I guess this is where the science ends and common sense begins, for me :) As a parent, it seems beyond obvious that raising my kids without smart phones or social media, but with rich, embodied real world experiences in nature, with friends and family, creating with their hands, moving their bodies -- and shielding them from the dispassionate influence of the algorithm in favor of the influence of real people who know them and love them -- is the better choice. I'm grateful I don't need to wait for conclusive evidence to act. And I'm so grateful for Jon's book and the conversations I've seen it spark amongst people in my community who previously didn't feel delaying smartphones or social media was possible. It will make walking this road easier for all of us!
(Psst get a tiny spouted cup to pour a little milk in so your toddler can practice putting milk into their cereal independently and then when it spills everywhere it's only like an ounce of milk)
I also wonder if kids today are more anxious because their parents are more anxious. They aren't allowed to roam free the way previous generations were, they're constantly being told things are too dangerous when statistically the risk (of being kidnapped by a stranger, in particular) is very low. 20 years ago my mom let us run around the neighborhood, but I know she was always worried that someone would call CPS if they saw unattended children. None of the kids in my (very safe, very walkable, full of play fields and tot lots suburban) neighborhood seem to go much further than their own yards. I wonder how much of that is parents thinking it's safer to be close by vs parents not wanting to look like bad parents for giving more freedom than is in style?
It's a good point, and actually part of Haidt's thesis is that parental "overprotection" in the real-world has also contributed to some of the issues we're seeing. I love the idea of giving kids more freedom and responsibility in the "real world" when possible!
I think parental anxiety spilling over onto children is huge. Some regarding safety, but also just the general high-stakes mindset of *visible* parenting where there is so much make sure your child is in the right elementary school so they can get the compact math that prepares them for advanced middle school math, so they can be sure they have access to multiple calculus classes in high school kind of thinking. What if you sent your kid to the neighborhood school that didn't offer compact math in 4th grade??!! That's why they couldn't go to Harvard and they'll never get a job.
I agree, millenial parents do generally seem more anxious, which you could similarly argue is due to the rise in social media (amongst all the other things making us anxious). We tend to turn to social media for parenting advice about also many of us regularly perform our parenting on social media. I had to stop following some parenting accounts on Instagram as they made me anxious about risks or made me feel like I was failing as a parent.
I definitely know this feeling. I learned recently that the word "parenting" wasn't even commonly used until the 1970s! - hard to imagine now, given our current approach to parenting and the amount of parenting advice out there!
I hope you don't mind me jumping in here. The word "parenting" was rarely used before the 70s because it was referred to as "mothering". There are plenty of parenting advice books going back to the 1800s but they tend to be called something like: Advice to Mothers. And one i looked at recently from the late 1800s included the suggestion that children should be in the home doing things with their mother and not playing out on the street! These ideas have been with us longer than we sometimes assume.
There is also something to be said here for changing societal expectations of parents. There’s the “open letter to the mom reading while her kids play on the playground” crowd, who want moms to know that if they aren’t performing exceptional mom-hood every second they are visible then someone is noticing. There’s the neighbor who calls the cops when they see two kids walking to the park because they don’t have a parent with them and assume they are neglected. Where I live drivers are so aggressive it’s dangerous to cross the street in a crosswalk when you have a crossing signal. There’s the cutting back of recess and free time in school to maximize learning. And decreasing park and open space in towns and cities. Increasing cost of living and childcare make it harder for parents to have time with their kids and also have enough money to feed them. There are so many things working together that mean kids spend less time outside, and it includes parental anxiety, but some of that anxiety is well founded.
I'm still only about a quarter of the way in, but based on what I have read so far I genuinely do recommend every parent/researcher/educator/policy-maker read it, even with the challenges that have been put forward by some in the scientific community. I've been in the digital wellness space for about 8 years now, I know just about all the for and against arguments, but what this book has done for me, somewhat weirdly, is actually encouraged me to focus LESS on the technology and MORE on the societal shifts in parenting. I believe THAT is where the much deeper issue lies. And as mentioned here before, it has SO much to do with parental (and societal) anxiety.
I have not read the book, but if what other scientists are saying is true, it's incredibly unfortunate that he misconstrues or inaccurately summarizes science in support of what sound like very reasonable reform actions. It honestly makes me wish someone like you (!) had written this!
I would recommend reading it! I think it comes down to different ways of interpreting evidence, and different ideas about how much and what type of evidence is needed to draw conclusions.
I don't think he misconstrues or inaccurately summarises science. He DOES interpret the evidence, which ALL researchers do, and especially the social sciences. I think also, though he doesn't say it, that part of his framework is that when thrme correlation is overwhelming and repeated, there is some justification in presuming causation until the evidence clearly shows otherwise.
