In Letter #45 I pointed out that I very much agree with Jonathan Haidt’s contention, in The Anxious Generation, that children and teens are suffering because they have been deprived of free play and other independent activity but disagree that social media or other uses of digital devices are a major cause of the recent increase in anxiety, depression, and suicide.
I began that letter by referring, with links, to previous letters (in my D series) in which I had summarized research countering each of Haidt’s lines of evidence for the social media/smartphone theory of kids’ suffering. Then I took the one published example Haidt gave as experimental evidence for a causal effect of social media use on suffering and showed the serious flaws in that study and why it provides no evidence at all for such a cause-effect relationship.
The letter drew many thoughtful comments, all of which I appreciate. What I want to do now is respond briefly to what I found to be the most interesting and, in some cases, provocative comments. I will use direct quotes, in Italics, to present the comments and criticisms, and then respond in Roman to each.
Here We Go
• “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.…. 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.”
I appreciate this concern for my reputation and concern that my refutation of the popular social media/smartphone theory of teen suffering might undermine my effectiveness in promoting other causes. Every day I thank the universe that I am not a politician, but a scientist, trying my best to understand the social forces operating on kids and the rest of us and trying to convey that understanding to others. The data and logical analyses of the data, not popular beliefs, dictate my views. Popular beliefs are sometime right and sometimes wrong. When wrong, they can create great harm. I have no stake in the social media/smartphone industry, and if the research showed that it is a major cause of the high rate of current suffering among kids, I would gladly hop on the anti-smartphone anti-social media bandwagon. But I have looked deeply and broadly at the research that has been done and conclude, as do others who really know the research, that the evidence for that theory simply isn’t there.
I might add too that there are other popular waves I have failed to ride because I concluded they were wrong. My introductory psychology textbook countered many popular waves of psychological dogma at the time. I have long been making public the evidence that forced schooling is bad for kids and have been supporting movements for Self-Directed Education. These are hardly popular positions. I haven’t convinced the world at large, but I have been thanked by hundreds of families for giving them the courage to remove their kids from school. Most of my historical heroes, to the degree that I have them, are people who have countered the popular beliefs of their time. Where would we be if everyone “rode the waves”?
• “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. … 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?”
There have been many studies of video games and what kids get out of them. Such studies show, conclusively, that gaming indeed is free play (for my summaries of some of that research, see here and here). The games are freely chosen by the players and are directed by the players, not by a coach or any adult. They are amazingly challenging and mind building (see here). Many if not most popular online games are social, often involving many players. They are highly creative. Research shows that the most popular games are those that best serve the three primary psychological needs for wellbeing—autonomy, competence, and relatedness. I don’t know of comparable research on watching videos, but I do know that many kids have become remarkably skilled at making videos and that many of the videos kids watch are made by other kids. --- We long ago took away the outdoor playground for most kids, by not letting them out without an adult guard, so kids have found this new playground where they can get away from adults and play freely. Taking this playground away would certainly not increase free play.
• “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.”
I think there are certain group situations where it is perfectly appropriate to have a “no phones” rule. As most of you know, I am not a fan of school classrooms as they are constructed, but given that we have them, I think phones should be tucked away someplace out of reach during class time. This is a time to be present together, not each off in a separate activity. I’m tempted to add, however, that if classes were interesting and meaningful, kids would likely want to be attentive rather than on their phones.
I also think phones should be banned at summer camps. Camp should be a place to play and socialize in physical space, and phones interfere with that. [On the other hand, should books also be banned at camp, for the same reason??] Phones should also be banned in every family at dinner time—for the adults as well as the kids. This is a place to be present with one another. The Let Grow Play Clubs that we have brought to elementary schools are also appropriately phone free, but I don’t hear kids complaining about that because they love Play Club.
I think you are right that it is parents, not kids, who are most outspoken against banning phones at school. The same is true pertaining to summer camps. I have spoken with camp directors who would love to ban phones, but the parents won’t agree. Parents want to keep tabs on their kids every minute, and, sadly, many in the new generation of kids, who have not been allowed any real-world freedom and haven’t learned to take charge of their own lives, seem to welcome such constant parental connection. I even see it with college students. The worst thing about the cell phone is it is an invisible umbilical cord that never gets cut. A huge part of growing up is becoming ever less dependent on parental supervision and protection, and cell phones are in that way interfering with growing up. {Maybe we should have a law saying that kids can own phones, but parents cannot.]
• “Bans do not work, and the best way to avoid "addictions" is to provide a diversity of experience.”
Amen to that! We need to increase, not decrease, the menu of children’s possible ways of using their time. In my experience, watching kids at democratic schools where there is lots of opportunity for real, adventurous, self-directed outdoor play and kids to play with, most kids choose a balance. In the schools I have observed, kids could be on their devices all day long; there are no rules against it, but most are not. See the next comment.
• “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.”
Yes.
• “From a clinical and experience-based point of view there is no doubt that self harm, the use of illicit substances and eating disorders get more rapidly "distributed" to vulnerable individuals these days than just ten years ago.”
There is no doubt that all these have been rising beginning around 2010, and those ringing the smartphone alarm argue that therefore it must be caused by smartphones, because that’s when smartphones for teens became common. But correlation does not prove causation, and hundreds of attempts to show causation have failed. I have presented strong evidence that a change in schooling, with Common Core, which also began around 2010, has had the biggest negative effect on kids’ mental health. Also, as I repeatedly note, and is ignored by most people, we saw a similar high peak of all these ills in 1990, when suffering among teens was just as high as it is today and eating disorders (anorexia and bulimia) among girls were more prevalent than today. That was before the Internet and smartphones. History, if we attend to it, can help inform our understanding.
• “The research evidence for 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 those noted by other commenters] the result of 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 an 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 themwith 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 superseded.”
