1. So many people are eager to blame xyz - social media, gentle parenting, plastics, bottle feeding, and several other fairly easily removable factors like food dyes - but very, very few people are willing to have a discussion about the elephants in the room: modern daycare and modern school. I think this is because, while taking screens away is fairly straightforward, reengineering society so parents stop warehousing kids for 10 hours a day is too much to ask so people are in deep denial about it. I don’t know, just a thought!
(I say this as someone opposed to screens very very strongly, though for other reasons)
2. As a huge fan of your work, I know the value you place on child-led free play (ie the sandlot vs organized baseball with adult coaches/uniforms). It’s so important for kids to play in a world of their own making, not to always be in adult world, following adult rules. That having been said, does it bother you that “online freedom” involves kids playing video games/watching videos that are entirely programmed by very sophisticated adult programmers/developers? Isn’t it no different than playing coached baseball, only in a virtual sense? I just can’t believe online time is truly comparable to free play outside with friends.
3. Aren’t most studies that limit screen time equivalent to studies that increase free play? It’s not like the screen free kids are also assigned to get *more school.* So if their screen time is decreased, doesn’t their free time automatically increase? Of course you’d have to make sure that parents weren’t intervening with extra piano lessons…
Great point. Increase free play without specifically limiting screen time and I suspect the benefit would be clear (with the added safety that phones offer kids at the end of the school day)
There is not much to be done about this, but many parents will listen attentively to a news report about their kids sooner than they would actually talk to their kids.
By the way, are you familiar with Dr. K. He wrote another book for general audiences called "How to Raise a Healthy Gamer". He is my favorite psychology YouTuber on his channel HealthyGamerGG
This is such a hot topic in my town right now because our school board voted for a phone-ban via Yondr pouches for 6-12th grade. While I think overall it's a generally supported move, it's angered a lot of parents because *they* are particularly attached to texting their middle and high school aged children throughout the day. According to them, their kids are too anxious to get through the day without communicating with them, they don't trust the school staff (for various reasons), they think having access to the phone will save their kid in a school shooting, their kids don't know what they are supposed to do after school unless they text mom before the end of the day to ask - etc, etc. So, over the past two days of this conversation in my town - I see the anxiety being highly on the parents' ends, and the parents' desire to have that constant communication line to their teenage kids. In terms of encouraging childhood and adolescent independence, the phones on during school hours seem like a potential hindrance in some family scenarios.
Being able to tell kids of changes of plans is an important safety issue. As is the ability for them
I used to be called to say they were going to a friend's house rather than coming straight home. This offers them a useful freedom they otherwise wouldn't have had
You cute parental anxiety as if it's a silly thing, rather than something rooted in reason
Does this plan need to be communicated immediately at 10am in the middle of class, or can it be communicated or seen at 2pm when school is dismissed? Can this plan be communicated to the school secretary as it was always done prior to kids carrying phones to school in the past decade or two, or can it only be communicated to the student's cell phone?
It absolutely can! They can communicate through the school. Or, maybe teach the kids the responsibility that they can't and don't need to change after school plans on a whim during the day without connecting with their parents. When you send your kids off to school in the morning you should already know what's going on for the day. And if it's truly a special case then communicating through the school works just fine.
Exactly, parents are the ones who need their kids to have phones at school more than the kids do. They should be teaching their kids how to function without being able to get a hold of them every second.
I'm a head chaperone for a group of 200+ Elementary kids every winter. Every year the same thing happens, some kid calls their parents because they can't find their gloves or their skis and is crying on the phone about it instead of talking to one of the leaders. The parent tells them to come talk to me but they never get off the phone with their parent so we can actually help the child. Usually ends with me telling the parent they're not going to be able to help from where they are and let us take care of it or the child runs off crying still talking to their parent on the phone to look for their stuff. If the kid didn't have a phone we would have just helped them find their stuff, like the good old days. End of story.
I am struggling with my emotions a bit on this one. I highly respect your work and agree with most of your conclusions—but I feel the same way about Haidt’s work. And I hate to see you stand against him, especially because in many ways, your goals align. I worry by opposing his conclusions, you may be limiting the reach and effectiveness of your own, and your conclusions work really well together.
Anecdotally, with my own gen z children, I see the negative consequences of social media pretty strongly. Now, could some of it be simply the middle school struggles we all experienced because of puberty and other universal changes that come with reaching the teen years? Sure—but I also know that my son’s access to porn would be much lower, and my daughter’s opportunity to be drawn in by the transgender “influencers” would have been next to zero. Are both of them already experiencing higher than normal levels of anxiety—absolutely, but there is also a genetic predisposition that makes this unavoidable, and social media comparisons make it worse.
They absolutely reduced their outdoor and free play time when they got phones, and since their friends did, too, no one goes out to play anymore.
My younger (right on the edge of being considered gen alpha) daughter didn’t want a phone until she got to middle school and knows she will be out of the social loop if she doesn’t have one. So she has one. Ugh! She would prefer her phone to backyard play with her younger brother—the only person around without a phone and willing to play outside.
We DO need to change school culture and increase free play time. 100%. But right now, my son is surrounded by other highschoolers just nose in the phone during any free time there is—there is no play happening. These things go hand in hand.
Another aspect of Haidt’s work includes what I would consider a vital change that took place in the middle of the last century—the meaning crisis. His work addresses that.
With the momentum his book has, you would do better to ride the wave than try to swim against it. As we all know from politics, people usually are more strongly led by how they feel than by cold reason. I hate to think you will fall on the wrong side of that equation.
Hi Graham—I too, want to know the truth. I am not a power broker. These are my concerns, given the reality of the world and social climate we are in.
Absence of proof does not mean that a conclusion is false—it just isn’t proven (so Peter’s example doesn’t actually show Haidt is wrong, it just doesn’t show he is right.)
Haidt’s book is striking a chord with parents, parents like me who see a correlation between changes in our kids and in our communities that coincide with phones. Is it causal? Even if it isn’t, it FEELS like it is. If Peter wants to see his cause move forward (and he absolutely should, as should we) the current way (and perhaps always) to convince people is with their feelings. If Peter sets himself up in opposition to a popular position, he is likely to become irrelevant. Is this the way it SHOULD be? Maybe not. Do we have to operate in the world as it is? Unfortunately yes.
It remains to be seen if Haidt’s action items will actually be adopted. In addition to going on feeling, people are also lazy and resistant to change. The inertia of screens in little hands may be hard to overcome.
You may be right Jennifer but what a depressing take. Haidt is emphatically wrong and yet you and so many others want to believe him because you’re scared of tech. It’s incredibly disappointing to me how few parents are willing to grapple with the impacts of forced schooling and just go straight to the phones. The people I know jumping on Haidt’s bandwagon are completely unwilling to contend with the impacts of our school system. This is why I can’t take anyone who is anti-phones seriously- if you really cared about children’s mental health, you would be focused on schools. Phones are an easy scapegoat and too many adults are unwilling to see past their own biases.
Hi Megan, it’s ok if you don’t take me seriously. I am not a thought leader outside my own home (and maybe an extremely small circle of local friends). I homeschool one of my children because the schools here are a mess. My older children have various reasons for continuing in the school systems, but by no means do I think public school is just fine. But again, I am no thought leader. My influence extends to votes, one in a vast sea of parents with lower care levels.
I am not afraid of tech. I and my husband are in tech as careers (though I retired to care for our children some time ago). The whole reason I have anecdotal “evidence” that phones/social media are negative for kids is because we have consistently granted our children smart phones at 13. We have four, our oldest is 19, followed by a 16 year old, a 13 year old, and a ten year old. So I have seen the effects on both sons and daughters and their various group of friends and neighbors for over 6 years. I don’t think phones are the only problem, but they ARE a problem, and low hanging fruit in terms of actionability. Can we solve the meaning crisis? Maybe—but that is going to take more than parental zeal. Can we convince parents to return their kids to the real world and real world risks, as Peter advocates? Maybe—the scarcity of children may make that a tough hill to climb. But it appears from the response to Haidt’s book, that we could, just maybe, remove phones as a factor because it appeals to the emotions of parents.
