in my life!’. I was very curious to meet him and get a chance to show him my personality.”

This essay proves that you should always believe in yourself and not be afraid to try something new. The author recalls when they had many problems and met an extraordinary person who changed their life. 

When they were in sixth grade, the writer had life issues that caused them to be anxious about any future endeavor. The author then says they don’t usually open up to teachers because they fear their reactions. Then they met Mr. Salazar, a mentor who respects and values them, and the writer considers him their best friend.

“When the funeral was over and he was laid to rest, I had a feeling I can’t even describe. It was almost an empty feeling. I knew I had lost someone that could never be replaced.”

Annie never thought that she’d go through a life-changing experience until the sudden death of her father. Her thoughts and feelings are all over the place, and she has many unanswered questions. She says that although she will never wish for anyone to experience the same. However, her father’s passing improved her life in some ways.

Her mother remarried and introduced a new father figure, who was very kind to her. Living with her stepdad allowed her to explore and do things she thought she couldn’t. Annie still mourns the loss of her birth father, but she is also grateful to have a stepdad she can lean on. She gradually accepts that she can’t bring her birth father back.

“This story as a whole has really changed me and made me an even better person in life, I’m so thankful that this happened to me because now I have a greater appreciation for the little things in life.”

The essay shows how a simple interaction on a cold day in December can completely change a person’s view on life. It starts with the writer being asked a small favor of an older man with Alzheimer’s disease to help him find his car. This experience teaches the writer to be more observant and appreciative of the things they have. The author was inspired to spend more time with loved ones, especially their grandfather, who also has Alzheimer’s disease, as they learned never to take anything for granted.

7 Prompts for Essays About Life-changing Experiences

Everyone has their definition of a life-changing experience. But in general, it is an event or series of events profoundly altering a person’s thinking, feelings, and behavior. Use this prompt to explain your understanding of the topic and discuss how a simple action, decision, or encounter can change someone’s life. You might also be interested in these essays about yourself .

For this prompt, choose a specific memory that made you re-evaluate your views, values, and morals. Then, discuss the impact of this event on your life. For example, you can discuss losing a loved one, moving to another country, or starting a new school. Your conclusion must contain the main lessons you learned from the experience and how it can help the readers.

Various positive and negative life-changing experiences happen anytime and anywhere. Sometimes, you don’t notice them until they substantially disturb your everyday life. 

To begin your essay, interview people and ask about a momentous event that happened to them and how it influenced their way of living. Then, pick the most potent life-changing experience shared. Talk about what you’d do if you were in the same situation.

Some life-changing events include common things such as marriage, parenthood, divorce, job loss, and death. Research and discuss the most common experiences that transform a person’s life. Include real-life situations and any personal encounters for an intriguing essay.

It’s normal to meet other people, but connecting with someone who will significantly impact your life is a blessing. Use this prompt to discuss that particular person, such as a parent, close friend, or romantic partner. Share who they are and how you met them, and discuss what they did or said that made a big difference in your life. 

Movies like “The Truman Show” help change your viewpoint in life. They open our minds and provide ideas for dealing with our struggles. Share how you reached an epiphany by reading a book or watching a movie. Include if it’s because of a particular dialogue, character action, or scenes you can relate to.

While others use inspirational quotes for comfort and to avoid negative thinking, some find a quote that gives them the courage to make drastic changes to better their lives. For this prompt, search for well-known personalities who discovered a quote that motivated them to turn their life around.  Essay Tip: When editing for grammar, we also recommend spending time and effort to improve the readability score of your essay before publishing or submitting it.

Maria Caballero is a freelance writer who has been writing since high school. She believes that to be a writer doesn't only refer to excellent syntax and semantics but also knowing how to weave words together to communicate to any reader effectively.

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An Experience That Changed My Life Essay | Life Changing Experiences, Long and Short Essays on Life Changing Experiences

October 1, 2021 by Prasanna

Experience That Changed My Life Essay: It is rightly said that ‘Experience is the best teacher.’ Experience teaches a lot more things. Life gives you many experiences and certain experiences in your life can impact you a lot. In life we all have faced some or the other experience that has changed the way we perceive things. Through these life lessons we can learn a lot about ourselves and how strong we can be in difficult situations and circumstances.

You can also find more  Essay Writing  articles on events, persons, sports, technology and many more.

Long Essay on Experience that Changed My Life 500 Words in English

Sometimes things are out of our control and we can’t do anything about it. Experiences can be good and sometimes terrible that results in a positive or negative impact on one’s life. Life is full of many unexpected challenges and unknown turning points that will come along any time. People must learn and grow from every experience that they go through in life rather than losing yourself. Change is a part of life. Life gives many experiences almost every day.

An experience that changed my life was on 21st August 2004. One of my biggest life changing experiences was the time when I lost my father suddenly. Till that very day I was a very immature and jolly person. I don’t know what the worries were. I was the eldest one in my family. But as we lost the head of our family life took a new turning point in my life I had to take charge of all the decisions made which I had never done before. My mother was not in a state to understand anything. I started making big decisions even about finances, about our house and many more.

When my father died, my life had changed completely. I lost him in my own lap. He took his last breath and it was very heartbreaking. Accepting his loss was one of the hardest things that I’ve ever had to do. It was very hard because it was unpredictable. I let all my emotions out, because I had to remember to take care of myself and my family too. Now it was the time for me to be more responsible.

His death made me an introvert, more responsible, think for myself and my family, and see things differently. Now that he is gone, I have to take charge of many things. My father was my counselor, my friend, my guidance, and most of all my motivator. I feel completely lonely without him.

I also experienced how people were falsely claiming that he is a family member of theirs and they will take care of me and my family, but two weeks after the cremation they were the same as before with no sympathy. I finally got a glimpse of the real world who are my real well wishers and who are not. Looking back at all of this I realized how important my father was to me. Now I am a more focused and responsible person. I still feel my father lives through me. Even though my father is gone he still guides me at each and every point of life. His death made me an introvert, think for myself and my family, and live life practically. I wish I could thank him for making me a better person. It was his inspirations which made me handle things in a proper way.

Short Essay on Experience that Changed My Life

According to me, experiences are very important to forge our personality over time. From very childhood I grew up in a nurturing and loving environment where I always felt safe and loved. My parents always made me feel important. I was a stubborn child. I used to throw tantrums if things didn’t go my way. I was a very demanding child as well, though my mother loved me unconditionally. My mother was very patient and compassionate and used to explain things so well to make me understand why things couldn’t always be how I wanted them to be. But as a child I never wanted to understand her preachings. But then once on a school trip to an orphanage totally changed my view towards life.

Orphanage is the place where the orphans (children who are homeless having no parents) are taken care of.

Once when I was in Grade 4 our school planned an educational trip to an orphanage institute.We were asked to bring whatever we wanted to donate. My mother gave me some of my old toys, clothes and some sweets. We collected a good amount of material to distribute.

As we entered the orphanage all the kids gathered in a hall. There were children of all ages. They strayed at us with eyes full of hope. We were asked to distribute the things and spent some time with them. They were so excited to receive these old things. In conversation with them we came to know that they have only two to three dresses to wear. One plate and a bowl for their food. Even the food served to them was always the same and limited. They don’t have many varieties of food to eat. They have toys in common to play with. These children don’t know the meaning of love, care and affection. They cannot demand for anything. The plight of every child was so miserable.I realised all my mistakes. I realised fortunate I am to receive all the luxury.

I never liked it when my parents reprimanded me for not studying properly, when I made blunders, when I didn’t listen to them but there was a concern behind every word that they said. They took care of me at every juncture of my lives no matter what their condition.

But I felt so sorry for these children because they are lacking all those words of care, anger, and love.

Visiting the orphanage is a life changing experience for me. From that day I started appreciating the little things in life. I never demanded for unexpected things. I feel like helping every needy person.

I also started understanding my mother’s preachings and with her help, over time, I learned how to deal with my emotions and situations and these experiences shaped my behavior and personality.

I feel extremely fortunate that I have parents with me and they provide me all the luxury. I am thankful to them.

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How To Write Narrative Essay About Something That Changed Your Life

Table of Contents

How to start

• How to write body

How to conclude

It is common to come across life-changing experiences or encounters with a particular person that makes a significant impact on one’s life. People normally talk about these interesting things that play an integral part in their life and thus reserve a particular part of their memories for such occurrences. The revelations that a person makes may range from extraordinary events to the simple or rather common gestures that they hold very close to the heart owing to the impact on their lives. Life-threatening experiences that change a person’s perception of their life also form a part of the narrations one may come across in different conversations. An essay outlining the life-changing experiences is a narration from the first-person perspective and follows the general structure of narrative essays giving a detailed account of events.

Narrative essays provide a breakdown of events in a limited number of words with maximum attention given to the author’s ability to engage the reader in the story to avoid boredom. The student’s ability to gain the readers’ interest is a critical aspect to consider in essay writing. It is easy to tell or narrate a story, but writing a narrative essay that captures the reader’s attention is an entirely different story. Hence, putting down to paper the events as they unfolded and how they changed or affected a person’s life can prove to be quite a task. A narrative essay about something that changed your life is totally dependent on the author’s real experiences and their ability to successfully recollect how the transformative event or encounter occurred. It is usually not such an easy task because no research materials should be used as they are also irrelevant in this case. On a positive note, though, writing a narrative essay on something that changes one’s life is integral to the development of a student’s ability to express opinion and imagination.

A narrative essay on life-changing moments has become a common assignment to students in various learning institutions across a range of academic fields. It is, therefore, common to come across discussions on how to write a narrative essay about something that changed your life, a question or an aspect that students should acquaint themselves with before setting out to write down their unique encounters in life.

Like in any other essay, a narrative essay on something that changed your life should start with an introduction of between one and two paragraphs.

• The first paragraph should contain the essay’s topic which functions to introduce the reader to the main body of the article.
• The introductory paragraph should not be too long as it may lose its purpose of capturing the interest of the reader. A precise introduction serves to lead the reader to the life events that are expounded within the body of the essay and upon which the author also makes the final remarks.

How to write body paragraphs

The main body of the essay also demands the author’s attention to certain details that ensure efficient delivery when writing an essay about your life. When you want to write about an event that changed your life, the essay’s main body should follow the following structure .

• First and foremost, the student must give the reader a glimpse of the situation at hand. The creative ability of the author plays a significant role in bringing out or stating the idea and giving thoughts to it or simply explaining it.
• An essay on a life-changing moment requires some reasoning for the event, arguing out of why the situation is important to your life, among other different ways through which the author states the situation in the essay.
• The main body of an essay on a life-changing moment may also take the form of a thesis statement. The author may choose a particular idea in the thesis statement, the main idea, and validate it with facts and or other multiple proofs. Some authors prefer stating the thesis at the beginning of their arguments in the essay, though there is no harm in either start before or after the said argument.  However, caution should be taken in the statement of arguments for the thesis lest you confuse the readers or fail to convince them.
• It is important always to remember that capturing the attention of the audience and maintaining interest is vital in writing a narrative essay about something that changed your life. Life events to write about in such essays may include a breakup in a relationship, meeting someone special, divorce, or surviving a fatal accident among many others.

The conclusion of such essays, and like in many others, is usually a summation of all the main ideas outlined in the article on what or something that changed your life. The conclusions should be limited to the text that the author writes and not an observation from any other event-related or otherwise. The attention and interest of the readers should not be abused at this juncture, but rather pampered with a good summary that is easy to understand from reading the text. The reader’s interest maintenance is the distinguishing factor between a good storyteller in narrative essays and a boring one.