This comment should remind us all that digital devices connected to the Internet are far and away the most powerful tools for self-education we have today. The Internet connects us to the whole world of knowledge and, quite literally, to the whole diverse world of people. I know of kids who are learning foreign languages by playing video games or watching clever videos in those languages. I know of gamers who have friends in other cultures. I hear about young kids making complex calculations—involving compound interests and translating across different currencies, for example,—to work through problems in a video game. And on and on.
One thing I have learned from my forays into anthropology is that kids everywhere are drawn to the tools of their culture, and they begin playing with those tools while very young. The younger they start using those tools, the better they will be at using them effectively. Do parents really want to deprive children and early teens of the opportunity to use and learn from these tools? Wouldn’t it be better to teach safety rules and introduce a few constraints than to take the tools away?
• “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.”
What can I say? In study after study, when kids are asked about the source of their distress, the great majority say it’s school, and that majority has become much greater since Common Core than before . Every summer when school closes, the rates of teen suicides and mental health emergency admissions plummet. Surveys of teachers and school psychologists show that they agree that school has become more stressful for all concerned since the onset of Common Core. What used to be fun and interesting in school has largely been removed for the sake of test preparation. Recesses and lunch periods have been reduced to almost nothing. I have presented such evidence before (e.g. here) and will do so with greater detail in a future post.
• “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 it’s far worse.”
Yes, from the many reports I hear, the UK is very much following the US example regarding schooling, as are Australia and Canada, and I suggest that may be why rates of teen mental distress have risen in those countries, since about 2010, while they have not risen in the European Union or most of the rest of the world.
• “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?”
You are right that I don’t refute those data. Everyone agrees that teen mental health in the U.S. declined beginning around 2010. I don’t say he is wrong about that. I say he is mistaken in his view of the primary cause, and throughout many letters I have given a great deal of evidence as to why I think he is mistaken.
• “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 you 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.”
I’m sympathetic but don’t agree. If he is wrong, then why would you want to spread a myth? Many kids really are suffering, and many kids are on social media. Jon’s book might make parents believe that their kid is suffering because of social media, when the real reason might be something else. Also, many kids are on social media and are not suffering and are gaining much from it, yet parents might take their phones away because Jon’s book suggests it will make them suffer.
I believe it is really important for parents to talk with their kids—get the kids’ points of view about things. The younger the kids is when you start doing that, the better it works. Some kids might say, “You know, I really am on social media more than is good for me and I see why.” Then you might talk with your kids about ways to manage their time better. I hope to write another post on what I think really are parental responsibilities regarding social media and technology in general.
You know, we made a HUGE societal mistake when we decided as a culture that we were not going to let kids play and explore independently outdoors anymore because of exaggerated reports of dangers. By 1990 it had became “common sense” to think that a parent is negligent if they let their kids run around outdoors without an adult guard. Let’s not make the same mistake regarding kids’ exploration of the digital world.
Some adults might not like it, but we live in a digital age. This is the world our kids are growing up in. Like kids throughout history, our kids embrace new developments that their elders fear. If our kids are to prepare themselves for adulthood in this new world, they must be allowed to use the tools of their time.
Concluding Thoughts
Again, I thank everyone who commented. I know that parents are truly torn about this issue, and I can understand the drive to think we can make our kids happier by something as seemingly simple as taking away their phones. But it is a mistake. Taking another thing away is not going to broaden their activities and make them happy, it will narrow their activities and decrease happiness. In a future post I will suggest some ways of increasing your kid’s menu of activities, especially adventurous real-world activities.
Feel free to add more comments here! I always learn from them.
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It’s interesting to me that so many here are utilizing a top down approach- the adult/parent/teacher has authority on children’s activities. What if we engage children in these conversations- treat them as the whole beings they are - include them in the decisions that impact their lives. Critical thinking and decision making skills are key to fulfillment and contentment in adulthood - why do we deny these tools to children? Why not coach them to use their inherent thinking to gain mastery of their own lives and environments? Children are more than capable of determining screen-based time management. Giving them the knowledge to inform their own decisions not only bolsters their confidence, critical thinking, and decision-making skills, but empowers them as whole human beings. While this discussion is interesting, it is missing key voices - those of the children about whom we are all making judgments and decisions for. Play is not just a thing kids do outside or with toys. Play is also something engaging for the mind - let children play with thinking, decision-making, ideologies, etc. I think the most powerful question one person can ask another is, “What do you think?” Informed children make solid decisions for themselves, because they are intelligent humans, too. Top down discussions, such as the ones here, are a play tool of the adult mind. Why not include the children whose lives are immediately impacted?!
Peter is often the only one actually talking to children, instead of about or for them. I don't think anything he's written here or anywhere demonstrates otherwise. Also, the key to fulfillment and contentment at any age is agency in one's life. The skills to make the most of this agency are important, as you say, but at the end of the day, children learn critical thinking and decision-making skills specifically by being trusted with independence. Skills schmills. Kids need time away from adults!
I think a distinction needs to be made between 1. taking phones and social media away from kids who already have them (or very shortly will) and 2. delaying access to smartphones and social media
I don't support number 1. If kids already have smartphones, taking them away is cruel. Yes, limits and safety agreements should be in place, to enable them to get the benefits while minimising harm
I also think we can do that, while supporting a delay in smartphones and social media for younger kids. And I think that's what the Anxious Generation is suggesting, more than taking the phones away.
Personally, I'm planning on delaying smartphones and social media for my kids as long as possible. But I'm doing it in a setting of creating opportunities for free play, both within and outside the home. And I'm trying to build a community of like-minded parents, who are also delaying smartphones and social media, so that our kids can play together without the disruption that technology causes.
Thank you for this thought. My observation is that kids who have ample opportunity for truly free outdoor play (not governed by adults), especially if that begins when they are young and there are kids to play with, happily set their phones aside while playing. It will be relatively easy to deprive your kids of phones but, in our culture, not so easy to provide ample opportunities for outdoor free play. I wish you well.
I'm doing my best using some of your ideas actually. Homeschooling does make it easier for outdoor free play, but I've also started a local play street, where I am the lone lifeguard parent (except for the parents of younger kids).