I want to see the changes Peter advocates implemented. I just think he should be wise as well as truthful. He could have left this unsaid (since he less pointedly already said it) and made a case for using that freed-up non screen time for play. Our current cultural moment is likely to push his stance into the margins if the current is flowing in the Haidt direction and he is perceived as anti-Haidt.
I don't agree with the idea that we shouldn't publically disagree with Haidt. I see people who already question Haidt and I'm sure they would not swallow blind pandering. I tend to think phone use can be dangerous but I tend to also be suspicious of ideas that seem on the extreme, and I appreciate taking a better look at the methodology.
My personal experience is as a homeschooler of teens and a leader in our large homeschool community. Homeschoolers do not all agree on this subject. However, I personally see many who carve time out of their week for outside activities, and other in person activities like board games or classes that usually the student has elected to take. While the evidence against social media is spotty, the evidence for outside experiences is positive. We also do teach our kids that it's rude to have phones out in certain situations. At the same time I have seen some negative impact of phones, but similar to what you said, it's not just the phone but negative aspects of culture reaching our children through the phone. Luckily, in my friend group, if I go to so-and-so's mom because the tween is bullying another tween through the phone, that tween gets a lecture from us both. I have taught my kids some strategies for screen use, and also had those strategies frustrated by innocent needs like playing an audiobook before bedtime. My kids do not have social media and I've only had one kid actually ask for it, but they do have text, kids messenger, and they sell items on eBay and also access educational websites themselves, including YouTube, which I know can be dicey. It is definitely a hard balance for parents. I believe the internet has changed since I used it as a teen and that predators can take advantage, and children can be exposed to very odd and dangerous things, but thankfully it also gives us more access to information like this and to form those very groups that my homeschooled kids thrive on. My kids are exposed to plenty of families with differing beliefs, but the families they interact with the most agree on some very important things, like bullying. If you don't have that mutual agreement, and you can't with the world at large, then that is certainly part of what makes the Internet dangerous, and I'm not convinced that my kids "need" full exposure to social media before 16. If they want to get involved with something like a literary magazine, or photography for our hobby farm, then we'll reevaluate, but if they want it just to want it, the answer right now is no.
Thank you for your support of the burner phone industry and the ongoing war with the present. Oh, if only our children lived in the 19th century our schools would align with our children.
I find your idea of riding the tide of tagging along curious, albiet implicit. We joined the local boy scout troop as a supplement for homeschooling, but i'm sad to report scouts are very much declined these days. Our local library has been offering more cool stuff these days. The problem is that anything sufficiently impactful tends to land on a spectrum where the sudbury valley school has inspired a few copycats and basic after school programs rock no boats.
My kids won't be getting phones and social media until they're much older than the norm, but I'm glad that I'm building a community now of like-minded parents. I've seen how play changes as soon as screens are involved - and it just stops. I'm hoping to keep play alive and well for as long as possible, and keeping away from smartphones is a big part of that effort.
When kids have as much freedom in real life as they do online they engage in real life. I spend a lot of time in secondary schools. Where/when phones are banned or where kids are locked down and bored to death there is a lot of phone use. But when there is truly free time and space phone use declines rapidly.
Arguing that one's personal anecdotes prove a point not supported by research, that does sum up the problem with Haidt’s "research" and the arguments of those who promote him.
Sure, I wasn’t trying to suggest my personal experience suggests that this is the proven outcome for all. Not in the least. But I am not convinced common core (as truly awful as it is) is the problem and phones are not. Having seen the changes come over my kids in sequence—each three years apart, each receiving a phone in 6th grade at 13. I saw changes and I do not think common core kicked in for each of them at that developmental stage. Phones did. Anyway, I want to see both Peter and John succeed in their goals for the social norms for kids, not one over the other. I significantly reduced my reading of Peter’s work after he posted this. Is that rational? No. But I don’t feel like reading about problems that don’t align with what I see in my kids, I only have so much time.
This is fascinating. I read Zimbardo's research in Psych 101 years ago and later his book and until reading your linked article somehow missed the role expectations place in psychology studies. I appreciate reading an intelligent response regarding Haidt's claims from you as his colleague and peer. If more scientists would get back to respected, published disagreement and dissent, we could move science (and it's reputation) forward again.
My wife and I have brought up four daughters, all adults now, two of them having their children now. What we have learnt is that bans do not work, and the best way to avoid "addictions" is to provide a diversity of experience. If a parent uses a phone just like a tool, facilitating quick communication when necessary, a child is likely neither to overuse, not fear it. We should not try to isolate children from technology, but make continuous effort of providing them with sane, often critical, but consistent with our own behaviour, patterns of use.
I am a Norwegian child and adolescent psychiatrist and have written a book about childrens play in a neuroperspective some years ago - and I very much agree with Jennifer Engstrom/previous speaker here. I am an admirer of your and Jonathan Haidts work on why todays children do not thrive. You (and several critics) of Haidts book might be right about the fact that most research is mostly correlational and not causal. But it is still a fact that children and adolescents mental health problems started to increase just few years after the increase in social media-use. As far as I now is Odgers work mainly focused on screentime in general and not specifically on SoMe? In my clinical work in a psychiatric intensive care unity for adolescents I daily experience the negative effects from SoMe on my patients. From a clinical and experience based point of view there is no doubt that selfharm, the use of illicit substances and eating disorders get more rapidly "distributed" to vulnerable individuals these days than just ten years ago. The lack of free play in critical phases of development, increased school pressure and SoMe are all together changing the conditions of how children grow up today. These conditions all together influence very much how they thrive. The research evidence for a causality on the deprivational effects of lack of free play is also scarce - except in animal models - still we do think there is a strong connection.
But are anecdotal observations such as Jennifer's above based on fundamental problems with digital media, requiring eg. banning kids use of phones, or do they indicate problems which can be addressed by adults so that kids can access all the other numerous current and future benefits of these technologies? And with the amount of change happening with technology at the moment is this now and old argument with will get less relevant in the near future?
For example a ban would mean limiting access to an AI in a child's pocket to help them with their learning, which is truly revolutionary all on its own. What we're talking about here are the negative consequences of algorithms and technologies which are mostly already outdated and superceded. For anyone who hasn't yet I'd suggest downloading the ChatGPT app and inviting their kids to have a conversation with it about their homework before advocating for a phone ban for kids.
For right now, porn should be blocked by the service provider for kids accounts, for trans kids the support they can find on social media is way beyond anything they could find elsewhere, and the challenge of getting kids participating in free play can be addressed by limiting some apps to specific and maybe very limited hours and blocking a few maybe.
Social media firms competition and algorithmic improvements are also responding to market criticism, the older Facebook has a fundamentally flawed algorithm whereas the newer TikTok has a vastly more positive one. I volunteer and worked for a UK children's charity and I use TikTok extensively to learn from families similar to the ones we support, and from specialists such as speech and language therapists and others who post there, and I sure many kids and teenagers benefit from using it too overall.
From the UK at least I agree with Peter that the main problem is likely to be the current school system, which is essentially not fit for purpose for many kids and traumatic for some. This is why home education is booming. Anecdotally the US school system sounds like its far worse.
Kids use of phones have some negatives which needs addressing, but so do many adults use of their phones too. Society needs to address those individually through innovation, rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater, as they used to say. And the future of these technologies is many times more positive and optimistic than the teething troubles of the early attempts at personal apps such as social media; much more positive scenarios and use cases which will transform or replace them are already in sight.