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‘Someone Who Has Made an Impact On Your Life’ Essay Sample

EssayEdge > Blog > ‘Someone Who Has Made an Impact On Your Life’ Essay Sample

“Describe a person who has influenced you” is the opening phrase of several personal statement prompts that go on to ask that you provide details of what that influence was. The major mistake made in these personal statement essays is that candidates make the essay about the individual and that individual’s achievements and character, which is all fine, but not if it is at the expense of detailing how that person has influenced you. The other mistake candidates make in response to this prompt is that they answer with the intuitive “first response,” which is usually a parent. And there is nothing wrong with offering a parent as the influential person – but only if in so doing, you can show that it was your parent who provided you with the abilities and interests that set you apart and can contribute to the target program.

As is the case with most personal statement essays, the success of your essay is determined before you begin writing – by what you decide to offer as content. In this essay there are many approaches to use – parents, siblings, teachers, coaches, friends, political leaders, celebrities – all of these categories can be tapped when it comes to the choice of who it was that influenced you. Let’s discuss how to write an essay about someone who influenced you and avoid the most typical mistakes.

The Trap to Avoid in Your “Who Has Influenced You the Most in Your Life” Essay

The trap to avoid is the trap of selecting a person without thinking through what you can offer as the influence. What is the strongest aspect of your candidacy? Your creativity? Your communication skills? Your technical background? Your professional background? The answer to this question – “What is the strongest aspect of your candidacy?” – is what should determine your subject matter for personal statement essays about a person who influenced you.

If your strength, say, is your background in a particular field, in your personal statement about a person who influenced you, identify the person who steered you in the direction of that field.

Need help? Check out EssayEdge editing services:

By doing this, you will use your essay about a person who influenced your life not only as a means to describe someone with positive traits you would like to emulate, but someone whose influence in your life was critical in letting you develop those skills that most set you apart as a candidate.

• Writing a Great Personal Statement
• Describe a significant experience or achievement
• Discuss an issue that is important to you
• Why is our school right for you?

You certainly had someone who changed your life, even if you feel it difficult to remember who it was. This essay topic is fantastic because it lets you look at yourself from a different angle, so try to analyze your life and express it in writing. Our experts edit essays 24/7 , so if you need professional guidance and advice, you’re welcome.

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An Essay about Someone Who Has Made an Impact on Your Life

Who has made a significant impact in your life and why? Essay on the topic might be challenging to write. One is usually asked to write such a text as a college admission essay.

A topic for this paper can be of your choice or pre-established by the institution. Either way, you may have to describe a person who influenced your life.

Here, we’ll tell you how to write about someone who had a huge impact on your life:

• Learn story-telling techniques.
• Choose the right person that affected you significantly.
• Describe the representative situation in an engaging way.
• Focus on yourself and the meaning of your journey.

However, it may not be enough to write about someone who had a great impact on your life. You should know some other peculiarities which we are going to discuss right now. Don’t forget that you can always find help here with any academic task.

📃 Writing about a Person Who Influenced You

Writing your essay about someone who has made an impact on your life starts with learning a few techniques. One of the main things you should know is that you will have to create a captivating story. Thus, you should know how to write personal narrative essays , some basic rules of story-telling.

Here is what you should keep in mind:

• Tell a story. A great way to engage your audience is to say something in the form of a story. Human brain processes information better that way. With words and sensory details, you can create a mental image of the person you are describing.
• Be personal. It can resemble composing an autobiography or memoir as you have to talk about your actual experience. There is nothing more moving than an individual story, so do not be afraid to open up in the reflective essay. Talk about the change you’ve experienced after meeting the person that influenced you.
• Don’t be predictable. A good story needs some level of suspense. There are many ways in which it can be done. You can try to tell the story chronologically or go back in time and include flashbacks. Try to surprise your readers with an intriguing essay title.
• Create a three-dimensional character. The focus of the story is not the sequence of events. It’s the character. Provide enough details and explain to the reader what makes that unusual.
• Show instead of telling. It’s a core idea of good story-telling. By doing that, you invite the readers to the scene. For starters, try using dialogue instead of narration.
• End on a positive note. Even if you had to face challenges, tell about a positive influence in your life. The biggest impact might be harmful, but it helped you grow nonetheless. Help the readers to see a piece of wisdom or a lesson you have learned.

Besides, we have listed some quick hints. With them, you’ll complete your essay on someone who has made a significant impact on your life and why successfully:

• Someone’s impact that you can describe may be either positive or negative. A vast majority of essays written about influential persons speak positively about them. However, do not try to overidealize. It’s fair to talk about negative as much as about positive. A person that influenced you does not have to be likable or perfect. It is enough to recognize the positive qualities that made an impact on you. It will help the commission to see you as a thinking and just person.
• Be as specific as possible. Describe a particular incident that explains this person’s impact on you. You have to describe the qualities of the person through the actual events that took place and the overall environment. However, remember that the story is also about you and how the person influenced you. Be specific about your growth and journey. The essay is the best way to demonstrate your thoughts and personality.
• The main character of your essay might be someone you do not know personally. Stay truthful and honest to yourself. If someone who has made an impact on your life is a person you have never met, write about it. You could talk about your grandparent whose story you’ve heard or an author of your favorite book. Describe how a person that you’ve met on social media and the friendship with them changed you.

Whoever it is that inspired you, remember that the essay is also about you. It is not the best practice to talk about celebrities, though. You might appear as a fan and not as a thinker.

🎯 College Application Essay

Why are you writing paragraph after paragraph about the person who has made an impact on your life? If this essay is for some contest or is a part of the college application package, be careful.

We’ve gathered some tips on writing an application essay:

• Construct a story. Every story should have a good beginning, a middle, and an end. The first paragraph should serve as an introduction to your information. At the same time, leave the last section for the conclusion. The middle part is where you describe the events in your account.
• Outline it. To make every paragraph count, you should create an outline. It will help you to understand what you want to say in each particular moment in your story. As well as stay on track and coherently describe the incident in your essay.
• Provide examples. They can help you prove your point and demonstrate your role model’s qualities. Instead of saying my father is a generous person, you can find an example in which he showed generosity. These parts should always lead back to you. The goal here is to show how their good conduct influenced your life decisions.
• Be honest. Staying true to who you are is essential. Read successful college essay examples if you’re not sure about it. After all, the paper is not about the role model, but it is about the influence. Try to write something that will be creative and unique. Honesty is the key to reach your reader’s heart.
• Ask someone to read it. Once you finish, ask a friend or a relative for their honest feedback. They can evaluate the content, the grammar, the readability, and the style. An independent reader can help you to improve all of these points.
• Don’t include the prompt. Remember that the admissions committee will receive hundreds of essays on this subject. Do not repeat standard templates and writing prompts. Your goal is to stand out from the crowd, and the only way to do it is by writing something meaningful and personal.

Most importantly:

You will have a particular word limit. It means you need to be very precise and clear when writing your essay on the person who has had the greatest impact on your life. You should be able to express the main idea and explain the effects in 200 or even fewer words.

Tips on how to prepare “remembering a person” essays can also be useful for your task. Look up successful someone who has impacted your life essay examples as well.

Who Has Made a Significant Impact in Your Life & Why: Essay Example

Every person has a unique character that is formed under the impact of various factors. These include the environment, social status, financial status, and many other elements that play a vital role in the life of any individual. However, being social creatures, people are most of all impacted by other people as they since the first minutes of their lives, up to the last ones, they live in society and interact with its representatives.

People Who Influenced You: Essay Topics

• Teacher’s influence on my personality .
• Discuss how your teacher’s attitude influenced your desire to study.
• Describe a teacher who had a negative impact on your zeal to learn the subject.
• How the example of Henri Cartier-Bresson influenced my desire to become a photographer.
• Parental influence on my life outcomes. 
• Explain how a conversation with happy spouses changed your views on marriage.
• How James Brown influenced my dancing style.
• Effect of an online friend on my life.
• Analyze how the example and behavior of your parents influenced your character.
• School bullies and their impact on my life.
• Discuss the impact Disney cartoon characters had on your perception of gender roles.
• Narrate how Maria Montessori work impacted your desire to become a teacher.
• Describe how your vegetarian friend influenced you to change your eating habits .
• Examine the role of your coach in your decision to take up football.
• Role of influencers in American society. 
• How your Italian relatives impacted your view on family and your cultural values.
• Discuss the way Aristotle’s understanding of ethics influences your ethical values. 
• Analyze the impact if your father’s beliefs on your career choice .
• How meeting my best friend affected my life.
• Teacher’s impact on my choice of career .
• Why I think George Washington is a true hero: the impact of his personality on my life.
• Describe how life and example of Florence Nightingale inspired you to become a nurse.
• A fictional character that influenced my worldview.
• My mother’s influence on my ideals of beauty .
• Hayao Miyazaki and his influence on me. 
• How my uncle helped me to overcome my fear of riding a bicycle .
• Write about a celebrity you consider a role model .
• Why Steve Jobs’ story inspires me.
• Discuss how your physical education teacher motivated you to take up a healthy lifestyle.
• Describe the way Jane Austen influenced your love for reading.  
• Teacher’s impact on my personal life .
• Analyze how the example of Greta Tunberg inspired you to become an environmental activist.  
• My friend helped me to overcome my fear and it changed my life.
• Influence of Martin Luther King on my beliefs.
• Why Roberto Clemente is my hero.  
• How superheroes affect modern society.
• Examine how your favorite K-pop group influenced your personal style.
• The role of my grandparents in building up my identity.  
• Impact of my parents on my self-confidence.
• Explain how your mother’s example influenced your desire to enter a college.
• The way Mother Theresa’s life and example changed my worldview.
• A person who inspired my interest in Indian art .
• Jay-Z’s biography and influence on me .
• The role of my family in my decision to lead a healthy lifestyle .
• Discuss how Jane Addams legacy influenced your resolution to become a social worker.
• Why Helen Keller is a person I would like to resemble.
• Analyze the role of Edgar Allan Poe in shaping your literature taste.  
• How the activities of Eleanor Roosevelt motivate me and a lot of other Americans.
• Abraham Lincoln and his impact on my life .
• Impact of my coach on my professional development and success.  

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Are you a nursing student? Then, you will definitely have an assignment to compose a nursing reflective essay. This task might be quite tough and challenging. But don’t stress out! Our professionals are willing to assist you.

Environment vs. development is a multifaceted present days’ dilemma. On the one hand, environmental problems are increasing year after year. We have more polluted areas on our planet, more polluted rivers, fewer trees that produce oxygen. On the other hand, can we stop development and progress in various fields? Is...

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Narrative Essay Sample: The Events That Changed My Lifestyle

Everybody has certain events that change their lifestyle, but for me, it was two major events that really changed the course of my life.

Well, let's start at the very beginning. When I was little I always thought about everything, and my parents said that I had a very big vocabulary and that I always thought long and hard about things. But I thought about the most though was what I was going to get to become a big sister.  I would sit all day praying for God to bless me with a little sister.

Well, I remember coming home from school one day in  kindergarten, and my mom was in the bathtub when she said “ come here  Arlee I have to tell you something.”  I ran into the room full of excitement just knowing what she was going to tell me. So she sat me down and she showed me a little picture, and I looked at the picture and asked what it was, and she said said “see that little dot, that's going to be your new sibling”.” we don't know if it is a boy or a girl yet but you're going to be a big sister”.

Most of my mom's pregnancy was very exciting, I was anticipating the birth of my sibling so badly and I couldn't wait to find out the gender, and when I finally did I was so happy. We contemplated over tons of names, the most popular being Ruby Kate, but in the end, we ended up just naming her Addee Claire.

I remember that day she was born like the back of my hand. We had to wake up at 4:30  And I remember the nanny being on TV And then having to rush off to the hospital. My mom had to stay in the hospital for a few days so I got to stay with my grandma and grandpa. On the first night, my cousin Peyton spent the night too and we went and had furs for dinner.  The next day we went up to the hospital and saw my little sister and we both got to hold her. She was beautiful. She was just the most pretty baby I  had ever seen, with a cute little pink bow right at the top of her head. That same night my cousin Gracie came over to spend the night with me and my grandma and grandpa are to keep me company.  The next day after that my grandma took me home.  