I do see how screens impact the outdoor free play during play street, all the kids end up gathered around a tablet watching one kid play a video game. Much more fun for everyone when I ask the kid to take the tablet back home.
This is a really good point, to better to split out what the proposed changes might be and look at the evidence for/against them more specifically. For example, for my kids (oldest is 6) planning on delaying social media access until age 16 is easy to commit to and seems prudent in a risk/reward calculation. If my kids want to advocate for a different policy as they get closer to that age, I'll listen to them and consider their arguments.
I also think that social media companies should be held a lot more accountable for their own designs on age restriction.
But for parents who already have young teenagers with smartphones and social media accounts and in conventional school, I think they're in a much trickier position.
Thank you for your ongoing dialogue on this topic, most especially your scientific resistance to the exhortations by some of the comments to “go with the flow” and “be on the right side of history.” It’s exactly what’s frightening about this and so many other issues that we’re told “the data is in” and can only be solved by government intervention. We must remain vigilant against traveling the roads paved with such good intentions, lest we forget where they all lead.
1) it’s possible that kids are inaccurately identifying the source of their stress (as school) when you consider how kids’ brains have changed through infancy by being plopped in front of screens. Their ability to sustain attention and work through challenges has diminished. I don’t disagree that school could be a source but why is it? Yes, because of Common Core (etc.) but it could also be because the kids attention spans and addiction to their device and the world of social media has corrupted their attention spans.
2) the comment I wanted to make on your original letter was that I was hoping you would address the fact that phones rob kids of even more freedom as parents are using them as tracking devices to constantly monitor their kids so they have no freedom of movement or true independence. Problems are fixed by parents with a quick text, an electronic transfer of money to give the kid what they need (now), kids aren’t figuring things out themselves. They are constantly tethered to parents and there has finally been discussion, thankfully, about how this (false) sense of safety is also adding to people’s anxieties. Kids actually reporting feeling safer if they are tracked. Parents freaking out if they can’t track their kids. Where is the freedom?
I'm completely with you on your second point and I'm surprised it isn't getting more scrutiny in the debate. One of the main things I didn't like about The Anxious Generation is that Haidt is in favour of tracking kids via their phones and admits to tracking his own children this way. Seems obviously contradictory to me!
As to your first point, can you point me to any studies which show a decline in attention span?
Yes, kids have a wide variety of ways they can use their Internet access and there are a lot of beneficial things that can be done with it. However, I don't recall you addressing the problem that the social media companies are motivated to make their platforms as time consuming as they can. These apps are designed to create addictions. Kids with no freedom but the Internet can't be expected to choose better activities when access to the Internet outside of these large platforms is becoming harder thanks to things like Google becoming more of a carosel of advertisements and less of a functioning search engine. I'm not saying kids can't think for themselves and find the ways around these problems. I'm saying there's billions of dollars rigging the system against them. I think these companies need to be discouraged from preying on kids (and all of us) in this way (without the censorship problems inherent to KOSA). Do you think that this is a significant battle in getting kids their freedom back?
The algorithm and business model is a problem for everyone, not just for kids (as you point out). I don't want to pretend like we've solved that problem by creating some panic-driven patch with an age limit. We should build a better system instead.
This conversation is fantastic. Thanks for getting all of us to reflect a little more deeply, Peter, about technology, school design, and stress.
Focusing my thoughts on smartphones in schools and the current trend to ban them, I can’t help but look back on the 10+ years of experience I had working with educators around the world as they explored how technology could advance teaching and learning (or not).
From the hundreds of projects and “experiments” I saw, a common theme appeared: Positive effects were only seen when the right technology was combined with the right pedagogy to create a new and powerful learning experience.
Great pedagogy and no tech has its limits, e.g. lack of access to libraries around the world, experiencing places one would otherwise not be able to see, rapid collaboration with peers near and far…). The list of lost benefits goes on.
On the other extreme, technology without good pedagogy can be a disaster. My favorite example is the introduction of laptops in a lecture hall. Should we really ban laptops to avoid distractions, or should we ban boring lectures?
The same goes for smartphones in class: Use them wisely, for formal and informal (all the important bits about life that aren’t on the test) learning. The technology by itself is neither the problem nor the solution. It’s all about thoughtful learning design to enable powerful learning experiences…
I'm very much in agreement with you, Peter. The unavoidable contradiction at the centre of Haidt's book is that it is likely to just replicate the 'safetyism' he criticises in the real world in the online world.
I can't help but feel that lots of people who are the most panicked about phones and social media would be equally anxious if they didn't exist and children still played outside. They'd be anxious about who their children were playing with, where they were going, peer pressure, gossip/drama/cliques, bullying, alcohol/smoking, the influence of older kids, gang crime, and even whether new games and fads were somehow turning children to satanism (as was the case with DnD, Pokemon cards, and Harry Potter!). When one worry disappears, more just crop up to fill its place.
I have read all the letters in regard to this, but I don’t remember if you e mentioned the rise in teen mental health issues in regard to the mental health of the population as a whole. Is it only teens in these countries suffering a rise in mental health problems?
To the extent that I’ve been able to follow this discussion here and elsewhere (limited time), I am struck by how it seems to be unidimensional. What if (a) cell phones & social media and (b) school pressures & Common Core are BOTH a causation? Acting on two different groups of kids. My own granddaughter was 7 in 2010, had a cell phone by about age 12, was not skilled academically, was horribly bullied on social media, and spent years cutting herself and in misery (thankfully, she has much recovered). The Common Core was irrelevant to her. Her same high school was populated by kids with helicopter parents and I can easily imagine that some were miserable.
Thanks for quoting me, Peter. I expected my comment to be mostly ignored since it was explicitly an emotional response. I appreciate the continued conversation around these topics. The comments on today’s article show a lot of folks feel the phone/social media situation is hand-in-hand with diminished play. Hopefully, society will move in the right direction as a result of all the attention around the mental health of children these days.