Absolutely we should rely on innovations to solve a lot of this. There has been no motivation for tech companies to innovate to protect vulnerable children. The motivation needs to be innovation through a change in social norms and laws. Then we can rely on those improvements.
I disagree. I'm very far from a Capitalist but the market in this case has innovated and delivered TikTok, which has a much more inclusive algorithm. That may be why teenagers disillusioned with Facebook were early adopters. Trying to motivate change through socially engineering society or making laws to force the changes you want doesn't have a good track record, so say the least.
Ah. I see what you are saying. On the other hand, TikTok has brought a LOT of bad with it. Maybe not in the same way Instagram has in terms of mental health, but as far as being good for kids and society, I am not convinced. Innovation, yes, but innovation along the lines of health and safety, not so much.
I see legislation in this area more like seatbelt laws and tobacco marketing laws. Minimum safety requirements.
I don't see any specific negatives which are unique to TikTok, unless you count the US governments very iffy justifications for trying to ban it. It's far from perfect and no doubt will get replaced through further innovation at some point, but it's algorithm feels much safer and more positive than the others and the content feels more inclusive. There are definitely large communities on there which are vitally important to their members.
But as with all of social media, and most of the real world, young kids need hand holding until you think they're old enough to risk going solo. Seat belt and smoking regulations only reduced deaths to levels which were more socially acceptable at the time, they didn't prevent them. But I agree with you to a point, I'm not against them in principle.
Whilst obviously not the point of this piece, I ended up thinking about what a suitable placebo for a social media study like the one you mentioned might look like. My first thought is to give participants a screen filter and claim it will will have similar effects. Not a social scientist though, so I've no sense for how that might pan out
Anyway, I do find it hard to have any concrete stance on social media and phone use generally. The school I teach at, like many, has a firm anti phone policy, though I suspect that's more about having the school run well than anything about the kids' wellbeing
I have read the piece and the nine comments so far and I am convinced by the case made by you Peter. A lot of what parents seem to raise as concerns relate to the organisation of schooling and the reason for young people to pay more attention to social media. At Self Managed Learning Community in England parents who visit want to know about controls on social media and smartphones. My answer is that it is between the parent and their off-spring to sort that out. If a parent agrees that their young person can bring in a smartphone that's fine. When visiting parents go round the building and outdoors they don't see our students spending a lot of time on their phones. NB our students have complete freedom to do what they want so long as they don't interfere with the rights of others. We do have students who, as part of decompressing from school, may spend what looks like excessive time on computers on gaming. However over time they get more involved in the community. As an example a student who had experienced major problems in school did spend much of his time at the start on gaming. Then gradually he became interested in game making and is now about to start a degree in game making. All of this can, of course, be dismissed as anecdotal evidence. But what I would claim is that over a 22 year period we have not had evidence of the negative impact of social media - and our programme has been well-researched by doctoral students. One of the problems with social science is that it does not mirror the physical sciences where scientific evidence support technological change which then supports further scientific research - and the testing of scientific evidence with real life application. What we have wanted to do is to test, for instance, the value of freedom for young people within a bounded setting and to monitor if this freedom produces better or worse results for the young people. Clearly much more research is needed on the issue of smartphone use but such developments are not helped by less than rigorous research. We are clear about the limitations of research on our students but where follow-up studies show increased personal fulfillment, happiness and productive careers they provide some evidence to juxtapose against the evidence of those who have gone through schooling. Science is not about absolute truth but about using the best available evidence and testing it. In conclusion we don't have evidence that unrestricted use of smartphones increases mental health problems.
I am a retired UK child psychiatrist. I worked as one from 1985 to 2017.
I noticed significant changed school league tables came in. Testing was increased and results mattered hugely to the schools, that pressure was passed down to the children
At the same time we had 'inclusion'. A wide variety of special schools were closed, but these children were rarely 'included'. Many of their needs weren't met despite teachers devoting a lot of time to them, to the detriment of other children.
Finally the national curriculum hamstrung good teachers.
I say this to back up your point on schools.
Meanwhile, as a parent, the freedom with safety I was able to offer my children as I knew they could call me anytime, and I could call them, was huge. Being able to contact friends was also important to them
A few rebuttals. (I don’t have Haidt’s book in front of me so give me some rope.)
-It is absurd to think school pressure has caused teen suffering. In fact, there’s ample evidence suggesting that in some ways school is easier: grade inflation, easier standardized exams, less homework, a general decline of rigor in classes. Common Core was a blip whose effect is overstated by individuals who do not spend their time in K-12 schools. Even still, there are tons and tons of kids who don’t take school seriously and thus don’t feel the pressure that the strivers and over-scheduled upper middle class students feel.
-Haidt does not claim causation from individual studies. Rather he takes a batch of correlative studies (some of which he admits are not gold standard), includes other data (emergency room admissions for cutting, eg), shows how other factors (pessimism around US socio-politics, eg) could not be the cause of teen suffering, and draws the reasonable conclusion that, all things considering, it’s probably smartphones.
-You don’t refute the data Haidt uses to show the myriad ways teen mental health declined around 2010. To wit: suicide attempts, hospitalizations, the surge of anxiety. You simply say “No, he’s wrong.” Why?
-What percentage of the data would you say Haidt relies on for his hypothesis is flawed? You don’t say. You dismantle one study but don’t say anything about the trove of Haidt uses.
-You also don’t talk about Haidt’s rebuttals of the null hypotheses as the cause of teen suffering (the pandemic, gloom about the fate of the world, etc.)
I guess I wish you had been more thorough in your post. Can we expect more?
If you read my D series of letters, or use the links to them I provided in this letter to look back at them, you will see that I in fact do provide counter evidence to all of the arguments presented in Haidt's book.
A few questions & thoughts because I’m not a social psychologist or researcher. How long do these studies usually take & then how long does the analysis + distribution take?
One would assume years upon years. But I just don’t have that kind of time to wait around hoping that in 10+ years the research shows that it actually wasn’t social media addiction but something else. What else was it? My husband & I are trying to be proactive & look at ALL the variables around us.
Being a mom to a pre-teen the convo about phones & social media is nearly a constant one in our home. It’s an incredibly lonely road to walk when it seems like “everyone else is doing it”. But real world experience, seeing the addiction in close friends kids & even family members has opened my eyes & given me my own “proof”. Enough that I’m able to draw my own conclusions about how we want to do things differently.
So we’re trusting our guts, and choosing differently when it comes to social media, endless gaming & youtube consumption.
I would still recommend Jon’s book to friends & family even if all the data came back as wrong or inconclusive.
**Because** if you’re raising a teen in this current landscape, the proof is in how our children in our homes are doing. Are they thriving with social media? Or are they struggling? Parents know things aren’t good. We talk with other parents about the constant struggle phones play in our homes, moms share with one another about the struggles their teens face while on these apps. We’re seeing this in real time.
Could there be other reasons as to why our kids aren’t well?! Yes, of course! But at the end of the day, the people who are going to make change on this subject are parents who keep asking questions, keep reading new books & research, but most importantly the parents who take the time with their children to have open & honest conversations with their teens.
Perhaps it's not the general social media use that is harming kids but specifically English/Westernized social media b/c American culture is toxic, specifically that American psychology culture wants to diagnose everything a certain way.
Young adults seem to want to retreat into their "diagnosis" of anxiety or depression to not try new things, take new risks, etc. Parents seem to want to limit their children's abilities b/c of some "diagnosis" at 4 yrs old that they have some "xyz" condition and so cannot do "abc" like others.
So Haidt is correct in sounding the alarm for AMERICAN and English-speaking families to remove social media as their kids take in this toxic content.