I have not read this book, but you don’t talk about any discussion of other reasons for teen mental health concerns. Does he address ALL of the other issues in society that could contribute to teen mental health? Like the dumpster fire that is our government? Like the rolling back of rights, the war on trans people, the conservative Christian movement, the continuing decline of the environment, the way we make all of that and more individual problems to solve? How about lack of a social safety net, rising housing prices, resistance to raising the minimum wage, the many many rich people who haven’t had any consequences for their crimes because they are rich? Teens and young adults are smart, they see all this going on and feel a lack of power to change it. I don’t think most social media is good for anyone, but there are so many things contributing to the decline of mental health that to make it all about smartphones seems naive.
I feel very similiar to you after reading the book. If you haven't already, check out Peter Gray on Substack--he has lots of great posts on the importance of play and childhood independence. My toddler loves helping with the laundry too!
The main issue i have with Haidt's hypothesis is that an uptick in mental health problems in the 2010s doesnt even correlate that well to the rise of phones or social media. His data showed stable mental health in the 2000s, which was the exact decade in which teens started socialising for hours behind screens through texting and instant messaging (c. 2001), the decade teens started using social media and posting selfies (c. 2005), and even the decade that the first iPhone was released (2007). But it does correlate to adults adopting these things!
I find it truly bizarre that not once does your article (and if I’m reading the room correctly since I haven’t read it, this book) note that this epidemic of mental illness in young people arose in an age of climate disaster and biodiversity collapse, rising fascism and the threat of global war, police brutality, gun violence and school shooters, sexualized violence, anti-lgbtq legislation and loss of reproductive rights, covid lockdowns, extreme inflation, homelessness, wealth disparity and the violent suppression of uprisings against anti-black racism, genocide and ecocide. As a therapist, I work with young people everyday who feel hopeless and terrified about the future - and they have every reason to feel that way!
Blaming their despair on access to social media and cell phones is like blaming the alarm for the fire. I think the moral panic about young people having access to media is about pretending we can continue a way of life that is clearly unsustainable and that most people around the world have never experienced because their children have been forced into labour to supply our insatiable greed. Four years ago Gen Z was in the middle of a massive uprising for climate action that got shut down by COVID lockdowns and since then the general state of the world has been in free fall. I think we need to be honest with ourselves that so-called social media and cell phone addiction is a symptom of a world most of us want to escape from. And that our desire to take away our kids phones is a manifestation of guilt for not doing more to create a liveable world that is more appealing to them than the one they escape to online.
For the "gestures broadly at everything" crowd, it's worth pointing out that things have pretty much *always* been a mess. There are many things that cause every generation a collective wringing-of-hands, and I often think of my dad's teenagehood in the 1970s as an example. There was a LOT going on in the world that was tragic, scary, painful, etc. But dosage matters. The difference was, he simply didn't know about it! Sure, he caught a glimpse now and then via the news or overhearing conversations or whatever, but he didn't—he couldn't have—marinate deeply in it. He didn't have a magic box in his pocket, literally next to his skin, that he could stare at every minute of the day to keep the chaos extremely close and inescapable at all times. Now we do.
I'd argue that we don't need that level of dosage, that firehose of global current events. We don't need, and were not designed, to shoulder the concerns and the causes of every single corner of civilization at once. When I stopped following the 24hr news cycle and ditched any meaningful amount of time on social media, I replaced all that abyss gazing with volunteering, with participating in local civics, and with doing things that I think will actually have an impact on my neighborhood and city. I learned the names of the nonprofits that have been working for decades to impact our area. I think a lot of our youth would feel less hopeless by learning to put one foot in front of the other, to engage IRL with their own community, at the level they can handle, and to exhale all the You Have To Fix The Whole World Why Haven't You Fixed It Already messaging that causes them to (understandably) want to just collapse and give up on the average weekday.
Two very important issues related to this I think are paranoia and the set-up syndrome. My generation is constantly seeking a comparison, often unsuccessful, with other people, both in terms of personal and professional success, and in terms of consumption and goods purchased. Moreover, paranoia is always something insidiously widespread, and more common than we think, in my opinion. Honestly (to answer the questions in the essay) I do not feel that social media increases my anxiety or stress, however I see many of my peers who are subject to this and are often unaware of it. Perhaps, however, too radical solutions risk creating more harm than good. What are your thoughts on this?
This is great and I might share with my classes! The narrative that tech is rotting our brains is too easily accepted and as you point out, the evidence is just not there.