After addee was born everything was really good until one day it wasn't. My mom began to lose her hair and have body aches that were terrible. My dad took her to several doctors who all said the same thing, they didn't know what she had. They said it wasn't cancer but they didn't know what she had. They tested her for all sorts of things such as lupus, fibromyalgia, and other things too. They ended up saying that she did have fibromyalgia, and some other autoimmune disease but they still don't know exactly what it is yet.

A little bit after finding all of this out though, we got some pretty good news. My dad had a friend of his who knew a lady who couldn't quite take care of her little baby girl anymore. I was really excited to find out that we were going to have her stay with us for a while. Her name was Greenlee, she was very sweet. But I knew we couldn't keep her forever, and eventually, we had to give her to some of her relatives. My sister began going to all of the visitations my mom would get with Greenlee and they became pretty close.  But she doesn't quite remember her now. I actually remember once  Addee had told me she wanted a little sister just like Greenlee.  And after some discussion, we realized we wanted twins, so We immediately began to pray every day for twins. And it wasn't but five years later before I became pregnant again.  

I remember that day perfectly as well. I was sitting on the couch in our living room with my sister reading a book when I decided to go ask my mom what a word meant from the book that I didn't understand. When I walked in she called me over and told me the wonderful news. She said  I was going to be a big sister again. All I remember is just running in the living room crying because I was so excited to be a sister again. It was like the greatest moment of my life. 

We contemplated way more names this time considering we were waiting to find out the gender till the day of birth. Everyone said it was going to be a boy and my mom thought so too but I wanted another sister so I wasn't too happy about this idea at all. I  had told my mom I hoped she had twins, but she said because of her autoimmune stuff and the fact that she was 42 and had already had two cesexshons it was already going to be a high-risk pregnancy  .  and it was, she had to have the baby in Dallas instead of in sulfur springs where we were born.

I later found out that my mom wanted to have twins when she was a teenager but changed her mind, and  I also found out that I would have had another sibling before Addee but my mom had a miscarriage.   We went through the whole pregnancy just wondering the gender of the baby, me wanting a girl, everybody else wanting a boy. The day the baby was born my sister was sick and had to wear a mask so when we finally got to see the baby and found out it was a girl  (who we named Aynslee Grace) she kept tugging on my sister's mask and kept sticking her tongue out at her. 

Those events changed my life because they helped shape me into the person I am today and brought a lot of responsibility into my life. For example, becoming a big sister allowed me to learn skills such as patience, and many others that I can use when I become a parent myself.   Also, my mom having her autoimmune disease brought me different responsibilities, for both like having to watch my sisters on my mom’s really bad days and other things too. But those two events greatly changed my life for the better. And wouldn’t change any of it for the world.

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Essay on Incident That Changed My Life

Students are often asked to write an essay on Incident That Changed My Life in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Incident That Changed My Life

The day everything changed.

One sunny afternoon, I was out cycling when a dog ran onto the road. Swerving to avoid it, I fell and hurt my leg badly. This accident made me stay in bed for a month.

Learning and Growing

During that time, I read many books and discovered a love for stories. I also learned to appreciate the small things, like the warmth of sunlight or a phone call from a friend.

Because of this incident, I decided to start writing. I wanted to create stories that could make others feel less alone and more hopeful, just as those books did for me.

250 Words Essay on Incident That Changed My Life

One sunny afternoon, my life took a surprising turn. I was at the park, playing soccer with friends, when I noticed an old man sitting alone on a bench. He looked sad and forgotten. After the game, I felt a strong urge to talk to him. That decision marked a new chapter in my life.

A New Friend

Lessons learned.

Through Mr. Wilson, I learned the value of kindness and the joy of giving time to others. He taught me that everyone has a story worth listening to and that sometimes the simplest act of kindness can brighten someone’s life.

A Changed Perspective

Meeting Mr. Wilson changed my outlook on life. I became more compassionate and started volunteering at a local community center. The happiness I saw in Mr. Wilson’s eyes whenever I visited him was the greatest reward. That chance encounter at the park showed me that one small gesture can make a big difference. It was an incident that transformed who I am and how I see the world.

500 Words Essay on Incident That Changed My Life

Life is like a river, always flowing and changing its course when least expected. I learned this lesson when an incident changed the direction of my life completely. It was an ordinary Saturday morning, and I was on my way to the local library. Little did I know that this walk would lead me to an experience that would transform my life.

A Surprising Encounter

As I was walking, I noticed a small, scared kitten hiding under a bush. Its eyes were wide with fear, and it was meowing softly. Without thinking much, I approached the kitten and gently picked it up. I looked around for its mother or any sign of where it came from, but there was none. I realized this little creature was alone and needed help. So, I decided to take it home, at least until I could find it a safe place to live.

A New Responsibility

Bringing the kitten home meant I had to learn how to take care of it. I named her Whiskers, and as days passed, I grew attached to her. I learned about feeding schedules, the importance of play, and regular visits to the vet. Whiskers became my responsibility, and I took that role seriously. This experience taught me about commitment and the joy of caring for another living being.

Sharing the Joy

I began to share my story with friends and classmates. Many were inspired by how a simple act of kindness could lead to such a positive change. My teachers also praised my actions and used my experience as an example in class to encourage others to be kind and responsible.

A Lasting Impact

The day I found Whiskers was the day my life took a new turn. I became more caring, responsible, and aware of the needs of others. This incident showed me that even a small gesture can have a big impact. It changed how I saw the world and how I interacted with it. I learned that life can be unpredictable, but it is these surprises that shape us and help us grow.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Change — The Moment that Changed Everything: Personal Experience

The Moment that Changed Everything: Personal Experience

• Categories: Change Life Changing Experience Personal Experience

About this sample

Words: 520 |

Updated: 20 October, 2023

Words: 520 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Works Cited

• Davis, R. D., & Nolen-Hoeksema, S. (2001). Cognitive processes in depression. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 27(1), 107-126.
• Eby, L. T., Casper, W. J., Lockwood, A., Bordeaux, C., & Brinley, A. (2005). Work and family research in IO/OB: Content analysis and review of the literature (1980–2002). Journal of Vocational Behavior, 66(1), 124-197.
• Healey, J. F., & Zimmerman, J. (2017). Statistics for Psychology. Cengage Learning.
• Kessler, R. C., & McLeod, J. D. (1985). Social support and mental health in community samples. In Social support: Theory, research and applications (pp. 219-240). Springer.
• Lazarus, R. S., & Folkman, S. (1984). Stress, appraisal, and coping. Springer publishing company.
• Liu, Y., & Huang, Z. (2019). Why do people procrastinate? A review of six main theories. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 1460.
• Luthans, F., & Youssef, C. M. (2007). Emerging positive organizational behavior. Journal of Management, 33(3), 321-349.
• Peterson, C. (2000). The future of optimism. American Psychologist, 55(1), 44-55.
• Scheier, M. F., & Carver, C. S. (1993). On the power of positive thinking: The benefits of being optimistic. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 2(1), 26-30.
• Seligman, M. E. (2002). Authentic happiness: Using the new positive psychology to realize your potential for lasting fulfillment. Simon and Schuster.

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An essay that changed my life

I'm just a sophomore in highschool. I have lived my whole life with a speech impediment, mainly with the r sound but other pronounciation issues. It is interesting how doing something out of your comfort zone can change your life. Last April I decided to do just that and enter a writing contest to tell my "secret" to all my friends.

Up until this point in my life I went with people thinking I was from England (I live and am from Georgia) and just laughed it off. It wasn't that any of this was offensive, it definitely wasn't but as I said in the essay it just made me know they can tell I speak funny sometimes.

Not many of my close friends even know, and now that I was in highschool I had to do something. After talking to my youth minister during I retreat and watch a YouTube channel called yes theory. I decided to do the essay. The essay was called the law of life contest. It is when you pick a quote and write how it reflects in your life. I also did 4 months of quotes on my Instagram in summer 2 years ago, so I thought this was perfect for me.

Law of Life- “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.” - Bernard M. Maruch Character Trait: Concern People live every day hiding behind closed curtains not showing their real selves, but instead following others on how to live their life. The truth is that struggle is a human attribute, and struggle is the only way to successfully do something productive with one’s life. I have struggled with a minor speech problem my entire life; I have struggled with R’s and many other pronunciation issues. It’s tough not to think about how my life would be changed without it, or how I sometimes wish it would just vanish. This struggle affects my life every day, from the willingness I have to speak in class or the words I choose to avoid and replace with similar words. I sometimes speak to people and then seconds after I turn my head, they begin laughing at how I just said the word. This society chooses to judge over being respectful towards problems people have dealt with throughout their life. They judge based on what they see without knowing the whole story of one’s life. I’ve gone through so many situations where people laugh at the way I talk or the way I pronounce things. People judge me before knowing me and if I have to speak in class I am always freaking out and looking ahead to see if there is a heavy R word ahead that I can’t say well. With this speech impediment, I have also gotten thousands of questions about if I am from England. Most of the time when I meet a new person, they usually ask me if I am from England. Although they mean nothing by it, it’s offensive to me because I know that they can tell I don’t always speak right. Because of what I've seen in my life, I feel like everyone will judge me for speaking a little different, even though I know it’s not true. For some people, the courage to go out and be their selves is nowhere in sight due to how this world treats them. For some, fear haunts their mind, and they are scared to open the curtains to be themselves; therefore, they are always hidden inside this robot that controls their actions and controls how their life is run. I am concerned about how people treat others poorly, and how that makes the victim not wanting to share their story with the world, which, who knows, might change a life one day. This law of life, “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind” by Bernard M. Maruch, is one that I have known for a while now. Reading this quote makes me know that those who know my story are the ones who will not be bothered by any problems I have. Those who care to laugh and make fun of me are the ones who don’t know my story and are the ones who don’t matter that much. I have learned to go through life as myself, without worry of what people think of me. No matter what I go through, I know that being myself will make me feel better as a person and it lets me know that I have the strength to withstand people judging me. I rather be loved for the person I am, rather than be loved for the person I'm not. I hope one day I can share my story and convince people to share theirs. Which, who knows, might change a life one day...

After winning my essay I had to present it in front of business men at a meeting and then I shared the video of me talking on my Instagram.

I know my "disability" isn't serious and so many people have it worse but this essay taught me so much. Ever since this essay everyone knows and it is no longer a secret. I now can laugh at all jokes made and even make jokes myself. It made my life so much easier and was the start of opening up on my life and also telling others my own thoughts.

Since this essay I made a blog to share about my life and my thoughts on this world. It was all because of this one essay that really changed my view on the world.

Who thought opening up about your life could change your life. If you have a secret you are worried to tell people, tell them. Not only will your story inspire and change your life, your story will change others as well. Don't let your mind think the world will judge you for opening up. The world will do the opposite and follow your lead. Your story can change lives, don't be afraid to tell people something. Ever since this essay people accept my flaws and they don't question me.

Share your story and seek discomfort just like the YouTube channel yes theory does

Sincerely, Colin Zimmer

This Year, Let Go Of The People Who Aren’t Ready To Love You

It is the hardest thing you will ever have to do, and it will also be the most important: stop giving your love to those who aren’t ready to love you.

Stop having hard conversations with people who don’t want to change. Stop showing up for people who are indifferent about your presence. Stop prioritizing people who make you an option. Stop loving people who aren’t ready to love you.

I know that your instinct is to do whatever you can to earn the good graces of everyone you can, but that is also the impulse that will rob you of your time, your energy and your sanity.