Sax wrote that perhaps, more specifically, it's the changes in Western psychology combined with Western social media and it's dangerous algorithms that are affecting American kids, and kids that primarily take in social media content in English. This would explain why other (non-English speaking) countries do not show a depression increase amongst their teens.
He referred to an article in The Atlantic by Derek Thompson which I found very interesting and definitely worth the read.
Peter, I appreciate your push-back against Haidt because it seems that he is getting a lot of attention at the moment and that his book and his suggestions are gaining a lot of steam. It's useful to have someone say, "stop! let's think about this a bit more." I've read Haidt's Substack and listened to podcast interviews with him, and I have generally nodded my head in agreement with him. But I do so primarily from instinct and experience. My own experiences with phones and social media are generally negative. Sure, I like having easy access to Google Maps, but I long for the days (not that long ago!) when you could look at an actual menu in a restaurant, have uninterrupted conversations at dinner, and put aside the news/work/gossip for a few hours each day. For my kids, ages 5 and 10, I wish we were still in the days when kids in the neighborhood would play outside and run to each other's houses (I hear many stories from my older child about kids who play video games and watch movies all day during the summer). Do phones and other screens prevent spontaneous, unsupervised play? Absolutely, and I would support policies and cultural norms that displace phones and screens as central objects in daily life. The trouble is that we could easily restrict phones for children without bringing back the embodied, interactive activities that used to be second nature. We could restrict phones without acquiring and implementing the skills to build relationships and communities. I haven't read Haidt's book yet (I'm on the library waitlist), but he has mentioned in his interviews and on his Substack that children need more unsupervised, free play. I think that suggestion is the hardest to implement (it requires a culture shift, not just a policy change), and based on the media coverage of the book and Haidt's own pattern of emphasis (he really pushes the "smartphones are damaging our kids" angle), I think that most people will ignore the bit about expanding freedom for children in the physical world. I worry that we will limit digital freedom and physical-world freedom for the kids, and that we won't give a thought to rebuilding the communities and relationships that undergird the trust we need to to let our kids go out into the world without us.
A lot of people feel that our phone-based lives are diminished lives. A lot of people lament the erosion of community, belonging, and meaning. We don't want our kids to live that way. But a general feeling of "this isn't working" doesn't seem legitimate. At least, it's not legitimate enough to undergird policies and laws and allow us to feel confident about personal and parenting decisions. Haidt is an esteemed social scientist. He's giving all of us the scientific (read: legitimate, socially approved) basis for what so many of us have intuited or gleaned from personal experience. Maybe one thing that we need to reckon with is that we shouldn't rely exclusively on the science. You and Haidt make good points based on the science and they're valuable. We should certainly take them into account. But this problem requires us to bring many other skills, modes of inquiry (arts and humanities, for example), and wisdom traditions to our thought processes and to the public conversation.
What’s missing in the convo about how phones disintegrating community are the voices of disabled people for whom tech and SM has been life-changing. Or the marginalized communities (like CHILDREN) who have used SM in powerful ways to organize and push against the status quo.
This longing for the past is a uniquely white middle-class sentiment, and part of what Haidt is doing that’s so compelling is appealing to the parents of middle class girls because that is who is the most harmed by SM.
Maybe Haidt needs to be more specific and stop acting like he really cares about all children’s mental health when he so obviously has not considered marginalized communities and their relationships with tech.
Megan, have you read the book? Haidt does say social media has caused more harm to girls, and points out that the screen effect for boys coincides less with phones and more with video games that put risk-taking into the virtual realm and demotivate embodied play and risk.
I’m reading it now albeit begrudgingly as I find his voice condescending to say the least. I’m not sure how your comment addresses my point that Haidt does not acknowledge benefits of tech and SM, especially for marginalized groups. My point is bc he is mainly concerned about middle class girls, ie non-disabled and predominantly white, his argument is not at all inclusive to marginalized communities
You could be right. He is mainly dealing with the negative consequences (though he also acknowledges the benefits) of averages in western countries—since a lot of people and especially children with phones and social media are going to be middle class, that is probably the group that is most featured.
If we want to focus primarily on disabled and marginalized children, does Peter prove that unsupervised childhood is beneficial to those groups? I think he has been more general than that. That doesn’t change the thrust of the argument, that children and society would broadly benefit from Peter’s ideas.
The benefits of technology for marginalized groups absolutely bears concerted attention, but I don’t think that was the goal of either Haidt’s research or Peter’s.
Peter’s primary role is not to be a Haidt detractor, but it also doesn’t appear to be as an advocate for marginalized groups and their access to technology. His primary goal in this space seems to be to advocate for more freedom and play for kids in general, a goal that I see as being better served by embracing Haidt’s ideas and piggybacking off the success.
Peter has been clear that he sees tech as a non-issue, it is Haidt who is making a call to action so he bears the responsibility of creating a movement that is inclusive. Or not. At the end of the day, the anti-phones will persist but I want you all to know the movement is inherently ableist. Tech is access. Phones are mini-computers.
Peter has other pieces that discuss instruction for dyslexic children and he also mentions the limitations of social play for some autistic people. I am an extremely critical reader wrt race and ability and I have interrogated Peter’s work with the same veracity as Haidt’s.
Haidt doesn’t even consider the disabled community.
Smartphones are like drugs - they reduce attention agency and personal power of those who already lack it. Who do you think is more likely to escape poverty and being marginalized- someone with a good attention span and ability to focus or someone who can't stop scrolling ? the smartphones are literally programmed to get people hooked, kids and those with little other options are the most vulnerable.
Do you know anyone who is marginalized and/or living in poverty? That’s not what they said when I asked them. This whole notion of knowing better what is good for people is very paternalistic
I have grown up in poverty actually. I know and speak to many people in poverty through my charity work. My husband is governor of a 'poor' school. I recommend Rob Hendersons book - Troubled . Someone who went from foster to foster home expands on the misconceptions people have on many issues (not just phones). He actually coined the term 'luxury beliefs' - the thing I think you are referring to . IT's not that rich or poor ONLY can know whats better for poor. Its not true that if you are rich you cant have a right view on whats good for poor and if you are poor you can. There is more to it
I appreciate the recommendation but growing up poor and your husband helping the poor doesn’t actually indicate you are hearing directly from people living on the margins. Nor does it seem your viewpoints are coming from their lived experiences. When I speak to family and friends who are Black, disabled and/or living in poverty, they see phones as a lifeline. Phones can make Black mothers feel a LOT safer letting their kids go out into the world, for example. They give disabled folx access to the world when they can’t leave their homes. 2 examples of many.
A dumb phone that can make parents feel safe is 10x cheaper than a smartphone. You can text and call. Disabled folks who can’t leave the home can use the internet . JH point are not against internet use at home . There is plenty of ways for a teenager to use tech in a responsible useful ways and connect to friends without Instagram and TikTok . Plenty do, including in marginalized communities where they don’t have enough money for a smartphone
The anti-phones take is coming from families that feel schools are safe for their kids. There is not a starker line to be drawn. The parents who fear for their children’s physical and/or psychological safety see the phones as a lifeline. Dismissing that as parental panic while setting policy around bad science is just a whole other shade of privilege. Bravo Peter, we need your voice more than ever!!!!
1. So many people are eager to blame xyz - social media, gentle parenting, plastics, bottle feeding, and several other fairly easily removable factors like food dyes - but very, very few people are willing to have a discussion about the elephants in the room: modern daycare and modern school. I think this is because, while taking screens away is fairly straightforward, reengineering society so parents stop warehousing kids for 10 hours a day is too much to ask so people are in deep denial about it. I don’t know, just a thought!