I will have to read back to see your work on common core. I, too, was introduced to your work by Haidt’s substack, so I am missing some details of your stance. I don’t personally know any teachers or parents over many years who actually think common core is good for kids, and I would be just as happy to see that go as I would be happy to see my middle school daughter off her phone.
There is an article in today’s New York Times about students creating fake accounts on TikTok that impersonated their teachers. They got photos of their teachers and the teachers’ families and used the photos to make it seem as if the teachers were pedophiles, or gay. They mocked the teachers’ ethnicity and pasted their heads on nude bodies. The school suspended a few of the students for a few days but said they could not regulate what students do online.
Not sure what this means, but it seems to suggest that social media are amplifying the power of sociopathic teens to destroy the reputations of their teachers just for fun.
People don't do anti-social things for no reason. One must always look at the prior life experience and state of mind when evaluating malicious behavior. We are inherently a social species and none of us opts for anti-social behavior for the hell of it. We must ask what pathology lead to the behavior and address that if we're to understand and find solutions.
Hi Peter, I appreciate you replying to my original comment on your last Substack. My husband laughed when he heard it was possibly seen as provocative. That was my exact point.
I think it’s so important to critically think about all these issues that we as parents are facing in this digital age. Sometimes more provocative comments help us really ask question & explore the topic more.
I hope others will go back and read my original comment & observations I claim to be proof enough that the topic of cell phone usage- and more so the addictions they *can* cause are harming our kids. It’s not the only thing we need to be questioning… but it’s a start!
Written by an “unschooling”/ homeschooling mom of 11 & 6 year old boys who prioritizes ample amounts of time for free, independent play in the outdoors each day. I guess you could say our parenting philosophy is provocative in today’s societal standards too! ;)
Thank you for your perspective on this topic, Peter! It is important to hear many sides of the argument. I just read this article https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/child-and-adolescent-psychiatry/articles/10.3389/frcha.2024.1276154/full. As an educator, I feel that denying children the opportunity to play and then handing them a device that is "educational" is a large part of the problem. Kids may be growing up in a digital world but they need a solid foundation of being a human first.
Thanks so much for providing competing theories to Dr. Haidt's. I admit, I am fairly convinced by it, but there are so few responses that are as high-quality and thoughtful as yours has been.
For your theory regarding the particular effects of Common Core, is there state-by-state data regarding implementation timing and roll back timing that show that kids in different states were affected at different times that coincide with Common Core implementation? Does the roll-back of Common Core show any improvement? Perhaps most importantly, how to do account for rises in international mental health issues that Haidt and Company argue coincide with smartphone/social media adoption (and it's accompanying displacement of play)? Were the comparable education reforms in other places? Can implementation time effects further support your argument? Are there countries that did not have such education reforms but still had mental health effects?
Regarding the self-reporting by (US?) children that school is their main problem: I think this is likely useful information, but without more I'm very skeptical at taking it at face value. Without more detail as to why school is so bad, it seems like (depending on how the surveys are conducted) kids can very easily incorrectly ascribe problems to school. For example, kids may now find themselves more time-constrained than in the past because of the massive increase in total screen time but the constraints are felt mostly because their most salient deadlines are all school related? In other words, as time to get things done runs out do how likely are kids to blame the things they like to do or the things they have to do?
Is there data regarding the school environment rather than academic pressures that could better support your theory that schools are a larger driver of the problem? For example, my kids have passing periods intentionally designed so that kids cannot go to the bathroom or go to the locker or have a quick conversation with a friend. Also, it seems order and respect in the average classroom is not what it once was. My kids take AP classes and get good grades and don't complain about academic pressure, but don't seem to have as enjoyable of an environment as I had in school. Given that kids spend less time on school work and that standards have been dropping, academic pressure just strikes me as a bad candidate for driving mental illness or mental weakness. But perhaps the the degredation of the overall school environment could do it.
I am surprised this discussion has not included a model of human development to guide decision-making. We need a model of how humans develop as in what develops when, to make informed decisions so I am veering away from the thread to make a point.
According to Dr. Steiner, founder of Waldorf education, windows for learning are open during stages of development. The young child is developing their physical capacities, will forces, and imagination, so creative free play and rhythms are key. In elementary school, children are developing their emotions, so relationships and learning that integrates the arts supports development. In high school and college, cognitive development is at the forefront, students need academic rigor and challenge. This is of course, oversimplifying the overlapping aspects of human development, but I think we need to consider each stage; conversations about what children need must be based on an understanding of what it is to be human. And bearing in mind the end goal, as in the development of independent thinking and socially responsible humans.
For example, play is an innate capacity in early childhood but is hard to learn later and it supports the development of self-direction and cooperation. If practiced in early childhood, play is foundational. We need to bring the right things at the right time.
When we talk about providing phones for children, I suggest introducing them at adolescence along with boundaries around using them, as in not at the dinner table and not keeping them on at night. In a nutshell, I am all for delaying smart phone use for kids and providing social opportunities for play. And having a model for human development, as well as engaging in objective observation of children and maintaining strong intergenerational connections. I think dogmatic approaches backfire by increasing interest in what has been denied. Also, I think home-schooling is better than a school that does not meet children's needs, but not better than one that does. I am speaking as an early childhood educator, author, and a grandmother who home-schooled her children briefly and participated in founding two schools.
I predict that if phones are banned in New York and LA schools, the first time there's a shooting in either district parents will howl for their return. As is so often the case, school types love to identify any solution to The Problem that doesn't implicate them or their system. Invariably they fail.
1. Touch screens are addictive; look into it. social media is not the variable you are looking for; rather it is the addictive quality of interactions with touchscreen devices.
2. The parent’s gaze and attention are co opted by the smart device so many times a day. A parent of a young child, who eschews games and social media except for texting, still find themselves interrupted by or turning to their small precious rectangle with disturbing frequency, to answer calls, text about a play date, find directions or store hours, play music, look up an nutrition fact or recipe, best tick repellant to use, update grandparents, etc etc. Add recreational or job non-kid-related phone time to that. The eye and ear, the attention, return to and focus on the the same infernal rectangle, again and again many times each day.