When you start showing up to your life wholly and completely, with joy and interest and commitment, not everyone is going to be ready to meet you there.

It doesn’t mean you need to change who you are.  It means you need to stop loving people who aren’t ready to love you. 

If you’re left out, subtly insulted, mindlessly forgotten about or easily disregarded by the people you spend the most time with, you’re doing yourself an incredible disservice by continuing to offer your energy and life to them.

The truth is that you are not for everyone, and everyone is not for you. That’s what makes it so special when you do find the few people with whom you have a genuine friendship, love or relationship: you’ll know how precious it is because you’ve experienced what it isn’t.

But the longer you spend trying to force someone to love you when they aren’t capable, the longer you’re robbing yourself of that very connection. It is waiting for you. There are billions of people on this planet, and so many of them are going to meet you at your level, vibe where you are, connect with where you’re going.

… But the longer you stay small, tucked into the familiarity of the people who use you as a cushion, a back burner option, a therapist and a ploy for their emotional labor, the longer you keep yourself out of the community you crave.

Maybe if you stop showing up, you’ll be less liked.

Maybe you’ll be forgotten about altogether.

Maybe if you stop trying, the relationship will cease.

Maybe if you stop texting, your phone will stay dark for days and weeks.

Maybe if you stop loving someone, the love between you will dissolve.

That doesn’t mean you ruined a relationship. It means that the only thing sustaining a relationship was the energy you and you alone were putting into it.

That’s not love. That’s attachment.

The most precious, important thing that you have in your life is your energy. It is not your time that is limited,  it is your energy.  What you give it to each day is what you will create more and more of in your life. What you give your time to is  what will define your existence. 

When you realize this, you’ll begin to understand why you’re so anxious when you spend your time with people who are wrong for you, and in jobs or places or cities that are wrong, too.

You’ll begin to realize that the foremost important thing you can do for your life and yourself and everyone you know is to protect your energy more fiercely than anything else.

Make your life a safe haven in which only people that can care and listen and connect are allowed.

You are not responsible for saving people.

You are not responsible for convincing them they want to be saved.

It is not your job to show up for people and give away your life to them, little by little, moment by moment, because you pity them, because you feel bad, because you “should,” because you’re obligated, because, at the root of it all, you’re afraid to not be liked back.

It is your job to realize that you are the master of your fate, and that you are accepting the love you think you’re worthy of.

Decide you’re deserving of real friendship, true commitment and complete love with people who are healthy and thriving.

Then wait in the darkness, just for a little bit…

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Brianna Wiest

Brianna is the author of 101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think , The Mountain Is You , Ceremony , and When You’re Ready, This Is How You Heal .

Keep up with Brianna on Instagram , Twitter and shopcatalog.com

This is the year you change your life.

The pivot year: new book by brianna wiest.

If you’re in a pivot period—if you’re still bridging the space between where you are and where you want to be—remember that the person you’re becoming is already within you. The journey is convincing your mind to act consistently on what your heart already knows it wants to do.

The Pivot Year   is a book of 365 daily meditations on finding the courage to become who you’ve always wanted to be, from the internationally bestselling author of  101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think ,  The Mountain Is You,  and more.

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End the Phone-Based Childhood Now

The environment in which kids grow up today is hostile to human development.

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S omething went suddenly and horribly wrong for adolescents in the early 2010s. By now you’ve likely seen the statistics : Rates of depression and anxiety in the United States—fairly stable in the 2000s—rose by more than 50 percent in many studies from 2010 to 2019. The suicide rate rose 48 percent for adolescents ages 10 to 19. For girls ages 10 to 14, it rose 131 percent.

The problem was not limited to the U.S.: Similar patterns emerged around the same time in Canada, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand , the Nordic countries , and beyond . By a variety of measures and in a variety of countries, the members of Generation Z (born in and after 1996) are suffering from anxiety, depression, self-harm, and related disorders at levels higher than any other generation for which we have data.

The decline in mental health is just one of many signs that something went awry. Loneliness and friendlessness among American teens began to surge around 2012. Academic achievement went down, too. According to “The Nation’s Report Card,” scores in reading and math began to decline for U.S. students after 2012, reversing decades of slow but generally steady increase. PISA, the major international measure of educational trends, shows that declines in math, reading, and science happened globally, also beginning in the early 2010s.

Read: It sure looks like phones are making students dumber

As the oldest members of Gen Z reach their late 20s, their troubles are carrying over into adulthood. Young adults are dating less , having less sex, and showing less interest in ever having children than prior generations. They are more likely to live with their parents. They were less likely to get jobs as teens , and managers say they are harder to work with. Many of these trends began with earlier generations, but most of them accelerated with Gen Z.

Surveys show that members of Gen Z are shyer and more risk averse than previous generations, too, and risk aversion may make them less ambitious. In an interview last May , OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman and Stripe co-founder Patrick Collison noted that, for the first time since the 1970s, none of Silicon Valley’s preeminent entrepreneurs are under 30. “Something has really gone wrong,” Altman said. In a famously young industry, he was baffled by the sudden absence of great founders in their 20s.

Generations are not monolithic, of course. Many young people are flourishing. Taken as a whole, however, Gen Z is in poor mental health and is lagging behind previous generations on many important metrics. And if a generation is doing poorly––if it is more anxious and depressed and is starting families, careers, and important companies at a substantially lower rate than previous generations––then the sociological and economic consequences will be profound for the entire society.

What happened in the early 2010s that altered adolescent development and worsened mental health? Theories abound , but the fact that similar trends are found in many countries worldwide means that events and trends that are specific to the United States cannot be the main story.

I think the answer can be stated simply, although the underlying psychology is complex: Those were the years when adolescents in rich countries traded in their flip phones for smartphones and moved much more of their social lives online—particularly onto social-media platforms designed for virality and addiction . Once young people began carrying the entire internet in their pockets, available to them day and night, it altered their daily experiences and developmental pathways across the board. Friendship, dating, sexuality, exercise, sleep, academics, politics, family dynamics, identity—all were affected. Life changed rapidly for younger children, too, as they began to get access to their parents’ smartphones and, later, got their own iPads, laptops, and even smartphones during elementary school.

Jonathan Haidt: Get phones out of schools now

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As a social psychologist who has long studied social and moral development, I have been involved in debates about the effects of digital technology for years. Typically, the scientific questions have been framed somewhat narrowly, to make them easier to address with data. For example, do adolescents who consume more social media have higher levels of depression? Does using a smartphone just before bedtime interfere with sleep? The answer to these questions is usually found to be yes, although the size of the relationship is often statistically small, which has led some researchers to conclude that these new technologies are not responsible for the gigantic increases in mental illness that began in the early 2010s.

But before we can evaluate the evidence on any one potential avenue of harm, we need to step back and ask a broader question: What is childhood––including adolescence––and how did it change when smartphones moved to the center of it? If we take a more holistic view of what childhood is and what young children, tweens, and teens need to do to mature into competent adults, the picture becomes much clearer. Smartphone-based life, it turns out, alters or interferes with a great number of developmental processes.

The intrusion of smartphones and social media are not the only changes that have deformed childhood. There’s an important backstory, beginning as long ago as the 1980s, when we started systematically depriving children and adolescents of freedom, unsupervised play, responsibility, and opportunities for risk taking, all of which promote competence, maturity, and mental health. But the change in childhood accelerated in the early 2010s, when an already independence-deprived generation was lured into a new virtual universe that seemed safe to parents but in fact is more dangerous, in many respects, than the physical world.

My claim is that the new phone-based childhood that took shape roughly 12 years ago is making young people sick and blocking their progress to flourishing in adulthood. We need a dramatic cultural correction, and we need it now.

Brain development is sometimes said to be “experience-expectant,” because specific parts of the brain show increased plasticity during periods of life when an animal’s brain can “expect” to have certain kinds of experiences. You can see this with baby geese, who will imprint on whatever mother-sized object moves in their vicinity just after they hatch. You can see it with human children, who are able to learn languages quickly and take on the local accent, but only through early puberty; after that, it’s hard to learn a language and sound like a native speaker. There is also some evidence of a sensitive period for cultural learning more generally. Japanese children who spent a few years in California in the 1970s came to feel “American” in their identity and ways of interacting only if they attended American schools for a few years between ages 9 and 15. If they left before age 9, there was no lasting impact. If they didn’t arrive until they were 15, it was too late; they didn’t come to feel American.

Human childhood is an extended cultural apprenticeship with different tasks at different ages all the way through puberty. Once we see it this way, we can identify factors that promote or impede the right kinds of learning at each age. For children of all ages, one of the most powerful drivers of learning is the strong motivation to play. Play is the work of childhood, and all young mammals have the same job: to wire up their brains by playing vigorously and often, practicing the moves and skills they’ll need as adults. Kittens will play-pounce on anything that looks like a mouse tail. Human children will play games such as tag and sharks and minnows, which let them practice both their predator skills and their escaping-from-predator skills. Adolescents will play sports with greater intensity, and will incorporate playfulness into their social interactions—flirting, teasing, and developing inside jokes that bond friends together. Hundreds of studies on young rats, monkeys, and humans show that young mammals want to play, need to play, and end up socially, cognitively, and emotionally impaired when they are deprived of play .

One crucial aspect of play is physical risk taking. Children and adolescents must take risks and fail—often—in environments in which failure is not very costly. This is how they extend their abilities, overcome their fears, learn to estimate risk, and learn to cooperate in order to take on larger challenges later. The ever-present possibility of getting hurt while running around, exploring, play-fighting, or getting into a real conflict with another group adds an element of thrill, and thrilling play appears to be the most effective kind for overcoming childhood anxieties and building social, emotional, and physical competence. The desire for risk and thrill increases in the teen years, when failure might carry more serious consequences. Children of all ages need to choose the risk they are ready for at a given moment. Young people who are deprived of opportunities for risk taking and independent exploration will, on average, develop into more anxious and risk-averse adults .

From the April 2014 issue: The overprotected kid

Human childhood and adolescence evolved outdoors, in a physical world full of dangers and opportunities. Its central activities––play, exploration, and intense socializing––were largely unsupervised by adults, allowing children to make their own choices, resolve their own conflicts, and take care of one another. Shared adventures and shared adversity bound young people together into strong friendship clusters within which they mastered the social dynamics of small groups, which prepared them to master bigger challenges and larger groups later on.

And then we changed childhood.

The changes started slowly in the late 1970s and ’80s, before the arrival of the internet, as many parents in the U.S. grew fearful that their children would be harmed or abducted if left unsupervised. Such crimes have always been extremely rare, but they loomed larger in parents’ minds thanks in part to rising levels of street crime combined with the arrival of cable TV, which enabled round-the-clock coverage of missing-children cases. A general decline in social capital ––the degree to which people knew and trusted their neighbors and institutions–– exacerbated parental fears . Meanwhile, rising competition for college admissions encouraged more intensive forms of parenting . In the 1990s, American parents began pulling their children indoors or insisting that afternoons be spent in adult-run enrichment activities. Free play, independent exploration, and teen-hangout time declined.

In recent decades, seeing unchaperoned children outdoors has become so novel that when one is spotted in the wild, some adults feel it is their duty to call the police. In 2015, the Pew Research Center found that parents, on average, believed that children should be at least 10 years old to play unsupervised in front of their house, and that kids should be 14 before being allowed to go unsupervised to a public park. Most of these same parents had enjoyed joyous and unsupervised outdoor play by the age of 7 or 8.

But overprotection is only part of the story. The transition away from a more independent childhood was facilitated by steady improvements in digital technology, which made it easier and more inviting for young people to spend a lot more time at home, indoors, and alone in their rooms. Eventually, tech companies got access to children 24/7. They developed exciting virtual activities, engineered for “engagement,” that are nothing like the real-world experiences young brains evolved to expect.