(I say this as someone opposed to screens very very strongly, though for other reasons)
2. As a huge fan of your work, I know the value you place on child-led free play (ie the sandlot vs organized baseball with adult coaches/uniforms). It’s so important for kids to play in a world of their own making, not to always be in adult world, following adult rules. That having been said, does it bother you that “online freedom” involves kids playing video games/watching videos that are entirely programmed by very sophisticated adult programmers/developers? Isn’t it no different than playing coached baseball, only in a virtual sense? I just can’t believe online time is truly comparable to free play outside with friends.
3. Aren’t most studies that limit screen time equivalent to studies that increase free play? It’s not like the screen free kids are also assigned to get *more school.* So if their screen time is decreased, doesn’t their free time automatically increase? Of course you’d have to make sure that parents weren’t intervening with extra piano lessons…
Great point. Increase free play without specifically limiting screen time and I suspect the benefit would be clear (with the added safety that phones offer kids at the end of the school day)
how did free play / free time get defined to mean not-on-devices?
If it is "free" then they should be "free" to use it as they wish, not as others' wish??
There is not much to be done about this, but many parents will listen attentively to a news report about their kids sooner than they would actually talk to their kids.
By the way, are you familiar with Dr. K. He wrote another book for general audiences called "How to Raise a Healthy Gamer". He is my favorite psychology YouTuber on his channel HealthyGamerGG
This is such a hot topic in my town right now because our school board voted for a phone-ban via Yondr pouches for 6-12th grade. While I think overall it's a generally supported move, it's angered a lot of parents because *they* are particularly attached to texting their middle and high school aged children throughout the day. According to them, their kids are too anxious to get through the day without communicating with them, they don't trust the school staff (for various reasons), they think having access to the phone will save their kid in a school shooting, their kids don't know what they are supposed to do after school unless they text mom before the end of the day to ask - etc, etc. So, over the past two days of this conversation in my town - I see the anxiety being highly on the parents' ends, and the parents' desire to have that constant communication line to their teenage kids. In terms of encouraging childhood and adolescent independence, the phones on during school hours seem like a potential hindrance in some family scenarios.
Being able to tell kids of changes of plans is an important safety issue. As is the ability for them
I used to be called to say they were going to a friend's house rather than coming straight home. This offers them a useful freedom they otherwise wouldn't have had
You cute parental anxiety as if it's a silly thing, rather than something rooted in reason
Does this plan need to be communicated immediately at 10am in the middle of class, or can it be communicated or seen at 2pm when school is dismissed? Can this plan be communicated to the school secretary as it was always done prior to kids carrying phones to school in the past decade or two, or can it only be communicated to the student's cell phone?
It absolutely can! They can communicate through the school. Or, maybe teach the kids the responsibility that they can't and don't need to change after school plans on a whim during the day without connecting with their parents. When you send your kids off to school in the morning you should already know what's going on for the day. And if it's truly a special case then communicating through the school works just fine.
Exactly, parents are the ones who need their kids to have phones at school more than the kids do. They should be teaching their kids how to function without being able to get a hold of them every second.
I'm a head chaperone for a group of 200+ Elementary kids every winter. Every year the same thing happens, some kid calls their parents because they can't find their gloves or their skis and is crying on the phone about it instead of talking to one of the leaders. The parent tells them to come talk to me but they never get off the phone with their parent so we can actually help the child. Usually ends with me telling the parent they're not going to be able to help from where they are and let us take care of it or the child runs off crying still talking to their parent on the phone to look for their stuff. If the kid didn't have a phone we would have just helped them find their stuff, like the good old days. End of story.
I am struggling with my emotions a bit on this one. I highly respect your work and agree with most of your conclusions—but I feel the same way about Haidt’s work. And I hate to see you stand against him, especially because in many ways, your goals align. I worry by opposing his conclusions, you may be limiting the reach and effectiveness of your own, and your conclusions work really well together.
Anecdotally, with my own gen z children, I see the negative consequences of social media pretty strongly. Now, could some of it be simply the middle school struggles we all experienced because of puberty and other universal changes that come with reaching the teen years? Sure—but I also know that my son’s access to porn would be much lower, and my daughter’s opportunity to be drawn in by the transgender “influencers” would have been next to zero. Are both of them already experiencing higher than normal levels of anxiety—absolutely, but there is also a genetic predisposition that makes this unavoidable, and social media comparisons make it worse.
They absolutely reduced their outdoor and free play time when they got phones, and since their friends did, too, no one goes out to play anymore.
My younger (right on the edge of being considered gen alpha) daughter didn’t want a phone until she got to middle school and knows she will be out of the social loop if she doesn’t have one. So she has one. Ugh! She would prefer her phone to backyard play with her younger brother—the only person around without a phone and willing to play outside.
We DO need to change school culture and increase free play time. 100%. But right now, my son is surrounded by other highschoolers just nose in the phone during any free time there is—there is no play happening. These things go hand in hand.
Another aspect of Haidt’s work includes what I would consider a vital change that took place in the middle of the last century—the meaning crisis. His work addresses that.
With the momentum his book has, you would do better to ride the wave than try to swim against it. As we all know from politics, people usually are more strongly led by how they feel than by cold reason. I hate to think you will fall on the wrong side of that equation.
I find "truth be damned" statements like these very alarming:
"I worry by opposing his conclusions, you may be limiting the reach and effectiveness of your own, and your conclusions work really well together"
"With the momentum his book has, you would do better to ride the wave than try to swim against it"
I want to know the truth. Thank you Peter for remaining true to that and not compromising in the ways this commenter wants you to.
Hi Graham—I too, want to know the truth. I am not a power broker. These are my concerns, given the reality of the world and social climate we are in.
Absence of proof does not mean that a conclusion is false—it just isn’t proven (so Peter’s example doesn’t actually show Haidt is wrong, it just doesn’t show he is right.)
Haidt’s book is striking a chord with parents, parents like me who see a correlation between changes in our kids and in our communities that coincide with phones. Is it causal? Even if it isn’t, it FEELS like it is. If Peter wants to see his cause move forward (and he absolutely should, as should we) the current way (and perhaps always) to convince people is with their feelings. If Peter sets himself up in opposition to a popular position, he is likely to become irrelevant. Is this the way it SHOULD be? Maybe not. Do we have to operate in the world as it is? Unfortunately yes.
It remains to be seen if Haidt’s action items will actually be adopted. In addition to going on feeling, people are also lazy and resistant to change. The inertia of screens in little hands may be hard to overcome.
You may be right Jennifer but what a depressing take. Haidt is emphatically wrong and yet you and so many others want to believe him because you’re scared of tech. It’s incredibly disappointing to me how few parents are willing to grapple with the impacts of forced schooling and just go straight to the phones. The people I know jumping on Haidt’s bandwagon are completely unwilling to contend with the impacts of our school system. This is why I can’t take anyone who is anti-phones seriously- if you really cared about children’s mental health, you would be focused on schools. Phones are an easy scapegoat and too many adults are unwilling to see past their own biases.
Hi Megan, it’s ok if you don’t take me seriously. I am not a thought leader outside my own home (and maybe an extremely small circle of local friends). I homeschool one of my children because the schools here are a mess. My older children have various reasons for continuing in the school systems, but by no means do I think public school is just fine. But again, I am no thought leader. My influence extends to votes, one in a vast sea of parents with lower care levels.
I am not afraid of tech. I and my husband are in tech as careers (though I retired to care for our children some time ago). The whole reason I have anecdotal “evidence” that phones/social media are negative for kids is because we have consistently granted our children smart phones at 13. We have four, our oldest is 19, followed by a 16 year old, a 13 year old, and a ten year old. So I have seen the effects on both sons and daughters and their various group of friends and neighbors for over 6 years. I don’t think phones are the only problem, but they ARE a problem, and low hanging fruit in terms of actionability. Can we solve the meaning crisis? Maybe—but that is going to take more than parental zeal. Can we convince parents to return their kids to the real world and real world risks, as Peter advocates? Maybe—the scarcity of children may make that a tough hill to climb. But it appears from the response to Haidt’s book, that we could, just maybe, remove phones as a factor because it appeals to the emotions of parents.