For young children, there is NO WAY this does not affect attachment. See stillface experiments. Maybe that’s why the kids welcome the constant intrusions later on- insecure attachment. I don’t blame the parents; only a very few can function effectively these days without using a smart phone.
Personally, I blame the reptilian philosophy propagated at business schools that leads entrepreneurs to see compassion for your customers (victims) as a weakness. No offense to reptiles, I mean that figuratively.
Thank you, Dr Peter Gray. I have only recently come across your articles and am relieved there is someone talking about this. The science is validating showing what many of us truly feel about our experience of school. I am a trained physician coming from a background which like most people, school was the biggest feature of my life and my achievements there being either my biggest pride or my biggest failure. You can already guess if I was ever truly happy there. The same is true for many of my peers. I still meet my classmates from kindergarten, elementary and high school and we share the same sentiments. None of us ever talked about how much we enjoyed being at school. What we enjoyed was the play we did outside of lesson times, about copying each others homework, which I guess is a kind of play, things that were funny, that we discover spontaneously or unexpectedly. With closer friends, we exchange stories of pain or stress such as social anxiety,feeling not good enough (grades) and often surprised to learn of each others suffering because we all thought the other was ok. If we were to go back in time, we would not want to be in that environment again even if it meant that it was only way to college.
As I feared, the School Phone Ban Crusade – the darling of Morning Talk Show Hosts, Governors, and Principals alike – has started to normalize the idea of significantly curtailing the free expression rights of 55+ million young humans. Do not mistake this: public K-12 schools are government schools – which means bans seriously infringe on rights protected by the First Amendment. This is especially concerning since Jon Haidt has been an incredible supporter of the work of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and Greg Lukianoff.
But it goes further! This week, Hillary Clinton is on the talk show circuit pushing her latest book, "Something Lost, Something Gained". In the book, she strongly argues that Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934, widely considered the "First Amendment" of the Internet, must be repealed since it permits the dissemination of "disinformation" and "misinformation". Clinton cites The Anxious Generation's arguments about the harmful effects of social media and argues that statewide school bans demonstrate the necessity and "right" of the government to limit Internet free expression.
Although an unintended consequence, this mission-creep infringement of First Amendment rights was completely foreseeable. The Anxious Generation is being weaponized to attack everyone's human, civil, and constitutional rights.
I choose to focus on the causal source of the psychological distress which is the thwarting and neglecting of the psychological needs. From this perspective even if a ban produces some level of improvement it will not solve the problem. Here’s my essay called Calming the Anxious Generation: https://www.holisticequity.org/anxious-generation.html
I had listened to the author of the book, Who’s Raising the Kids, speak on the podcast called Scrolling 2 Death. Here is the link if you’re interested.
Peter, I am out of my depth in this debate. When I was growing up, the only phone we had was the family phone, which was so expensive to use that we kids were strictly told not to talk on it for more than three minutes. I'm inclined to think that schools, rather than smart phones, are the cause of children's loneliness and anxiety, but I just escaped the endless pressure of testing by Ace-ing fact tests and psyching out the tester. Somehow, I escaped into books. I still love public libraries and I greatly respect private collections. Amazon is one of those high-tech media corporations that I regard as a public good. But, by the time I retired from college teaching (2018), the phones and tablets and computers in class made it almost impossible to cultivate a rational conversation. I fear
AI if it makes possible fake papers challenging the professor to find the source. It may not be possible any more to Google a line in a suspect paper and find the original on the Web. In the future, I suspect that teachers will have to assume that every student will be cheating by SnapChat so that the task of education will be to collectively master the new tools of artificial intelligence. Nobody will bother to find evidence, not already digitized, interpret it creatively, and construct new knowledge, as in the revolutions of Copernicus and Darwin and Madison and Hamilton. Kids will assume that everything is already on the Web. Why learn? You can just Google it! We will become a nation of sheep, ready for Orwell's 1984, in the grip of the software engineers. —Joseph Baratta
I really appreciate your detailed responses and also striving towards scientific rigor. There's been way too much sliding of "because Science" to justify certain policy preferences and it might be helpful to some goals in the short term but I think we're worse off overall because of it.
That said, on this topic, I think my honest stance is that I don't really care that much about what the research says for larger trends or whether there's a moral panic going on. I think my own intuition and personal observations are sufficient for being wary of giving unlimited access to the Internet to my kids at young ages (my oldest is 6 and is attending a Sudbury school). I'm also very skeptical of image/video-based social media specifically, because there are some use cases for which it is excellent and yet even for myself, I usually stick to text-focused platforms and I think it's only barely net positive (and I don't even post, I am mostly talking about groups related to parenting advice!)
Perhaps you could more clearly define, what you mean by child-driven freedoms Peter? On the one hand you support self-directed education and unlimited free play whether on a device, or not. But simultaneously state very clear boundaries and suggested rules against such devices, which would indeed limit the “freedom" of children:
1. “I think phones should be tucked away someplace out of reach during class time.”
2. “I also think phones should be banned at summer camps. Camp should be a place to play and socialize in physical space, and phones interfere with that.”
3. “Phones should also be banned in every family at dinner time- for the adults as well as the kids.”
4. “The worst thing about the cell phone is it is an invisible umbilical cord that never gets cut.”
5. “Wouldn’t it be better to teach safety rules and introduce a few constraints than to take the tools away?”
I agree with the boundaries you’ve stated above, but it would appear to negate the theory you are espousing.
You believe “Most kids choose a balance.” Perhaps that can be your next research project? Because as more adults are becoming attached to their devices, socializing in physical spaces is decreasing for all humans. That, I believe, is what is leading to greater mental health demise.
I agree, Common Core is detrimental to the freedoms and creativity of teachers, thus making education more boring. But the causality of growing mental health issues isn’t so cut and dry. There are multiple factors plaguing humanity. But devices are pulling people further away from active socialization. And as a result, critical skills like reading social cues, collaborative problem-solving, perspective taking, flexibility, and associative play, is suffering as a result.