The first wave came ashore in the 1990s with the arrival of dial-up internet access, which made personal computers good for something beyond word processing and basic games. By 2003, 55 percent of American households had a computer with (slow) internet access. Rates of adolescent depression, loneliness, and other measures of poor mental health did not rise in this first wave. If anything, they went down a bit. Millennial teens (born 1981 through 1995), who were the first to go through puberty with access to the internet, were psychologically healthier and happier, on average, than their older siblings or parents in Generation X (born 1965 through 1980).

The second wave began to rise in the 2000s, though its full force didn’t hit until the early 2010s. It began rather innocently with the introduction of social-media platforms that helped people connect with their friends. Posting and sharing content became much easier with sites such as Friendster (launched in 2003), Myspace (2003), and Facebook (2004).

Teens embraced social media soon after it came out, but the time they could spend on these sites was limited in those early years because the sites could only be accessed from a computer, often the family computer in the living room. Young people couldn’t access social media (and the rest of the internet) from the school bus, during class time, or while hanging out with friends outdoors. Many teens in the early-to-mid-2000s had cellphones, but these were basic phones (many of them flip phones) that had no internet access. Typing on them was difficult––they had only number keys. Basic phones were tools that helped Millennials meet up with one another in person or talk with each other one-on-one. I have seen no evidence to suggest that basic cellphones harmed the mental health of Millennials.

It was not until the introduction of the iPhone (2007), the App Store (2008), and high-speed internet (which reached 50 percent of American homes in 2007 )—and the corresponding pivot to mobile made by many providers of social media, video games, and porn—that it became possible for adolescents to spend nearly every waking moment online. The extraordinary synergy among these innovations was what powered the second technological wave. In 2011, only 23 percent of teens had a smartphone. By 2015, that number had risen to 73 percent , and a quarter of teens said they were online “almost constantly.” Their younger siblings in elementary school didn’t usually have their own smartphones, but after its release in 2010, the iPad quickly became a staple of young children’s daily lives. It was in this brief period, from 2010 to 2015, that childhood in America (and many other countries) was rewired into a form that was more sedentary, solitary, virtual, and incompatible with healthy human development.

In the 2000s, Silicon Valley and its world-changing inventions were a source of pride and excitement in America. Smart and ambitious young people around the world wanted to move to the West Coast to be part of the digital revolution. Tech-company founders such as Steve Jobs and Sergey Brin were lauded as gods, or at least as modern Prometheans, bringing humans godlike powers. The Arab Spring bloomed in 2011 with the help of decentralized social platforms, including Twitter and Facebook. When pundits and entrepreneurs talked about the power of social media to transform society, it didn’t sound like a dark prophecy.

You have to put yourself back in this heady time to understand why adults acquiesced so readily to the rapid transformation of childhood. Many parents had concerns , even then, about what their children were doing online, especially because of the internet’s ability to put children in contact with strangers. But there was also a lot of excitement about the upsides of this new digital world. If computers and the internet were the vanguards of progress, and if young people––widely referred to as “digital natives”––were going to live their lives entwined with these technologies, then why not give them a head start? I remember how exciting it was to see my 2-year-old son master the touch-and-swipe interface of my first iPhone in 2008. I thought I could see his neurons being woven together faster as a result of the stimulation it brought to his brain, compared to the passivity of watching television or the slowness of building a block tower. I thought I could see his future job prospects improving.

Touchscreen devices were also a godsend for harried parents. Many of us discovered that we could have peace at a restaurant, on a long car trip, or at home while making dinner or replying to emails if we just gave our children what they most wanted: our smartphones and tablets. We saw that everyone else was doing it and figured it must be okay.

It was the same for older children, desperate to join their friends on social-media platforms, where the minimum age to open an account was set by law to 13, even though no research had been done to establish the safety of these products for minors. Because the platforms did nothing (and still do nothing) to verify the stated age of new-account applicants, any 10-year-old could open multiple accounts without parental permission or knowledge, and many did. Facebook and later Instagram became places where many sixth and seventh graders were hanging out and socializing. If parents did find out about these accounts, it was too late. Nobody wanted their child to be isolated and alone, so parents rarely forced their children to shut down their accounts.

We had no idea what we were doing.

The numbers are hard to believe. The most recent Gallup data show that American teens spend about five hours a day just on social-media platforms (including watching videos on TikTok and YouTube). Add in all the other phone- and screen-based activities, and the number rises to somewhere between seven and nine hours a day, on average . The numbers are even higher in single-parent and low-income families, and among Black, Hispanic, and Native American families.

These very high numbers do not include time spent in front of screens for school or homework, nor do they include all the time adolescents spend paying only partial attention to events in the real world while thinking about what they’re missing on social media or waiting for their phones to ping. Pew reports that in 2022, one-third of teens said they were on one of the major social-media sites “almost constantly,” and nearly half said the same of the internet in general. For these heavy users, nearly every waking hour is an hour absorbed, in full or in part, by their devices.

In Thoreau’s terms, how much of life is exchanged for all this screen time? Arguably, most of it. Everything else in an adolescent’s day must get squeezed down or eliminated entirely to make room for the vast amount of content that is consumed, and for the hundreds of “friends,” “followers,” and other network connections that must be serviced with texts, posts, comments, likes, snaps, and direct messages. I recently surveyed my students at NYU, and most of them reported that the very first thing they do when they open their eyes in the morning is check their texts, direct messages, and social-media feeds. It’s also the last thing they do before they close their eyes at night. And it’s a lot of what they do in between.

The amount of time that adolescents spend sleeping declined in the early 2010s , and many studies tie sleep loss directly to the use of devices around bedtime, particularly when they’re used to scroll through social media . Exercise declined , too, which is unfortunate because exercise, like sleep, improves both mental and physical health. Book reading has been declining for decades, pushed aside by digital alternatives, but the decline, like so much else, sped up in the early 2010 s. With passive entertainment always available, adolescent minds likely wander less than they used to; contemplation and imagination might be placed on the list of things winnowed down or crowded out.

But perhaps the most devastating cost of the new phone-based childhood was the collapse of time spent interacting with other people face-to-face. A study of how Americans spend their time found that, before 2010, young people (ages 15 to 24) reported spending far more time with their friends (about two hours a day, on average, not counting time together at school) than did older people (who spent just 30 to 60 minutes with friends). Time with friends began decreasing for young people in the 2000s, but the drop accelerated in the 2010s, while it barely changed for older people. By 2019, young people’s time with friends had dropped to just 67 minutes a day. It turns out that Gen Z had been socially distancing for many years and had mostly completed the project by the time COVID-19 struck.

Read: What happens when kids don’t see their peers for months

You might question the importance of this decline. After all, isn’t much of this online time spent interacting with friends through texting, social media, and multiplayer video games? Isn’t that just as good?

Some of it surely is, and virtual interactions offer unique benefits too, especially for young people who are geographically or socially isolated. But in general, the virtual world lacks many of the features that make human interactions in the real world nutritious, as we might say, for physical, social, and emotional development. In particular, real-world relationships and social interactions are characterized by four features—typical for hundreds of thousands of years—that online interactions either distort or erase.

First, real-world interactions are embodied , meaning that we use our hands and facial expressions to communicate, and we learn to respond to the body language of others. Virtual interactions, in contrast, mostly rely on language alone. No matter how many emojis are offered as compensation, the elimination of communication channels for which we have eons of evolutionary programming is likely to produce adults who are less comfortable and less skilled at interacting in person.

Second, real-world interactions are synchronous ; they happen at the same time. As a result, we learn subtle cues about timing and conversational turn taking. Synchronous interactions make us feel closer to the other person because that’s what getting “in sync” does. Texts, posts, and many other virtual interactions lack synchrony. There is less real laughter, more room for misinterpretation, and more stress after a comment that gets no immediate response.

Third, real-world interactions primarily involve one‐to‐one communication , or sometimes one-to-several. But many virtual communications are broadcast to a potentially huge audience. Online, each person can engage in dozens of asynchronous interactions in parallel, which interferes with the depth achieved in all of them. The sender’s motivations are different, too: With a large audience, one’s reputation is always on the line; an error or poor performance can damage social standing with large numbers of peers. These communications thus tend to be more performative and anxiety-inducing than one-to-one conversations.

Finally, real-world interactions usually take place within communities that have a high bar for entry and exit , so people are strongly motivated to invest in relationships and repair rifts when they happen. But in many virtual networks, people can easily block others or quit when they are displeased. Relationships within such networks are usually more disposable.

From the September 2015 issue: The coddling of the American mind

These unsatisfying and anxiety-producing features of life online should be recognizable to most adults. Online interactions can bring out antisocial behavior that people would never display in their offline communities. But if life online takes a toll on adults, just imagine what it does to adolescents in the early years of puberty, when their “experience expectant” brains are rewiring based on feedback from their social interactions.

Kids going through puberty online are likely to experience far more social comparison, self-consciousness, public shaming, and chronic anxiety than adolescents in previous generations, which could potentially set developing brains into a habitual state of defensiveness. The brain contains systems that are specialized for approach (when opportunities beckon) and withdrawal (when threats appear or seem likely). People can be in what we might call “discover mode” or “defend mode” at any moment, but generally not both. The two systems together form a mechanism for quickly adapting to changing conditions, like a thermostat that can activate either a heating system or a cooling system as the temperature fluctuates. Some people’s internal thermostats are generally set to discover mode, and they flip into defend mode only when clear threats arise. These people tend to see the world as full of opportunities. They are happier and less anxious. Other people’s internal thermostats are generally set to defend mode, and they flip into discover mode only when they feel unusually safe. They tend to see the world as full of threats and are more prone to anxiety and depressive disorders.

A simple way to understand the differences between Gen Z and previous generations is that people born in and after 1996 have internal thermostats that were shifted toward defend mode. This is why life on college campuses changed so suddenly when Gen Z arrived, beginning around 2014. Students began requesting “safe spaces” and trigger warnings. They were highly sensitive to “microaggressions” and sometimes claimed that words were “violence.” These trends mystified those of us in older generations at the time, but in hindsight, it all makes sense. Gen Z students found words, ideas, and ambiguous social encounters more threatening than had previous generations of students because we had fundamentally altered their psychological development.

Staying on task while sitting at a computer is hard enough for an adult with a fully developed prefrontal cortex. It is far more difficult for adolescents in front of their laptop trying to do homework. They are probably less intrinsically motivated to stay on task. They’re certainly less able, given their undeveloped prefrontal cortex, and hence it’s easy for any company with an app to lure them away with an offer of social validation or entertainment. Their phones are pinging constantly— one study found that the typical adolescent now gets 237 notifications a day, roughly 15 every waking hour. Sustained attention is essential for doing almost anything big, creative, or valuable, yet young people find their attention chopped up into little bits by notifications offering the possibility of high-pleasure, low-effort digital experiences.

It even happens in the classroom. Studies confirm that when students have access to their phones during class time, they use them, especially for texting and checking social media, and their grades and learning suffer . This might explain why benchmark test scores began to decline in the U.S. and around the world in the early 2010s—well before the pandemic hit.

The neural basis of behavioral addiction to social media or video games is not exactly the same as chemical addiction to cocaine or opioids. Nonetheless, they all involve abnormally heavy and sustained activation of dopamine neurons and reward pathways. Over time, the brain adapts to these high levels of dopamine; when the child is not engaged in digital activity, their brain doesn’t have enough dopamine, and the child experiences withdrawal symptoms. These generally include anxiety, insomnia, and intense irritability. Kids with these kinds of behavioral addictions often become surly and aggressive, and withdraw from their families into their bedrooms and devices.

Social-media and gaming platforms were designed to hook users. How successful are they? How many kids suffer from digital addictions?