I want to see the changes Peter advocates implemented. I just think he should be wise as well as truthful. He could have left this unsaid (since he less pointedly already said it) and made a case for using that freed-up non screen time for play. Our current cultural moment is likely to push his stance into the margins if the current is flowing in the Haidt direction and he is perceived as anti-Haidt.
I don't agree with the idea that we shouldn't publically disagree with Haidt. I see people who already question Haidt and I'm sure they would not swallow blind pandering. I tend to think phone use can be dangerous but I tend to also be suspicious of ideas that seem on the extreme, and I appreciate taking a better look at the methodology.
My personal experience is as a homeschooler of teens and a leader in our large homeschool community. Homeschoolers do not all agree on this subject. However, I personally see many who carve time out of their week for outside activities, and other in person activities like board games or classes that usually the student has elected to take. While the evidence against social media is spotty, the evidence for outside experiences is positive. We also do teach our kids that it's rude to have phones out in certain situations. At the same time I have seen some negative impact of phones, but similar to what you said, it's not just the phone but negative aspects of culture reaching our children through the phone. Luckily, in my friend group, if I go to so-and-so's mom because the tween is bullying another tween through the phone, that tween gets a lecture from us both. I have taught my kids some strategies for screen use, and also had those strategies frustrated by innocent needs like playing an audiobook before bedtime. My kids do not have social media and I've only had one kid actually ask for it, but they do have text, kids messenger, and they sell items on eBay and also access educational websites themselves, including YouTube, which I know can be dicey. It is definitely a hard balance for parents. I believe the internet has changed since I used it as a teen and that predators can take advantage, and children can be exposed to very odd and dangerous things, but thankfully it also gives us more access to information like this and to form those very groups that my homeschooled kids thrive on. My kids are exposed to plenty of families with differing beliefs, but the families they interact with the most agree on some very important things, like bullying. If you don't have that mutual agreement, and you can't with the world at large, then that is certainly part of what makes the Internet dangerous, and I'm not convinced that my kids "need" full exposure to social media before 16. If they want to get involved with something like a literary magazine, or photography for our hobby farm, then we'll reevaluate, but if they want it just to want it, the answer right now is no.
Thank you for your support of the burner phone industry and the ongoing war with the present. Oh, if only our children lived in the 19th century our schools would align with our children.
I find your idea of riding the tide of tagging along curious, albiet implicit. We joined the local boy scout troop as a supplement for homeschooling, but i'm sad to report scouts are very much declined these days. Our local library has been offering more cool stuff these days. The problem is that anything sufficiently impactful tends to land on a spectrum where the sudbury valley school has inspired a few copycats and basic after school programs rock no boats.
I think you've put this perfectly!
My kids won't be getting phones and social media until they're much older than the norm, but I'm glad that I'm building a community now of like-minded parents. I've seen how play changes as soon as screens are involved - and it just stops. I'm hoping to keep play alive and well for as long as possible, and keeping away from smartphones is a big part of that effort.
When kids have as much freedom in real life as they do online they engage in real life. I spend a lot of time in secondary schools. Where/when phones are banned or where kids are locked down and bored to death there is a lot of phone use. But when there is truly free time and space phone use declines rapidly.
Arguing that one's personal anecdotes prove a point not supported by research, that does sum up the problem with Haidt’s "research" and the arguments of those who promote him.
Sure, I wasn’t trying to suggest my personal experience suggests that this is the proven outcome for all. Not in the least. But I am not convinced common core (as truly awful as it is) is the problem and phones are not. Having seen the changes come over my kids in sequence—each three years apart, each receiving a phone in 6th grade at 13. I saw changes and I do not think common core kicked in for each of them at that developmental stage. Phones did. Anyway, I want to see both Peter and John succeed in their goals for the social norms for kids, not one over the other. I significantly reduced my reading of Peter’s work after he posted this. Is that rational? No. But I don’t feel like reading about problems that don’t align with what I see in my kids, I only have so much time.
This is fascinating. I read Zimbardo's research in Psych 101 years ago and later his book and until reading your linked article somehow missed the role expectations place in psychology studies. I appreciate reading an intelligent response regarding Haidt's claims from you as his colleague and peer. If more scientists would get back to respected, published disagreement and dissent, we could move science (and it's reputation) forward again.
My wife and I have brought up four daughters, all adults now, two of them having their children now. What we have learnt is that bans do not work, and the best way to avoid "addictions" is to provide a diversity of experience. If a parent uses a phone just like a tool, facilitating quick communication when necessary, a child is likely neither to overuse, not fear it. We should not try to isolate children from technology, but make continuous effort of providing them with sane, often critical, but consistent with our own behaviour, patterns of use.
I am a Norwegian child and adolescent psychiatrist and have written a book about childrens play in a neuroperspective some years ago - and I very much agree with Jennifer Engstrom/previous speaker here. I am an admirer of your and Jonathan Haidts work on why todays children do not thrive. You (and several critics) of Haidts book might be right about the fact that most research is mostly correlational and not causal. But it is still a fact that children and adolescents mental health problems started to increase just few years after the increase in social media-use. As far as I now is Odgers work mainly focused on screentime in general and not specifically on SoMe? In my clinical work in a psychiatric intensive care unity for adolescents I daily experience the negative effects from SoMe on my patients. From a clinical and experience based point of view there is no doubt that selfharm, the use of illicit substances and eating disorders get more rapidly "distributed" to vulnerable individuals these days than just ten years ago. The lack of free play in critical phases of development, increased school pressure and SoMe are all together changing the conditions of how children grow up today. These conditions all together influence very much how they thrive. The research evidence for a causality on the deprivational effects of lack of free play is also scarce - except in animal models - still we do think there is a strong connection.
But are anecdotal observations such as Jennifer's above based on fundamental problems with digital media, requiring eg. banning kids use of phones, or do they indicate problems which can be addressed by adults so that kids can access all the other numerous current and future benefits of these technologies? And with the amount of change happening with technology at the moment is this now and old argument with will get less relevant in the near future?
For example a ban would mean limiting access to an AI in a child's pocket to help them with their learning, which is truly revolutionary all on its own. What we're talking about here are the negative consequences of algorithms and technologies which are mostly already outdated and superceded. For anyone who hasn't yet I'd suggest downloading the ChatGPT app and inviting their kids to have a conversation with it about their homework before advocating for a phone ban for kids.
For right now, porn should be blocked by the service provider for kids accounts, for trans kids the support they can find on social media is way beyond anything they could find elsewhere, and the challenge of getting kids participating in free play can be addressed by limiting some apps to specific and maybe very limited hours and blocking a few maybe.
Social media firms competition and algorithmic improvements are also responding to market criticism, the older Facebook has a fundamentally flawed algorithm whereas the newer TikTok has a vastly more positive one. I volunteer and worked for a UK children's charity and I use TikTok extensively to learn from families similar to the ones we support, and from specialists such as speech and language therapists and others who post there, and I sure many kids and teenagers benefit from using it too overall.
From the UK at least I agree with Peter that the main problem is likely to be the current school system, which is essentially not fit for purpose for many kids and traumatic for some. This is why home education is booming. Anecdotally the US school system sounds like its far worse.
Kids use of phones have some negatives which needs addressing, but so do many adults use of their phones too. Society needs to address those individually through innovation, rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater, as they used to say. And the future of these technologies is many times more positive and optimistic than the teething troubles of the early attempts at personal apps such as social media; much more positive scenarios and use cases which will transform or replace them are already in sight.