I guess this is where the science ends and common sense begins, for me :) As a parent, it seems beyond obvious that raising my kids without smart phones or social media, but with rich, embodied real world experiences in nature, with friends and family, creating with their hands, moving their bodies -- and shielding them from the dispassionate influence of the algorithm in favor of the influence of real people who know them and love them -- is the better choice. I'm grateful I don't need to wait for conclusive evidence to act. And I'm so grateful for Jon's book and the conversations I've seen it spark amongst people in my community who previously didn't feel delaying smartphones or social media was possible. It will make walking this road easier for all of us!
(Psst get a tiny spouted cup to pour a little milk in so your toddler can practice putting milk into their cereal independently and then when it spills everywhere it's only like an ounce of milk)
I also wonder if kids today are more anxious because their parents are more anxious. They aren't allowed to roam free the way previous generations were, they're constantly being told things are too dangerous when statistically the risk (of being kidnapped by a stranger, in particular) is very low. 20 years ago my mom let us run around the neighborhood, but I know she was always worried that someone would call CPS if they saw unattended children. None of the kids in my (very safe, very walkable, full of play fields and tot lots suburban) neighborhood seem to go much further than their own yards. I wonder how much of that is parents thinking it's safer to be close by vs parents not wanting to look like bad parents for giving more freedom than is in style?
It's a good point, and actually part of Haidt's thesis is that parental "overprotection" in the real-world has also contributed to some of the issues we're seeing. I love the idea of giving kids more freedom and responsibility in the "real world" when possible!
I think parental anxiety spilling over onto children is huge. Some regarding safety, but also just the general high-stakes mindset of *visible* parenting where there is so much make sure your child is in the right elementary school so they can get the compact math that prepares them for advanced middle school math, so they can be sure they have access to multiple calculus classes in high school kind of thinking. What if you sent your kid to the neighborhood school that didn't offer compact math in 4th grade??!! That's why they couldn't go to Harvard and they'll never get a job.
I agree, millenial parents do generally seem more anxious, which you could similarly argue is due to the rise in social media (amongst all the other things making us anxious). We tend to turn to social media for parenting advice about also many of us regularly perform our parenting on social media. I had to stop following some parenting accounts on Instagram as they made me anxious about risks or made me feel like I was failing as a parent.
I definitely know this feeling. I learned recently that the word "parenting" wasn't even commonly used until the 1970s! - hard to imagine now, given our current approach to parenting and the amount of parenting advice out there!
I hope you don't mind me jumping in here. The word "parenting" was rarely used before the 70s because it was referred to as "mothering". There are plenty of parenting advice books going back to the 1800s but they tend to be called something like: Advice to Mothers. And one i looked at recently from the late 1800s included the suggestion that children should be in the home doing things with their mother and not playing out on the street! These ideas have been with us longer than we sometimes assume.
There is also something to be said here for changing societal expectations of parents. There’s the “open letter to the mom reading while her kids play on the playground” crowd, who want moms to know that if they aren’t performing exceptional mom-hood every second they are visible then someone is noticing. There’s the neighbor who calls the cops when they see two kids walking to the park because they don’t have a parent with them and assume they are neglected. Where I live drivers are so aggressive it’s dangerous to cross the street in a crosswalk when you have a crossing signal. There’s the cutting back of recess and free time in school to maximize learning. And decreasing park and open space in towns and cities. Increasing cost of living and childcare make it harder for parents to have time with their kids and also have enough money to feed them. There are so many things working together that mean kids spend less time outside, and it includes parental anxiety, but some of that anxiety is well founded.
Yes absolutely and this is one of Haidt’s main points in his book.
Haidt addresses this in great detail in The Anxious Generation.
I'm still only about a quarter of the way in, but based on what I have read so far I genuinely do recommend every parent/researcher/educator/policy-maker read it, even with the challenges that have been put forward by some in the scientific community. I've been in the digital wellness space for about 8 years now, I know just about all the for and against arguments, but what this book has done for me, somewhat weirdly, is actually encouraged me to focus LESS on the technology and MORE on the societal shifts in parenting. I believe THAT is where the much deeper issue lies. And as mentioned here before, it has SO much to do with parental (and societal) anxiety.
I also found that the parts of the books focused on "off-screen" life really resonated
I have read and thought a lot about Haidt's book, but this is one of the best summaries/responses to his thesis that I've yet encountered.
Thank you so much, Yael!
Thanks for the thoughtful exploration of this book, really appreciate your perspective.
Thank you!
I have not read the book, but if what other scientists are saying is true, it's incredibly unfortunate that he misconstrues or inaccurately summarizes science in support of what sound like very reasonable reform actions. It honestly makes me wish someone like you (!) had written this!
I would recommend reading it! I think it comes down to different ways of interpreting evidence, and different ideas about how much and what type of evidence is needed to draw conclusions.