"There are multiple factors plaguing humanity." Yes, and there always have been. A quick perusal of the history of the last century turns up: two world wars, a catastrophic economic depression, the daily threat of nuclear annihilation spanning several decades, another devastating crash in 2008, etc. Young people have always had to cope with these events and yet have somehow weathered them, so I find it laughable that a new technology could be their undoing. It's much more credible that the denial of a deep-seated need (for independence and lots of time spent in free play) is to blame for the current maelstrom. I agree that Peter appears to contradict himself in advising specific limits on screen time, but he has never advocated for hands-off parenting. I grew up when kids were trusted with independent time much more, and I work with kids today, and his explanation for the crisis strikes me as spot on. Many people focus on kids already steeped in screens and social media, but I believe you can see the prelude to their anxiety and decreased resilience in younger kids, such as I work with. They're generally timid, unfamiliar with decision-making, and they think the most mundane things are high adventures because they've never done anything scary or, in truth, interesting. (They're also overly knowledgeable about material things, such as the varieties of various brands of products, materialism being the main compensation we allow them for our having ruined childhood.) In fact, I'll bet that kids growing up before the 1990s had many more stories to tell from their lived experience than kids do today, and were simply more interesting people. (Having adventures is really the main source of great stories about one's life, whether young or old.) My two cents.
It’s interesting to me that so many here are utilizing a top down approach- the adult/parent/teacher has authority on children’s activities. What if we engage children in these conversations- treat them as the whole beings they are - include them in the decisions that impact their lives. Critical thinking and decision making skills are key to fulfillment and contentment in adulthood - why do we deny these tools to children? Why not coach them to use their inherent thinking to gain mastery of their own lives and environments? Children are more than capable of determining screen-based time management. Giving them the knowledge to inform their own decisions not only bolsters their confidence, critical thinking, and decision-making skills, but empowers them as whole human beings. While this discussion is interesting, it is missing key voices - those of the children about whom we are all making judgments and decisions for. Play is not just a thing kids do outside or with toys. Play is also something engaging for the mind - let children play with thinking, decision-making, ideologies, etc. I think the most powerful question one person can ask another is, “What do you think?” Informed children make solid decisions for themselves, because they are intelligent humans, too. Top down discussions, such as the ones here, are a play tool of the adult mind. Why not include the children whose lives are immediately impacted?!
Peter is often the only one actually talking to children, instead of about or for them. I don't think anything he's written here or anywhere demonstrates otherwise. Also, the key to fulfillment and contentment at any age is agency in one's life. The skills to make the most of this agency are important, as you say, but at the end of the day, children learn critical thinking and decision-making skills specifically by being trusted with independence. Skills schmills. Kids need time away from adults!
Love this. The truth is, there is still a lot of childism at play.
So agree
I think a distinction needs to be made between 1. taking phones and social media away from kids who already have them (or very shortly will) and 2. delaying access to smartphones and social media
I don't support number 1. If kids already have smartphones, taking them away is cruel. Yes, limits and safety agreements should be in place, to enable them to get the benefits while minimising harm
I also think we can do that, while supporting a delay in smartphones and social media for younger kids. And I think that's what the Anxious Generation is suggesting, more than taking the phones away.
Personally, I'm planning on delaying smartphones and social media for my kids as long as possible. But I'm doing it in a setting of creating opportunities for free play, both within and outside the home. And I'm trying to build a community of like-minded parents, who are also delaying smartphones and social media, so that our kids can play together without the disruption that technology causes.
Thank you for this thought. My observation is that kids who have ample opportunity for truly free outdoor play (not governed by adults), especially if that begins when they are young and there are kids to play with, happily set their phones aside while playing. It will be relatively easy to deprive your kids of phones but, in our culture, not so easy to provide ample opportunities for outdoor free play. I wish you well.
I'm doing my best using some of your ideas actually. Homeschooling does make it easier for outdoor free play, but I've also started a local play street, where I am the lone lifeguard parent (except for the parents of younger kids).
I do see how screens impact the outdoor free play during play street, all the kids end up gathered around a tablet watching one kid play a video game. Much more fun for everyone when I ask the kid to take the tablet back home.
This is a really good point, to better to split out what the proposed changes might be and look at the evidence for/against them more specifically. For example, for my kids (oldest is 6) planning on delaying social media access until age 16 is easy to commit to and seems prudent in a risk/reward calculation. If my kids want to advocate for a different policy as they get closer to that age, I'll listen to them and consider their arguments.
I also think that social media companies should be held a lot more accountable for their own designs on age restriction.
But for parents who already have young teenagers with smartphones and social media accounts and in conventional school, I think they're in a much trickier position.
Thank you for your ongoing dialogue on this topic, most especially your scientific resistance to the exhortations by some of the comments to “go with the flow” and “be on the right side of history.” It’s exactly what’s frightening about this and so many other issues that we’re told “the data is in” and can only be solved by government intervention. We must remain vigilant against traveling the roads paved with such good intentions, lest we forget where they all lead.
1) it’s possible that kids are inaccurately identifying the source of their stress (as school) when you consider how kids’ brains have changed through infancy by being plopped in front of screens. Their ability to sustain attention and work through challenges has diminished. I don’t disagree that school could be a source but why is it? Yes, because of Common Core (etc.) but it could also be because the kids attention spans and addiction to their device and the world of social media has corrupted their attention spans.
2) the comment I wanted to make on your original letter was that I was hoping you would address the fact that phones rob kids of even more freedom as parents are using them as tracking devices to constantly monitor their kids so they have no freedom of movement or true independence. Problems are fixed by parents with a quick text, an electronic transfer of money to give the kid what they need (now), kids aren’t figuring things out themselves. They are constantly tethered to parents and there has finally been discussion, thankfully, about how this (false) sense of safety is also adding to people’s anxieties. Kids actually reporting feeling safer if they are tracked. Parents freaking out if they can’t track their kids. Where is the freedom?