Absolutely we should rely on innovations to solve a lot of this. There has been no motivation for tech companies to innovate to protect vulnerable children. The motivation needs to be innovation through a change in social norms and laws. Then we can rely on those improvements.
I disagree. I'm very far from a Capitalist but the market in this case has innovated and delivered TikTok, which has a much more inclusive algorithm. That may be why teenagers disillusioned with Facebook were early adopters. Trying to motivate change through socially engineering society or making laws to force the changes you want doesn't have a good track record, so say the least.
Ah. I see what you are saying. On the other hand, TikTok has brought a LOT of bad with it. Maybe not in the same way Instagram has in terms of mental health, but as far as being good for kids and society, I am not convinced. Innovation, yes, but innovation along the lines of health and safety, not so much.
I see legislation in this area more like seatbelt laws and tobacco marketing laws. Minimum safety requirements.
I don't see any specific negatives which are unique to TikTok, unless you count the US governments very iffy justifications for trying to ban it. It's far from perfect and no doubt will get replaced through further innovation at some point, but it's algorithm feels much safer and more positive than the others and the content feels more inclusive. There are definitely large communities on there which are vitally important to their members.
But as with all of social media, and most of the real world, young kids need hand holding until you think they're old enough to risk going solo. Seat belt and smoking regulations only reduced deaths to levels which were more socially acceptable at the time, they didn't prevent them. But I agree with you to a point, I'm not against them in principle.
Whilst obviously not the point of this piece, I ended up thinking about what a suitable placebo for a social media study like the one you mentioned might look like. My first thought is to give participants a screen filter and claim it will will have similar effects. Not a social scientist though, so I've no sense for how that might pan out
Anyway, I do find it hard to have any concrete stance on social media and phone use generally. The school I teach at, like many, has a firm anti phone policy, though I suspect that's more about having the school run well than anything about the kids' wellbeing
I have read the piece and the nine comments so far and I am convinced by the case made by you Peter. A lot of what parents seem to raise as concerns relate to the organisation of schooling and the reason for young people to pay more attention to social media. At Self Managed Learning Community in England parents who visit want to know about controls on social media and smartphones. My answer is that it is between the parent and their off-spring to sort that out. If a parent agrees that their young person can bring in a smartphone that's fine. When visiting parents go round the building and outdoors they don't see our students spending a lot of time on their phones. NB our students have complete freedom to do what they want so long as they don't interfere with the rights of others. We do have students who, as part of decompressing from school, may spend what looks like excessive time on computers on gaming. However over time they get more involved in the community. As an example a student who had experienced major problems in school did spend much of his time at the start on gaming. Then gradually he became interested in game making and is now about to start a degree in game making. All of this can, of course, be dismissed as anecdotal evidence. But what I would claim is that over a 22 year period we have not had evidence of the negative impact of social media - and our programme has been well-researched by doctoral students. One of the problems with social science is that it does not mirror the physical sciences where scientific evidence support technological change which then supports further scientific research - and the testing of scientific evidence with real life application. What we have wanted to do is to test, for instance, the value of freedom for young people within a bounded setting and to monitor if this freedom produces better or worse results for the young people. Clearly much more research is needed on the issue of smartphone use but such developments are not helped by less than rigorous research. We are clear about the limitations of research on our students but where follow-up studies show increased personal fulfillment, happiness and productive careers they provide some evidence to juxtapose against the evidence of those who have gone through schooling. Science is not about absolute truth but about using the best available evidence and testing it. In conclusion we don't have evidence that unrestricted use of smartphones increases mental health problems.
As a retired child psychiatrist I love this! Where is your school?
We are located on the edge of Brighton. www.smlcollege.org.uk
I am a retired UK child psychiatrist. I worked as one from 1985 to 2017.
I noticed significant changed school league tables came in. Testing was increased and results mattered hugely to the schools, that pressure was passed down to the children
At the same time we had 'inclusion'. A wide variety of special schools were closed, but these children were rarely 'included'. Many of their needs weren't met despite teachers devoting a lot of time to them, to the detriment of other children.
Finally the national curriculum hamstrung good teachers.
I say this to back up your point on schools.
Meanwhile, as a parent, the freedom with safety I was able to offer my children as I knew they could call me anytime, and I could call them, was huge. Being able to contact friends was also important to them
I appreciate this post, and know Haidt does, too.
A few rebuttals. (I don’t have Haidt’s book in front of me so give me some rope.)
-It is absurd to think school pressure has caused teen suffering. In fact, there’s ample evidence suggesting that in some ways school is easier: grade inflation, easier standardized exams, less homework, a general decline of rigor in classes. Common Core was a blip whose effect is overstated by individuals who do not spend their time in K-12 schools. Even still, there are tons and tons of kids who don’t take school seriously and thus don’t feel the pressure that the strivers and over-scheduled upper middle class students feel.
-Haidt does not claim causation from individual studies. Rather he takes a batch of correlative studies (some of which he admits are not gold standard), includes other data (emergency room admissions for cutting, eg), shows how other factors (pessimism around US socio-politics, eg) could not be the cause of teen suffering, and draws the reasonable conclusion that, all things considering, it’s probably smartphones.
-You don’t refute the data Haidt uses to show the myriad ways teen mental health declined around 2010. To wit: suicide attempts, hospitalizations, the surge of anxiety. You simply say “No, he’s wrong.” Why?
-What percentage of the data would you say Haidt relies on for his hypothesis is flawed? You don’t say. You dismantle one study but don’t say anything about the trove of Haidt uses.
-You also don’t talk about Haidt’s rebuttals of the null hypotheses as the cause of teen suffering (the pandemic, gloom about the fate of the world, etc.)
I guess I wish you had been more thorough in your post. Can we expect more?
If you read my D series of letters, or use the links to them I provided in this letter to look back at them, you will see that I in fact do provide counter evidence to all of the arguments presented in Haidt's book.
A few questions & thoughts because I’m not a social psychologist or researcher. How long do these studies usually take & then how long does the analysis + distribution take?
One would assume years upon years. But I just don’t have that kind of time to wait around hoping that in 10+ years the research shows that it actually wasn’t social media addiction but something else. What else was it? My husband & I are trying to be proactive & look at ALL the variables around us.
Being a mom to a pre-teen the convo about phones & social media is nearly a constant one in our home. It’s an incredibly lonely road to walk when it seems like “everyone else is doing it”. But real world experience, seeing the addiction in close friends kids & even family members has opened my eyes & given me my own “proof”. Enough that I’m able to draw my own conclusions about how we want to do things differently.
So we’re trusting our guts, and choosing differently when it comes to social media, endless gaming & youtube consumption.
I would still recommend Jon’s book to friends & family even if all the data came back as wrong or inconclusive.
**Because** if you’re raising a teen in this current landscape, the proof is in how our children in our homes are doing. Are they thriving with social media? Or are they struggling? Parents know things aren’t good. We talk with other parents about the constant struggle phones play in our homes, moms share with one another about the struggles their teens face while on these apps. We’re seeing this in real time.
Could there be other reasons as to why our kids aren’t well?! Yes, of course! But at the end of the day, the people who are going to make change on this subject are parents who keep asking questions, keep reading new books & research, but most importantly the parents who take the time with their children to have open & honest conversations with their teens.
I think both you and Haidt are correct.
Perhaps it's not the general social media use that is harming kids but specifically English/Westernized social media b/c American culture is toxic, specifically that American psychology culture wants to diagnose everything a certain way.
Young adults seem to want to retreat into their "diagnosis" of anxiety or depression to not try new things, take new risks, etc. Parents seem to want to limit their children's abilities b/c of some "diagnosis" at 4 yrs old that they have some "xyz" condition and so cannot do "abc" like others.