I don't think he misconstrues or inaccurately summarises science. He DOES interpret the evidence, which ALL researchers do, and especially the social sciences. I think also, though he doesn't say it, that part of his framework is that when thrme correlation is overwhelming and repeated, there is some justification in presuming causation until the evidence clearly shows otherwise.
I have not read this book, but you don’t talk about any discussion of other reasons for teen mental health concerns. Does he address ALL of the other issues in society that could contribute to teen mental health? Like the dumpster fire that is our government? Like the rolling back of rights, the war on trans people, the conservative Christian movement, the continuing decline of the environment, the way we make all of that and more individual problems to solve? How about lack of a social safety net, rising housing prices, resistance to raising the minimum wage, the many many rich people who haven’t had any consequences for their crimes because they are rich? Teens and young adults are smart, they see all this going on and feel a lack of power to change it. I don’t think most social media is good for anyone, but there are so many things contributing to the decline of mental health that to make it all about smartphones seems naive.
I feel very similiar to you after reading the book. If you haven't already, check out Peter Gray on Substack--he has lots of great posts on the importance of play and childhood independence. My toddler loves helping with the laundry too!
The main issue i have with Haidt's hypothesis is that an uptick in mental health problems in the 2010s doesnt even correlate that well to the rise of phones or social media. His data showed stable mental health in the 2000s, which was the exact decade in which teens started socialising for hours behind screens through texting and instant messaging (c. 2001), the decade teens started using social media and posting selfies (c. 2005), and even the decade that the first iPhone was released (2007). But it does correlate to adults adopting these things!
I find it truly bizarre that not once does your article (and if I’m reading the room correctly since I haven’t read it, this book) note that this epidemic of mental illness in young people arose in an age of climate disaster and biodiversity collapse, rising fascism and the threat of global war, police brutality, gun violence and school shooters, sexualized violence, anti-lgbtq legislation and loss of reproductive rights, covid lockdowns, extreme inflation, homelessness, wealth disparity and the violent suppression of uprisings against anti-black racism, genocide and ecocide. As a therapist, I work with young people everyday who feel hopeless and terrified about the future - and they have every reason to feel that way!
Blaming their despair on access to social media and cell phones is like blaming the alarm for the fire. I think the moral panic about young people having access to media is about pretending we can continue a way of life that is clearly unsustainable and that most people around the world have never experienced because their children have been forced into labour to supply our insatiable greed. Four years ago Gen Z was in the middle of a massive uprising for climate action that got shut down by COVID lockdowns and since then the general state of the world has been in free fall. I think we need to be honest with ourselves that so-called social media and cell phone addiction is a symptom of a world most of us want to escape from. And that our desire to take away our kids phones is a manifestation of guilt for not doing more to create a liveable world that is more appealing to them than the one they escape to online.
For the "gestures broadly at everything" crowd, it's worth pointing out that things have pretty much *always* been a mess. There are many things that cause every generation a collective wringing-of-hands, and I often think of my dad's teenagehood in the 1970s as an example. There was a LOT going on in the world that was tragic, scary, painful, etc. But dosage matters. The difference was, he simply didn't know about it! Sure, he caught a glimpse now and then via the news or overhearing conversations or whatever, but he didn't—he couldn't have—marinate deeply in it. He didn't have a magic box in his pocket, literally next to his skin, that he could stare at every minute of the day to keep the chaos extremely close and inescapable at all times. Now we do.
I'd argue that we don't need that level of dosage, that firehose of global current events. We don't need, and were not designed, to shoulder the concerns and the causes of every single corner of civilization at once. When I stopped following the 24hr news cycle and ditched any meaningful amount of time on social media, I replaced all that abyss gazing with volunteering, with participating in local civics, and with doing things that I think will actually have an impact on my neighborhood and city. I learned the names of the nonprofits that have been working for decades to impact our area. I think a lot of our youth would feel less hopeless by learning to put one foot in front of the other, to engage IRL with their own community, at the level they can handle, and to exhale all the You Have To Fix The Whole World Why Haven't You Fixed It Already messaging that causes them to (understandably) want to just collapse and give up on the average weekday.
100%!
Two very important issues related to this I think are paranoia and the set-up syndrome. My generation is constantly seeking a comparison, often unsuccessful, with other people, both in terms of personal and professional success, and in terms of consumption and goods purchased. Moreover, paranoia is always something insidiously widespread, and more common than we think, in my opinion. Honestly (to answer the questions in the essay) I do not feel that social media increases my anxiety or stress, however I see many of my peers who are subject to this and are often unaware of it. Perhaps, however, too radical solutions risk creating more harm than good. What are your thoughts on this?
This is great and I might share with my classes! The narrative that tech is rotting our brains is too easily accepted and as you point out, the evidence is just not there.