The main addiction risks for boys seem to be video games and porn. “ Internet gaming disorder ,” which was added to the main diagnosis manual of psychiatry in 2013 as a condition for further study, describes “significant impairment or distress” in several aspects of life, along with many hallmarks of addiction, including an inability to reduce usage despite attempts to do so. Estimates for the prevalence of IGD range from 7 to 15 percent among adolescent boys and young men. As for porn, a nationally representative survey of American adults published in 2019 found that 7 percent of American men agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “I am addicted to pornography”—and the rates were higher for the youngest men.

Girls have much lower rates of addiction to video games and porn, but they use social media more intensely than boys do. A study of teens in 29 nations found that between 5 and 15 percent of adolescents engage in what is called “problematic social media use,” which includes symptoms such as preoccupation, withdrawal symptoms, neglect of other areas of life, and lying to parents and friends about time spent on social media. That study did not break down results by gender, but many others have found that rates of “problematic use” are higher for girls.

Jonathan Haidt: The dangerous experiment on teen girls

I don’t want to overstate the risks: Most teens do not become addicted to their phones and video games. But across multiple studies and across genders, rates of problematic use come out in the ballpark of 5 to 15 percent. Is there any other consumer product that parents would let their children use relatively freely if they knew that something like one in 10 kids would end up with a pattern of habitual and compulsive use that disrupted various domains of life and looked a lot like an addiction?

During that crucial sensitive period for cultural learning, from roughly ages 9 through 15, we should be especially thoughtful about who is socializing our children for adulthood. Instead, that’s when most kids get their first smartphone and sign themselves up (with or without parental permission) to consume rivers of content from random strangers. Much of that content is produced by other adolescents, in blocks of a few minutes or a few seconds.

This rerouting of enculturating content has created a generation that is largely cut off from older generations and, to some extent, from the accumulated wisdom of humankind, including knowledge about how to live a flourishing life. Adolescents spend less time steeped in their local or national culture. They are coming of age in a confusing, placeless, ahistorical maelstrom of 30-second stories curated by algorithms designed to mesmerize them. Without solid knowledge of the past and the filtering of good ideas from bad––a process that plays out over many generations––young people will be more prone to believe whatever terrible ideas become popular around them, which might explain why v ideos showing young people reacting positively to Osama bin Laden’s thoughts about America were trending on TikTok last fall.

All this is made worse by the fact that so much of digital public life is an unending supply of micro dramas about somebody somewhere in our country of 340 million people who did something that can fuel an outrage cycle, only to be pushed aside by the next. It doesn’t add up to anything and leaves behind only a distorted sense of human nature and affairs.

When our public life becomes fragmented, ephemeral, and incomprehensible, it is a recipe for anomie, or normlessness. The great French sociologist Émile Durkheim showed long ago that a society that fails to bind its people together with some shared sense of sacredness and common respect for rules and norms is not a society of great individual freedom; it is, rather, a place where disoriented individuals have difficulty setting goals and exerting themselves to achieve them. Durkheim argued that anomie was a major driver of suicide rates in European countries. Modern scholars continue to draw on his work to understand suicide rates today.

Durkheim’s observations are crucial for understanding what happened in the early 2010s. A long-running survey of American teens found that , from 1990 to 2010, high-school seniors became slightly less likely to agree with statements such as “Life often feels meaningless.” But as soon as they adopted a phone-based life and many began to live in the whirlpool of social media, where no stability can be found, every measure of despair increased. From 2010 to 2019, the number who agreed that their lives felt “meaningless” increased by about 70 percent, to more than one in five.

An additional source of evidence comes from Gen Z itself. With all the talk of regulating social media, raising age limits, and getting phones out of schools, you might expect to find many members of Gen Z writing and speaking out in opposition. I’ve looked for such arguments and found hardly any. In contrast, many young adults tell stories of devastation.

Freya India, a 24-year-old British essayist who writes about girls, explains how social-media sites carry girls off to unhealthy places: “It seems like your child is simply watching some makeup tutorials, following some mental health influencers, or experimenting with their identity. But let me tell you: they are on a conveyor belt to someplace bad. Whatever insecurity or vulnerability they are struggling with, they will be pushed further and further into it.” She continues:

Gen Z were the guinea pigs in this uncontrolled global social experiment. We were the first to have our vulnerabilities and insecurities fed into a machine that magnified and refracted them back at us, all the time, before we had any sense of who we were. We didn’t just grow up with algorithms. They raised us. They rearranged our faces. Shaped our identities. Convinced us we were sick.

Rikki Schlott, a 23-year-old American journalist and co-author of The Canceling of the American Mind , writes ,

The day-to-day life of a typical teen or tween today would be unrecognizable to someone who came of age before the smartphone arrived. Zoomers are spending an average of 9 hours daily in this screen-time doom loop—desperate to forget the gaping holes they’re bleeding out of, even if just for … 9 hours a day. Uncomfortable silence could be time to ponder why they’re so miserable in the first place. Drowning it out with algorithmic white noise is far easier.

A 27-year-old man who spent his adolescent years addicted (his word) to video games and pornography sent me this reflection on what that did to him:

I missed out on a lot of stuff in life—a lot of socialization. I feel the effects now: meeting new people, talking to people. I feel that my interactions are not as smooth and fluid as I want. My knowledge of the world (geography, politics, etc.) is lacking. I didn’t spend time having conversations or learning about sports. I often feel like a hollow operating system.

Or consider what Facebook found in a research project involving focus groups of young people, revealed in 2021 by the whistleblower Frances Haugen: “Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rates of anxiety and depression among teens,” an internal document said. “This reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups.”

How can it be that an entire generation is hooked on consumer products that so few praise and so many ultimately regret using? Because smartphones and especially social media have put members of Gen Z and their parents into a series of collective-action traps. Once you understand the dynamics of these traps, the escape routes become clear.

Social media, in contrast, applies a lot more pressure on nonusers, at a much younger age and in a more insidious way. Once a few students in any middle school lie about their age and open accounts at age 11 or 12, they start posting photos and comments about themselves and other students. Drama ensues. The pressure on everyone else to join becomes intense. Even a girl who knows, consciously, that Instagram can foster beauty obsession, anxiety, and eating disorders might sooner take those risks than accept the seeming certainty of being out of the loop, clueless, and excluded. And indeed, if she resists while most of her classmates do not, she might, in fact, be marginalized, which puts her at risk for anxiety and depression, though via a different pathway than the one taken by those who use social media heavily. In this way, social media accomplishes a remarkable feat: It even harms adolescents who do not use it.

From the May 2022 issue: Jonathan Haidt on why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid

A recent study led by the University of Chicago economist Leonardo Bursztyn captured the dynamics of the social-media trap precisely. The researchers recruited more than 1,000 college students and asked them how much they’d need to be paid to deactivate their accounts on either Instagram or TikTok for four weeks. That’s a standard economist’s question to try to compute the net value of a product to society. On average, students said they’d need to be paid roughly $50 ($59 for TikTok, $47 for Instagram) to deactivate whichever platform they were asked about. Then the experimenters told the students that they were going to try to get most of the others in their school to deactivate that same platform, offering to pay them to do so as well, and asked, Now how much would you have to be paid to deactivate, if most others did so? The answer, on average, was less than zero. In each case, most students were willing to pay to have that happen.

Social media is all about network effects. Most students are only on it because everyone else is too. Most of them would prefer that nobody be on these platforms. Later in the study, students were asked directly, “Would you prefer to live in a world without Instagram [or TikTok]?” A majority of students said yes––58 percent for each app.

This is the textbook definition of what social scientists call a collective-action problem . It’s what happens when a group would be better off if everyone in the group took a particular action, but each actor is deterred from acting, because unless the others do the same, the personal cost outweighs the benefit. Fishermen considering limiting their catch to avoid wiping out the local fish population are caught in this same kind of trap. If no one else does it too, they just lose profit.

Cigarettes trapped individual smokers with a biological addiction. Social media has trapped an entire generation in a collective-action problem. Early app developers deliberately and knowingly exploited the psychological weaknesses and insecurities of young people to pressure them to consume a product that, upon reflection, many wish they could use less, or not at all.

The trap here is that each child thinks they need a smartphone because “everyone else” has one, and many parents give in because they don’t want their child to feel excluded. But if no one else had a smartphone—or even if, say, only half of the child’s sixth-grade class had one—parents would feel more comfortable providing a basic flip phone (or no phone at all). Delaying round-the-clock internet access until ninth grade (around age 14) as a national or community norm would help to protect adolescents during the very vulnerable first few years of puberty. According to a 2022 British study , these are the years when social-media use is most correlated with poor mental health. Family policies about tablets, laptops, and video-game consoles should be aligned with smartphone restrictions to prevent overuse of other screen activities.

The trap here, as with smartphones, is that each adolescent feels a strong need to open accounts on TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and other platforms primarily because that’s where most of their peers are posting and gossiping. But if the majority of adolescents were not on these accounts until they were 16, families and adolescents could more easily resist the pressure to sign up. The delay would not mean that kids younger than 16 could never watch videos on TikTok or YouTube—only that they could not open accounts, give away their data, post their own content, and let algorithms get to know them and their preferences.

Most schools claim that they ban phones, but this usually just means that students aren’t supposed to take their phone out of their pocket during class. Research shows that most students do use their phones during class time. They also use them during lunchtime, free periods, and breaks between classes––times when students could and should be interacting with their classmates face-to-face. The only way to get students’ minds off their phones during the school day is to require all students to put their phones (and other devices that can send or receive texts) into a phone locker or locked pouch at the start of the day. Schools that have gone phone-free always seem to report that it has improved the culture, making students more attentive in class and more interactive with one another. Published studies back them up .

Many parents are afraid to give their children the level of independence and responsibility they themselves enjoyed when they were young, even though rates of homicide, drunk driving, and other physical threats to children are way down in recent decades. Part of the fear comes from the fact that parents look at each other to determine what is normal and therefore safe, and they see few examples of families acting as if a 9-year-old can be trusted to walk to a store without a chaperone. But if many parents started sending their children out to play or run errands, then the norms of what is safe and accepted would change quickly. So would ideas about what constitutes “good parenting.” And if more parents trusted their children with more responsibility––for example, by asking their kids to do more to help out, or to care for others––then the pervasive sense of uselessness now found in surveys of high-school students might begin to dissipate.

It would be a mistake to overlook this fourth norm. If parents don’t replace screen time with real-world experiences involving friends and independent activity, then banning devices will feel like deprivation, not the opening up of a world of opportunities.

The main reason why the phone-based childhood is so harmful is because it pushes aside everything else. Smartphones are experience blockers. Our ultimate goal should not be to remove screens entirely, nor should it be to return childhood to exactly the way it was in 1960. Rather, it should be to create a version of childhood and adolescence that keeps young people anchored in the real world while flourishing in the digital age.

In recent decades, however, Congress has not been good at addressing public concerns when the solutions would displease a powerful and deep-pocketed industry. Governors and state legislators have been much more effective, and their successes might let us evaluate how well various reforms work. But the bottom line is that to change norms, we’re going to need to do most of the work ourselves, in neighborhood groups, schools, and other communities.

Read: Why Congress keeps failing to protect kids online

There are now hundreds of organizations––most of them started by mothers who saw what smartphones had done to their children––that are working to roll back the phone-based childhood or promote a more independent, real-world childhood. (I have assembled a list of many of them.) One that I co-founded, at LetGrow.org , suggests a variety of simple programs for parents or schools, such as play club (schools keep the playground open at least one day a week before or after school, and kids sign up for phone-free, mixed-age, unstructured play as a regular weekly activity) and the Let Grow Experience (a series of homework assignments in which students––with their parents’ consent––choose something to do on their own that they’ve never done before, such as walk the dog, climb a tree, walk to a store, or cook dinner).