I'm completely with you on your second point and I'm surprised it isn't getting more scrutiny in the debate. One of the main things I didn't like about The Anxious Generation is that Haidt is in favour of tracking kids via their phones and admits to tracking his own children this way. Seems obviously contradictory to me!
As to your first point, can you point me to any studies which show a decline in attention span?
Yes, kids have a wide variety of ways they can use their Internet access and there are a lot of beneficial things that can be done with it. However, I don't recall you addressing the problem that the social media companies are motivated to make their platforms as time consuming as they can. These apps are designed to create addictions. Kids with no freedom but the Internet can't be expected to choose better activities when access to the Internet outside of these large platforms is becoming harder thanks to things like Google becoming more of a carosel of advertisements and less of a functioning search engine. I'm not saying kids can't think for themselves and find the ways around these problems. I'm saying there's billions of dollars rigging the system against them. I think these companies need to be discouraged from preying on kids (and all of us) in this way (without the censorship problems inherent to KOSA). Do you think that this is a significant battle in getting kids their freedom back?
The algorithm and business model is a problem for everyone, not just for kids (as you point out). I don't want to pretend like we've solved that problem by creating some panic-driven patch with an age limit. We should build a better system instead.
Side note, I found your work through Haidt's, so I'd say it's good that this is becoming a larger discussion.
This conversation is fantastic. Thanks for getting all of us to reflect a little more deeply, Peter, about technology, school design, and stress.
Focusing my thoughts on smartphones in schools and the current trend to ban them, I can’t help but look back on the 10+ years of experience I had working with educators around the world as they explored how technology could advance teaching and learning (or not).
From the hundreds of projects and “experiments” I saw, a common theme appeared: Positive effects were only seen when the right technology was combined with the right pedagogy to create a new and powerful learning experience.
Great pedagogy and no tech has its limits, e.g. lack of access to libraries around the world, experiencing places one would otherwise not be able to see, rapid collaboration with peers near and far…). The list of lost benefits goes on.
On the other extreme, technology without good pedagogy can be a disaster. My favorite example is the introduction of laptops in a lecture hall. Should we really ban laptops to avoid distractions, or should we ban boring lectures?
The same goes for smartphones in class: Use them wisely, for formal and informal (all the important bits about life that aren’t on the test) learning. The technology by itself is neither the problem nor the solution. It’s all about thoughtful learning design to enable powerful learning experiences…
I'm very much in agreement with you, Peter. The unavoidable contradiction at the centre of Haidt's book is that it is likely to just replicate the 'safetyism' he criticises in the real world in the online world.
I can't help but feel that lots of people who are the most panicked about phones and social media would be equally anxious if they didn't exist and children still played outside. They'd be anxious about who their children were playing with, where they were going, peer pressure, gossip/drama/cliques, bullying, alcohol/smoking, the influence of older kids, gang crime, and even whether new games and fads were somehow turning children to satanism (as was the case with DnD, Pokemon cards, and Harry Potter!). When one worry disappears, more just crop up to fill its place.
I have read all the letters in regard to this, but I don’t remember if you e mentioned the rise in teen mental health issues in regard to the mental health of the population as a whole. Is it only teens in these countries suffering a rise in mental health problems?
To the extent that I’ve been able to follow this discussion here and elsewhere (limited time), I am struck by how it seems to be unidimensional. What if (a) cell phones & social media and (b) school pressures & Common Core are BOTH a causation? Acting on two different groups of kids. My own granddaughter was 7 in 2010, had a cell phone by about age 12, was not skilled academically, was horribly bullied on social media, and spent years cutting herself and in misery (thankfully, she has much recovered). The Common Core was irrelevant to her. Her same high school was populated by kids with helicopter parents and I can easily imagine that some were miserable.
Thanks for quoting me, Peter. I expected my comment to be mostly ignored since it was explicitly an emotional response. I appreciate the continued conversation around these topics. The comments on today’s article show a lot of folks feel the phone/social media situation is hand-in-hand with diminished play. Hopefully, society will move in the right direction as a result of all the attention around the mental health of children these days.
I will have to read back to see your work on common core. I, too, was introduced to your work by Haidt’s substack, so I am missing some details of your stance. I don’t personally know any teachers or parents over many years who actually think common core is good for kids, and I would be just as happy to see that go as I would be happy to see my middle school daughter off her phone.
There is an article in today’s New York Times about students creating fake accounts on TikTok that impersonated their teachers. They got photos of their teachers and the teachers’ families and used the photos to make it seem as if the teachers were pedophiles, or gay. They mocked the teachers’ ethnicity and pasted their heads on nude bodies. The school suspended a few of the students for a few days but said they could not regulate what students do online.
Not sure what this means, but it seems to suggest that social media are amplifying the power of sociopathic teens to destroy the reputations of their teachers just for fun.
People don't do anti-social things for no reason. One must always look at the prior life experience and state of mind when evaluating malicious behavior. We are inherently a social species and none of us opts for anti-social behavior for the hell of it. We must ask what pathology lead to the behavior and address that if we're to understand and find solutions.
Hi Peter, I appreciate you replying to my original comment on your last Substack. My husband laughed when he heard it was possibly seen as provocative. That was my exact point.
I think it’s so important to critically think about all these issues that we as parents are facing in this digital age. Sometimes more provocative comments help us really ask question & explore the topic more.
I hope others will go back and read my original comment & observations I claim to be proof enough that the topic of cell phone usage- and more so the addictions they *can* cause are harming our kids. It’s not the only thing we need to be questioning… but it’s a start!
Written by an “unschooling”/ homeschooling mom of 11 & 6 year old boys who prioritizes ample amounts of time for free, independent play in the outdoors each day. I guess you could say our parenting philosophy is provocative in today’s societal standards too! ;)
Thank you for your perspective on this topic, Peter! It is important to hear many sides of the argument. I just read this article https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/child-and-adolescent-psychiatry/articles/10.3389/frcha.2024.1276154/full. As an educator, I feel that denying children the opportunity to play and then handing them a device that is "educational" is a large part of the problem. Kids may be growing up in a digital world but they need a solid foundation of being a human first.
