Does Being Dependent Make You Dumb?

For their entire lives, most teenagers have been dependent on others in order to survive.  Their parents provided them with love, food, shelter, water, and the basic necessities of life.  Their teachers have provided them with knowledge, responsibility, and understanding.  Their coaches or mentors have taught them commitment, passion, and perseverance.  With all of this in mind, why is it so shocking that the newest generation of our world is so dependent on technology?  If it is what they have grown up with and are accustomed to, why wouldn’t they feel as if they could fall back on technology?  Our world teaches us dependence, and most of us grow up with our hand being held by someone every step of the way.  We are in a deep, irreversible rut that we will not be getting out of any time soon.  Power outages are a teenagers’ worst fear, and they will tweet about it until their battery dies and they have nothing left to do.  They would be forced to do the unthinkable: play board games, read, or actually interact with their peers.  The older generations frown down upon teenagers for this very reason, saying they need to get out more, skin their knees or climb fences like they did.  But they are forgetting, it’s a new era.  It is a very big thing to ask someone so young to give up what they know best, just to join in on activities so foreign to them that they will find themselves alone.