Even without the help of organizations, parents could break their families out of collective-action traps if they coordinated with the parents of their children’s friends. Together they could create common smartphone rules and organize unsupervised play sessions or encourage hangouts at a home, park, or shopping mall.

P arents are fed up with what childhood has become. Many are tired of having daily arguments about technologies that were designed to grab hold of their children’s attention and not let go. But the phone-based childhood is not inevitable.

We didn’t know what we were doing in the early 2010s. Now we do. It’s time to end the phone-based childhood.

This article is adapted from Jonathan Haidt’s forthcoming book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness .

​When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

The 8 Main Ways Technology Impacts Your Daily Life in 2024

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Technology affects almost every aspect of life in 2024, from transport efficiency and safety to access to food and healthcare, socialization, and productivity . It’s made learning more convenient, information easier to access, and has enabled global communities to form organically on the internet.

Even though technology has impacted our lives positively and allowed ideas and resources to be shared more easily, the overuse of some technology has been linked to a decline in mental health , increased social division , and privacy concerns . The rapid rise of AI tools like ChatGPT has raised even more questions about the role technology plays in our lives.

We take technology for granted every day – even when it’s delivering us the latest news in an instant, making our cappuccino, or connecting us with loved ones halfway across the country (or even the world).

So, to remind ourselves of just how much technology has changed society, we’ve taken a look at the eight most important ways that tech has impacted our lives in recent years.

Ways Technology Impacts Our Lives:

• Improved Communication
• AI Changing The Way We Work
• Decreased Privacy
• Accessible Shopping
• Better Information Access
• Virtual Social Lives
• Remote Working
• 4-Day Workweek

1. Improved Communication

“Come here Watson, I need to see you.” These were the first words that Alexander Graham Bell uttered over his revolutionary invention back in 1876, and it’s fair to say that the trusty telephone has had a good run. Bell originally dreamed that there would be ‘one in every town’. He was right of course — in fact, these days, there’s one in every person’s pocket. However, technology has seen the traditional audio call being edged out in favor of messaging and social media as a way of touching base.

Another medium that has seen a boom in the last few years is video calling. It’s nothing particularly new – the concept has been around for about as long as Bell’s telephone – but the revolution of high-speed broadband at affordable prices means that it’s now easy to send and receive the amounts of data needed for a video call.

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While video calling has spent the last decade slowly creeping into daily life, it’s the ongoing pandemic that has pushed it over the edge and secured its future as an everyday way to stay in touch.

Thanks to lockdowns and social distancing, families and friends are meeting up and socializing via video call more than ever before.

If you hadn’t heard of Zoom before 2020, you will have certainly become aware of it by now, and while there are plenty of other video conferencing apps out there, it’s Zoom that has emerged as the poster child for video chat in the public consciousness. In 2023, it was estimated that Zoom had well over 800 million unique global visitors a month.

In the post-pandemic world, more of us are working from home than ever. Many in-person meetings have been replaced with video conferencing as office staff swapping the boardroom for the bedroom (or wherever else they can find space to work at home) in droves. Now, based on data from mid-2022, Mckinsey estimates 35% of Americans can work from home full time.

While Zoom is a great tool for catching up with buddies, can it do the job of supporting your business through the pandemic? We’ve evaluated several high-profile video conferencing systems and can help you find the right one for your company in minutes.

2. AI Changing The Way We Work

If someone had told you just a few years ago that very soon, you’d have access to a free AI tool that could help you with all of your tasks, you might not have believed them. Millions of people now use ChatGPT, Bard , and other generative AI tools for all sorts of tasks in their personal and work lives.

Although it was only launched back in November 2022, ChatGPT has already had a transformative impact on the lives of students and businesspeople alike, making their lives easier by quickly and accurately answering questions relating to their work. According to our own research, 65% of companies are using ChatGPT already .

The AI revolution really is here. ChatGPT has been helping people with jobs like writing recipes, creating job resumes, crafting essays and poems, summarizing historical events, composing emails, creating spreadsheets, and even filing their tax returns. Others have used it to get free legal advice or plan their holiday.

The ChatGPT website is currently generating around 1.8 billion visits a month, and a Tech.co survey found that almost half (47%) of business leaders are considering using AI instead of hiring new members of staff. Some experts even say that soon, large companies will have “ 50 different AI tools ” in operation.

Be mindful that although ChatGPT is useful and has already had a significant impact on the lives of millions of people, you can’t – and shouldn’t – use it for every single essay, report, or task in your day-to-day life.

Although using ChatGPT isn’t technically plagiarism – after all, you’re not copying someone else’s work – many universities and schools now consider it to be cheating. Some teachers have said their students can use it, while others have banned it completely. It’s also not perfect, and it’s certainly not a geniue – AI tools often get things wrong, and you should always double-check the responses you receive from them.

3. Decreased Privacy

We’re spending more of our lives online than ever before. According to one report , the “typical” global internet user spent seven hours a day online in 2022.

Shopping? It’s done on Amazon. Catching up with friends? It’s FaceTime, Snapchat, or email. Want to be entertained? Netflix, or online gaming. Research? Hit up Google. Almost every facet of our daily routines can be catered for online today, so it seems inevitable that our time spent online will only increase. In fact, 37% of consumers said in a 2022 survey that they’d switched companies in an attempt to protect their own privacy.

While access to everything online gives us an unparalleled level of convenience, it has also made us vulnerable. Every move we make online is recorded, and we leave digital footprints wherever we visit. Hackers and scammers know this, and work hard to exploit it for financial gain.

Of course, as with everything else, technology has also given us the tools to protect ourselves and ensure that we are safe as our lives migrate online. In the last few years, this has become even more key – many of us are not only browsing for personal reasons, but accessing shared work networks from our own homes, and we can’t rely on the closed off security of the physical office.

One piece of technology that will help keep your data safe is the password manager . A password manager will protect your existing passwords, suggest new and secure ones, and in some cases, even monitor the web to ensure that your details aren’t compromised. Not only that, but it will do away with that ever-present fear we all have of forgetting one of our many, many passwords. If you don’t have one, there’s never been a better time to invest –plus, with some of the best apps only costing a few dollars a month, it’s a great low-cost solution for added security .

Another great security advancement is the Virtual Private Network (VPN). A VPN will bypass your internet service provider and mask your digital footprints. Nobody will be able to see the content you are accessing, and it makes you a lot less susceptible to hackers. You can also use public Wi-Fi accounts with more confidence. Many businesses have adopted them recently, as well as home users – they’re very quick to set up and most of the time you can troubleshoot a VPN yourself , which means they’re very low-maintenance.

Our recommendation? PureVPN . It’s packed with features like quantum-resistant servers and a streaming “shortcuts” tool, and has servers in more than 60 countries. What’s more, at just $2.11 per month , it’s a lot cheaper than NordVPN and ExpressVPN.

There’s also anti-virus software, providing a great shield from all the nasties out there on the internet looking to catch us out. This includes ransomware and malware, which is usually designed with the intent of extracting money from victims. From individuals to government, nobody is immune, and good antivirus software is a great way to capture and quarantine such efforts before they can wreak havoc.

Lastly, there are different ways to remove your personal information from Google that, in a world of decreased privacy, are definitely worth knowing about. Knowing how to kick off Google’s official removal request process will come in handy, for example, if you find content on a website that includes sensitive data about you.

A VPN can protect your identity from unwanted tracking. Have you used a VPN before?

4. Accessible Shopping

As we’ve mentioned, shopping has found a convenient and popular home online, but that’s not to say the high street is to be ignored – after all, you can’t really beat seeing a product in the flesh before you buy it, and you can’t eat out online just yet (you can order a delivery, but that’s not quite the same).

Technology hasn’t bypassed physical shopping either. Thanks to contactless cards and phone payments, we don’t need to worry about handing over cash or keying in a pin number – just tap to pay, and you’re done.

If you’re a business, then a Point of Sale (POS) system is a huge boon, regardless of your size. With a POS, not only can you take payments electronically, but you can also automatically manage stock levels, create electronic receipts, manage loyalty schemes, manage sales and so on. It doesn’t need to be costly, either – POS systems start at around $30 a month, and some even offer free hardware. To find out more, take a look at our POS system reviews, and compare POS systems today.

Of course, you don’t need to leave the house to shop. With the vast majority of us owning a tablet , laptop or smartphone , we’ve all got easy access to a virtual shop front right in front of us, where we can buy pretty much anything we want.

Technology has also democratized retail. It used to be the case that you needed a physical presence to start your own shop – now all you need is a computer and an idea.

Sharing your wares with the world is easier than ever. This is thanks to the simplicity of website builders – tools that can help you create professional-looking websites in minutes , then sell your products or services.

Have you used a password manager before?

5. Better Information Access

Today, if you want to find something out, it’s no more strenuous than a couple of clicks. For many of us, we don’t even need to move from the spot – simply pull out your phone and get Googling, or even ask your smart home assistant .

It may seem like a distant memory, but it wasn’t so long ago that you’d have to take a trip to the library to find out more in-depth information about a subject if it was available at all. Now, due to these advances in technology, you can find hundreds of thousands of web pages dedicated to pretty much anything you can dream of, from “crochet patterns” (Google gives 129,000,000 results) to “Roman history” (1,360,000,000 results).

It’s something of a cliche, but there is literally an app for anything, and they’ve rendered a lot of other mediums all but obsolete for many of us. Take GPS, for example – if you want to know how to get somewhere, it’s simply a case of pulling up an app like Google Maps and choosing the best route, which will come complete with directions, as well as satellite imaging. There are even apps for businesses that automatically route vehicles alongside traffic, weather, safety and legal information. App technology has also made learning, dating, dining, and almost anything else you can think of a lot easier for us.

Not to be overlooked either are the actual devices that all these apps run on. The rise of the smartphone has been exponential over the last decade, and daily web searches on mobile devices now outnumber those on laptop or desktop computers. Improvements continue to be made to handheld devices, each and every year, without fail.

The mobile phone is now considered an essential device for almost everyone, vastly superseding its original use as a telephone (to actually talk to people) and becoming our pocket-sized portal to an online world.

6. Virtual Social Lives

Another seismic change in our lives over the past decade has been the widespread usage of social media . This industry has progressed fast, and the early days of the likes of MySpace and the original version of Facebook – which first went live in 2006 – seem like a bygone age already.

Now, services such as Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, and others give us an insight into the waking lives of others in real-time, whether they’re friends with a few followers or celebrities with millions. New platforms are still coming out this year. Just recently, Meta – the company that owns WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram – brought out a new social media platform called Threads , which is a little bit like Twitter.

Now, these very same companies want us to spend even more time online, in a digital space they call “the Metaverse”, a virtual reality where users can interact in a computer-generated environment. Facebook’s chief Mark Zuckerberg says he wants one billion people to exist within it one day, and a variety of metaverse companies now exist. In the past year, some businesses even managed to sell virtual land in the metaverse.

Businesses have got in on the act too, and a savvy social media manager is considered essential in most companies, with their ability to make or break a brand’s reputation.

Social media’s course over the last few years has been somewhat bumpy, but as a society, or many societies, we’ve never seen global communication on such a scale. It has enabled the rise of social commentary and movements, such as #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, as well as leaving us vulnerable, with the likes of Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal serving to manipulate voters and skew democracy.

Social media can be fun, but studies have also shown that it can have a detrimental effect on our mental health. It’s so bad, in fact, that some governments are calling for social media companies to be more responsible – especially when it comes to younger users.

A recent study in the UK found that 46% of young girls reported that social media had a negative impact on their self-esteem, so there’s clearly a lot to fix. Lots of other recent studies have found links between social media use and mental health issues like depression, anxiety, and even Smartphone addiction.