Dr. Leonard Sax had a post on it recently. https://myemail-api.constantcontact.com/Social-media-debate-takes-an-unexpected-turn.html?soid=1130130397333&aid=qFzSXtu0yRA
So Haidt is correct in sounding the alarm for AMERICAN and English-speaking families to remove social media as their kids take in this toxic content.
Sax wrote that perhaps, more specifically, it's the changes in Western psychology combined with Western social media and it's dangerous algorithms that are affecting American kids, and kids that primarily take in social media content in English. This would explain why other (non-English speaking) countries do not show a depression increase amongst their teens.
He referred to an article in The Atlantic by Derek Thompson which I found very interesting and definitely worth the read.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/06/mental-health-crisis-anglosphere-depressed/678724/?gift=9xPqLPcwLfFbf_nnCRecvHTwVkrRqdKDcE128yn-6yQ&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
Peter, I appreciate your push-back against Haidt because it seems that he is getting a lot of attention at the moment and that his book and his suggestions are gaining a lot of steam. It's useful to have someone say, "stop! let's think about this a bit more." I've read Haidt's Substack and listened to podcast interviews with him, and I have generally nodded my head in agreement with him. But I do so primarily from instinct and experience. My own experiences with phones and social media are generally negative. Sure, I like having easy access to Google Maps, but I long for the days (not that long ago!) when you could look at an actual menu in a restaurant, have uninterrupted conversations at dinner, and put aside the news/work/gossip for a few hours each day. For my kids, ages 5 and 10, I wish we were still in the days when kids in the neighborhood would play outside and run to each other's houses (I hear many stories from my older child about kids who play video games and watch movies all day during the summer). Do phones and other screens prevent spontaneous, unsupervised play? Absolutely, and I would support policies and cultural norms that displace phones and screens as central objects in daily life. The trouble is that we could easily restrict phones for children without bringing back the embodied, interactive activities that used to be second nature. We could restrict phones without acquiring and implementing the skills to build relationships and communities. I haven't read Haidt's book yet (I'm on the library waitlist), but he has mentioned in his interviews and on his Substack that children need more unsupervised, free play. I think that suggestion is the hardest to implement (it requires a culture shift, not just a policy change), and based on the media coverage of the book and Haidt's own pattern of emphasis (he really pushes the "smartphones are damaging our kids" angle), I think that most people will ignore the bit about expanding freedom for children in the physical world. I worry that we will limit digital freedom and physical-world freedom for the kids, and that we won't give a thought to rebuilding the communities and relationships that undergird the trust we need to to let our kids go out into the world without us.
A lot of people feel that our phone-based lives are diminished lives. A lot of people lament the erosion of community, belonging, and meaning. We don't want our kids to live that way. But a general feeling of "this isn't working" doesn't seem legitimate. At least, it's not legitimate enough to undergird policies and laws and allow us to feel confident about personal and parenting decisions. Haidt is an esteemed social scientist. He's giving all of us the scientific (read: legitimate, socially approved) basis for what so many of us have intuited or gleaned from personal experience. Maybe one thing that we need to reckon with is that we shouldn't rely exclusively on the science. You and Haidt make good points based on the science and they're valuable. We should certainly take them into account. But this problem requires us to bring many other skills, modes of inquiry (arts and humanities, for example), and wisdom traditions to our thought processes and to the public conversation.
What’s missing in the convo about how phones disintegrating community are the voices of disabled people for whom tech and SM has been life-changing. Or the marginalized communities (like CHILDREN) who have used SM in powerful ways to organize and push against the status quo.
This longing for the past is a uniquely white middle-class sentiment, and part of what Haidt is doing that’s so compelling is appealing to the parents of middle class girls because that is who is the most harmed by SM.
Maybe Haidt needs to be more specific and stop acting like he really cares about all children’s mental health when he so obviously has not considered marginalized communities and their relationships with tech.
Megan, have you read the book? Haidt does say social media has caused more harm to girls, and points out that the screen effect for boys coincides less with phones and more with video games that put risk-taking into the virtual realm and demotivate embodied play and risk.
I’m reading it now albeit begrudgingly as I find his voice condescending to say the least. I’m not sure how your comment addresses my point that Haidt does not acknowledge benefits of tech and SM, especially for marginalized groups. My point is bc he is mainly concerned about middle class girls, ie non-disabled and predominantly white, his argument is not at all inclusive to marginalized communities
You could be right. He is mainly dealing with the negative consequences (though he also acknowledges the benefits) of averages in western countries—since a lot of people and especially children with phones and social media are going to be middle class, that is probably the group that is most featured.
If we want to focus primarily on disabled and marginalized children, does Peter prove that unsupervised childhood is beneficial to those groups? I think he has been more general than that. That doesn’t change the thrust of the argument, that children and society would broadly benefit from Peter’s ideas.
The benefits of technology for marginalized groups absolutely bears concerted attention, but I don’t think that was the goal of either Haidt’s research or Peter’s.
Peter’s primary role is not to be a Haidt detractor, but it also doesn’t appear to be as an advocate for marginalized groups and their access to technology. His primary goal in this space seems to be to advocate for more freedom and play for kids in general, a goal that I see as being better served by embracing Haidt’s ideas and piggybacking off the success.
Peter has been clear that he sees tech as a non-issue, it is Haidt who is making a call to action so he bears the responsibility of creating a movement that is inclusive. Or not. At the end of the day, the anti-phones will persist but I want you all to know the movement is inherently ableist. Tech is access. Phones are mini-computers.
Peter has other pieces that discuss instruction for dyslexic children and he also mentions the limitations of social play for some autistic people. I am an extremely critical reader wrt race and ability and I have interrogated Peter’s work with the same veracity as Haidt’s.
Haidt doesn’t even consider the disabled community.
Smartphones are like drugs - they reduce attention agency and personal power of those who already lack it. Who do you think is more likely to escape poverty and being marginalized- someone with a good attention span and ability to focus or someone who can't stop scrolling ? the smartphones are literally programmed to get people hooked, kids and those with little other options are the most vulnerable.
Do you know anyone who is marginalized and/or living in poverty? That’s not what they said when I asked them. This whole notion of knowing better what is good for people is very paternalistic
I have grown up in poverty actually. I know and speak to many people in poverty through my charity work. My husband is governor of a 'poor' school. I recommend Rob Hendersons book - Troubled . Someone who went from foster to foster home expands on the misconceptions people have on many issues (not just phones). He actually coined the term 'luxury beliefs' - the thing I think you are referring to . IT's not that rich or poor ONLY can know whats better for poor. Its not true that if you are rich you cant have a right view on whats good for poor and if you are poor you can. There is more to it
I appreciate the recommendation but growing up poor and your husband helping the poor doesn’t actually indicate you are hearing directly from people living on the margins. Nor does it seem your viewpoints are coming from their lived experiences. When I speak to family and friends who are Black, disabled and/or living in poverty, they see phones as a lifeline. Phones can make Black mothers feel a LOT safer letting their kids go out into the world, for example. They give disabled folx access to the world when they can’t leave their homes. 2 examples of many.
A dumb phone that can make parents feel safe is 10x cheaper than a smartphone. You can text and call. Disabled folks who can’t leave the home can use the internet . JH point are not against internet use at home . There is plenty of ways for a teenager to use tech in a responsible useful ways and connect to friends without Instagram and TikTok . Plenty do, including in marginalized communities where they don’t have enough money for a smartphone
I agree, Laura, well said!
The anti-phones take is coming from families that feel schools are safe for their kids. There is not a starker line to be drawn. The parents who fear for their children’s physical and/or psychological safety see the phones as a lifeline. Dismissing that as parental panic while setting policy around bad science is just a whole other shade of privilege. Bravo Peter, we need your voice more than ever!!!!