Ultimately, social media is only as positive as the hands of the people it’s in – but it looks like it’s here to stay, whether you like it or not.

As a consumer, you can choose to opt out, but businesses yet to get in on the action will soon fall behind the competition. Digital marketing is a hugely important aspect of any company with an online presence, and an essential one to get right.

7. Remote Working

2020 will be remembered for a lot of negative reasons, but one of its most defining positives has been the widespread acceptance of working from home. With the pandemic in full swing, many had to abandon their offices and log on from their own residences.

At its peak, 42% of Americans were working from home, according to one study. The trend has continued longer after the pandemic too, with large companies such as Twitter and Microsoft already stating that their staff can work from home indefinitely.

The CIPD’s 2023 report on flexible working found that 40% of organizations reported an increase in requests for flexible working arrangements in 2023. Two-thirds (66%) of organizations said it was important to them to offer this perk when advertising for new roles, up from 56% in 2021.

For many, working from home has been something of a revelation – no commuting, more flexible hours, a lessened environmental impact, and being able to choose where they work. All this is made possible thanks to technological advancements, yet again – as well as a whole host of companies offering remote work .

That’s not to say working outside the office doesn’t have its challenges – organizing employees who are spread across various locations successfully can certainly present problems. But yet again, our friend technological progress comes to the rescue, this time with remote working software , which can aid in organization, time management, goal focus and structure.

Anti-Virus Software Prevents Security Risks

8. 4-Day Workweek

Classic cartoon The Jetsons gave us a glimpse into the future of work, with the main character lamenting the fact he had to work ‘three hours a day, three days a week’.

The Jetsons was set in 2062, so there’s still a chance we could end up with a nine hour week, but until then, the focus is on the 4-day workweek.

It’s a movement that has seen a huge push in the last couple of years, with many companies starting to offer employees longer weekends . Some US States are also pushing a 4-day workweek, too .

The reason for the 4-day workweek becoming viable is, you guessed it, technology, specifically, AI. With the ability for tech to do a lot of the heavy lifting, many are arguing, including the likes of Bernie Sanders , that workers should reap the benefits and be rewarded with more leisure time.

We have seen some landmark studies carried out on the reduced workweek over the last year, and they proved overwhelmingly positive for the most part.

And why not? As we mention above, remote working, once seen as a luxury, is now more common than ever. The 4-day workweek could well be next.

Conclusion: The Impact of Technology

So, there we have it — eight dramatic ways that technology has impacted our daily lives for good. Of course, technology never takes a rest, and you can bet that it won’t be long before some of the devices and services we’ve covered here are superseded — in many cases, their next iteration is already being worked on in a lab somewhere.

Regardless, there’s no denying that technology has, and will continue to, have a huge impact on our lives, in one way or another.

More on this topic:

• Flirt, Fake, Make Them Wait— How Technology Has Changed the Way We Interact
• Top 6 Social Media Trends
• 10 Ways Businesses Are Using ChatGPT Right Now
• How to Remove Your Personal Information From Google
• What is a Digital Footprint, and How Do You Minimize It?

How Technology Has Changed Our Lives: FAQs

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How Pew Research Center will report on generations moving forward

Journalists, researchers and the public often look at society through the lens of generation, using terms like Millennial or Gen Z to describe groups of similarly aged people. This approach can help readers see themselves in the data and assess where we are and where we’re headed as a country.

Pew Research Center has been at the forefront of generational research over the years, telling the story of Millennials as they came of age politically and as they moved more firmly into adult life . In recent years, we’ve also been eager to learn about Gen Z as the leading edge of this generation moves into adulthood.

But generational research has become a crowded arena. The field has been flooded with content that’s often sold as research but is more like clickbait or marketing mythology. There’s also been a growing chorus of criticism about generational research and generational labels in particular.

Recently, as we were preparing to embark on a major research project related to Gen Z, we decided to take a step back and consider how we can study generations in a way that aligns with our values of accuracy, rigor and providing a foundation of facts that enriches the public dialogue.

A typical generation spans 15 to 18 years. As many critics of generational research point out, there is great diversity of thought, experience and behavior within generations.

We set out on a yearlong process of assessing the landscape of generational research. We spoke with experts from outside Pew Research Center, including those who have been publicly critical of our generational analysis, to get their take on the pros and cons of this type of work. We invested in methodological testing to determine whether we could compare findings from our earlier telephone surveys to the online ones we’re conducting now. And we experimented with higher-level statistical analyses that would allow us to isolate the effect of generation.

What emerged from this process was a set of clear guidelines that will help frame our approach going forward. Many of these are principles we’ve always adhered to , but others will require us to change the way we’ve been doing things in recent years.

Here’s a short overview of how we’ll approach generational research in the future:

We’ll only do generational analysis when we have historical data that allows us to compare generations at similar stages of life. When comparing generations, it’s crucial to control for age. In other words, researchers need to look at each generation or age cohort at a similar point in the life cycle. (“Age cohort” is a fancy way of referring to a group of people who were born around the same time.)

When doing this kind of research, the question isn’t whether young adults today are different from middle-aged or older adults today. The question is whether young adults today are different from young adults at some specific point in the past.

To answer this question, it’s necessary to have data that’s been collected over a considerable amount of time – think decades. Standard surveys don’t allow for this type of analysis. We can look at differences across age groups, but we can’t compare age groups over time.

Another complication is that the surveys we conducted 20 or 30 years ago aren’t usually comparable enough to the surveys we’re doing today. Our earlier surveys were done over the phone, and we’ve since transitioned to our nationally representative online survey panel , the American Trends Panel . Our internal testing showed that on many topics, respondents answer questions differently depending on the way they’re being interviewed. So we can’t use most of our surveys from the late 1980s and early 2000s to compare Gen Z with Millennials and Gen Xers at a similar stage of life.

This means that most generational analysis we do will use datasets that have employed similar methodologies over a long period of time, such as surveys from the U.S. Census Bureau. A good example is our 2020 report on Millennial families , which used census data going back to the late 1960s. The report showed that Millennials are marrying and forming families at a much different pace than the generations that came before them.

Even when we have historical data, we will attempt to control for other factors beyond age in making generational comparisons. If we accept that there are real differences across generations, we’re basically saying that people who were born around the same time share certain attitudes or beliefs – and that their views have been influenced by external forces that uniquely shaped them during their formative years. Those forces may have been social changes, economic circumstances, technological advances or political movements.

When we see that younger adults have different views than their older counterparts, it may be driven by their demographic traits rather than the fact that they belong to a particular generation.

The tricky part is isolating those forces from events or circumstances that have affected all age groups, not just one generation. These are often called “period effects.” An example of a period effect is the Watergate scandal, which drove down trust in government among all age groups. Differences in trust across age groups in the wake of Watergate shouldn’t be attributed to the outsize impact that event had on one age group or another, because the change occurred across the board.

Changing demographics also may play a role in patterns that might at first seem like generational differences. We know that the United States has become more racially and ethnically diverse in recent decades, and that race and ethnicity are linked with certain key social and political views. When we see that younger adults have different views than their older counterparts, it may be driven by their demographic traits rather than the fact that they belong to a particular generation.

Controlling for these factors can involve complicated statistical analysis that helps determine whether the differences we see across age groups are indeed due to generation or not. This additional step adds rigor to the process. Unfortunately, it’s often absent from current discussions about Gen Z, Millennials and other generations.

When we can’t do generational analysis, we still see value in looking at differences by age and will do so where it makes sense. Age is one of the most common predictors of differences in attitudes and behaviors. And even if age gaps aren’t rooted in generational differences, they can still be illuminating. They help us understand how people across the age spectrum are responding to key trends, technological breakthroughs and historical events.

Each stage of life comes with a unique set of experiences. Young adults are often at the leading edge of changing attitudes on emerging social trends. Take views on same-sex marriage , for example, or attitudes about gender identity .

Many middle-aged adults, in turn, face the challenge of raising children while also providing care and support to their aging parents. And older adults have their own obstacles and opportunities. All of these stories – rooted in the life cycle, not in generations – are important and compelling, and we can tell them by analyzing our surveys at any given point in time.

When we do have the data to study groups of similarly aged people over time, we won’t always default to using the standard generational definitions and labels. While generational labels are simple and catchy, there are other ways to analyze age cohorts. For example, some observers have suggested grouping people by the decade in which they were born. This would create narrower cohorts in which the members may share more in common. People could also be grouped relative to their age during key historical events (such as the Great Recession or the COVID-19 pandemic) or technological innovations (like the invention of the iPhone).

By choosing not to use the standard generational labels when they’re not appropriate, we can avoid reinforcing harmful stereotypes or oversimplifying people’s complex lived experiences.

Existing generational definitions also may be too broad and arbitrary to capture differences that exist among narrower cohorts. A typical generation spans 15 to 18 years. As many critics of generational research point out, there is great diversity of thought, experience and behavior within generations. The key is to pick a lens that’s most appropriate for the research question that’s being studied. If we’re looking at political views and how they’ve shifted over time, for example, we might group people together according to the first presidential election in which they were eligible to vote.

With these considerations in mind, our audiences should not expect to see a lot of new research coming out of Pew Research Center that uses the generational lens. We’ll only talk about generations when it adds value, advances important national debates and highlights meaningful societal trends.

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Kim Parker is director of social trends research at Pew Research Center .

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Outlook for Windows: The Future of Mail, Calendar, and People on Windows 11

The new Outlook for Windows brings the latest features with a modern and simplified design to your Windows 11 PC. You can tailor it to your style and do more with the new Outlook for Windows! Learn more about the new Outlook for Windows here .

When will the new Outlook for Windows replace the Mail, Calendar, and People apps?

Beginning in 2024, new Windows 11 devices will be shipped with the new Outlook for Windows as the default mailbox application free for all to use. The Mail and Calendar applications will continue to be available via download in the Microsoft Store through December 31, 2024. After this date the Mail & Calendar applications will no longer be supported. On existing devices, users can switch to the new Outlook for Windows from a toggle in the Mail and Calendar applications. You can see more information about accessing the People app here . 

Move to the new Outlook for Windows

To try the preview of the new Outlook for Windows, you can slide the Try the new Outlook  toggle located in the upper-right corner of your Mail and Calendar or the classic Outlook for Windows applications, then follow the onscreen instructions. See Getting started with the new Outlook for Windows. 

NOTE: You can switch back to your previous experience at any time. Just slide the toggle off and it will automatically open your previous version with no data or email loss.  

Why use the new Outlook for Windows

The new Outlook for Windows is for everyone. Now everyone with Windows gets the best of Outlook built into Windows for free. No subscription needed. You will write better emails with advanced AI built into the new Outlook for Windows to help you write impactful, clearer, mistake-free messages. New Outlook for Windows can also help remind you to follow up on important conversations. Other great features of the new Outlook for Windows include:

Streamline accounts. Now everyone can access their emails—in one spot—on every Windows device. That’s Gmail, Yahoo! and even a place for that account you use for shopping.

Stay on top of things. Organize your appointments, share availability and events with a click, and ensure time for important people and events.

Feel secure. Trust in Microsoft’s security to help keep your emails and documents safe from phishing and scams.

Accomplish more. Enjoy Microsoft 365 free on the web and use Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneDrive with the click of a button.

Stay organized. File your valuable content neatly or find it simply with universal search, make your calendar yours with multiple options and personalization capabilities, and know when your packages will arrive with package tracking.

Unify your accounts. The new Outlook for Windows brings several advantages when it comes to managing your emails and calendars. For example, you can now view your various emails and calendar events in one place, making it easier to stay organized. This is also great for people who have accounts from multiple providers, as they can access them all from one unified inbox.  '

Whether you are looking for an easier way to manage your emails or want more control over your calendar events, the new Outlook for Windows has something to offer everyone!   

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