Thanks so much for providing competing theories to Dr. Haidt's. I admit, I am fairly convinced by it, but there are so few responses that are as high-quality and thoughtful as yours has been.
For your theory regarding the particular effects of Common Core, is there state-by-state data regarding implementation timing and roll back timing that show that kids in different states were affected at different times that coincide with Common Core implementation? Does the roll-back of Common Core show any improvement? Perhaps most importantly, how to do account for rises in international mental health issues that Haidt and Company argue coincide with smartphone/social media adoption (and it's accompanying displacement of play)? Were the comparable education reforms in other places? Can implementation time effects further support your argument? Are there countries that did not have such education reforms but still had mental health effects?
Regarding the self-reporting by (US?) children that school is their main problem: I think this is likely useful information, but without more I'm very skeptical at taking it at face value. Without more detail as to why school is so bad, it seems like (depending on how the surveys are conducted) kids can very easily incorrectly ascribe problems to school. For example, kids may now find themselves more time-constrained than in the past because of the massive increase in total screen time but the constraints are felt mostly because their most salient deadlines are all school related? In other words, as time to get things done runs out do how likely are kids to blame the things they like to do or the things they have to do?
Is there data regarding the school environment rather than academic pressures that could better support your theory that schools are a larger driver of the problem? For example, my kids have passing periods intentionally designed so that kids cannot go to the bathroom or go to the locker or have a quick conversation with a friend. Also, it seems order and respect in the average classroom is not what it once was. My kids take AP classes and get good grades and don't complain about academic pressure, but don't seem to have as enjoyable of an environment as I had in school. Given that kids spend less time on school work and that standards have been dropping, academic pressure just strikes me as a bad candidate for driving mental illness or mental weakness. But perhaps the the degredation of the overall school environment could do it.
I am surprised this discussion has not included a model of human development to guide decision-making. We need a model of how humans develop as in what develops when, to make informed decisions so I am veering away from the thread to make a point.
According to Dr. Steiner, founder of Waldorf education, windows for learning are open during stages of development. The young child is developing their physical capacities, will forces, and imagination, so creative free play and rhythms are key. In elementary school, children are developing their emotions, so relationships and learning that integrates the arts supports development. In high school and college, cognitive development is at the forefront, students need academic rigor and challenge. This is of course, oversimplifying the overlapping aspects of human development, but I think we need to consider each stage; conversations about what children need must be based on an understanding of what it is to be human. And bearing in mind the end goal, as in the development of independent thinking and socially responsible humans.
For example, play is an innate capacity in early childhood but is hard to learn later and it supports the development of self-direction and cooperation. If practiced in early childhood, play is foundational. We need to bring the right things at the right time.
When we talk about providing phones for children, I suggest introducing them at adolescence along with boundaries around using them, as in not at the dinner table and not keeping them on at night. In a nutshell, I am all for delaying smart phone use for kids and providing social opportunities for play. And having a model for human development, as well as engaging in objective observation of children and maintaining strong intergenerational connections. I think dogmatic approaches backfire by increasing interest in what has been denied. Also, I think home-schooling is better than a school that does not meet children's needs, but not better than one that does. I am speaking as an early childhood educator, author, and a grandmother who home-schooled her children briefly and participated in founding two schools.
I predict that if phones are banned in New York and LA schools, the first time there's a shooting in either district parents will howl for their return. As is so often the case, school types love to identify any solution to The Problem that doesn't implicate them or their system. Invariably they fail.
1. Touch screens are addictive; look into it. social media is not the variable you are looking for; rather it is the addictive quality of interactions with touchscreen devices.
2. The parent’s gaze and attention are co opted by the smart device so many times a day. A parent of a young child, who eschews games and social media except for texting, still find themselves interrupted by or turning to their small precious rectangle with disturbing frequency, to answer calls, text about a play date, find directions or store hours, play music, look up an nutrition fact or recipe, best tick repellant to use, update grandparents, etc etc. Add recreational or job non-kid-related phone time to that. The eye and ear, the attention, return to and focus on the the same infernal rectangle, again and again many times each day.
For young children, there is NO WAY this does not affect attachment. See stillface experiments. Maybe that’s why the kids welcome the constant intrusions later on- insecure attachment. I don’t blame the parents; only a very few can function effectively these days without using a smart phone.
Personally, I blame the reptilian philosophy propagated at business schools that leads entrepreneurs to see compassion for your customers (victims) as a weakness. No offense to reptiles, I mean that figuratively.
Thank you, Dr Peter Gray. I have only recently come across your articles and am relieved there is someone talking about this. The science is validating showing what many of us truly feel about our experience of school. I am a trained physician coming from a background which like most people, school was the biggest feature of my life and my achievements there being either my biggest pride or my biggest failure. You can already guess if I was ever truly happy there. The same is true for many of my peers. I still meet my classmates from kindergarten, elementary and high school and we share the same sentiments. None of us ever talked about how much we enjoyed being at school. What we enjoyed was the play we did outside of lesson times, about copying each others homework, which I guess is a kind of play, things that were funny, that we discover spontaneously or unexpectedly. With closer friends, we exchange stories of pain or stress such as social anxiety,feeling not good enough (grades) and often surprised to learn of each others suffering because we all thought the other was ok. If we were to go back in time, we would not want to be in that environment again even if it meant that it was only way to college.
As I feared, the School Phone Ban Crusade – the darling of Morning Talk Show Hosts, Governors, and Principals alike – has started to normalize the idea of significantly curtailing the free expression rights of 55+ million young humans. Do not mistake this: public K-12 schools are government schools – which means bans seriously infringe on rights protected by the First Amendment. This is especially concerning since Jon Haidt has been an incredible supporter of the work of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and Greg Lukianoff.
But it goes further! This week, Hillary Clinton is on the talk show circuit pushing her latest book, "Something Lost, Something Gained". In the book, she strongly argues that Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934, widely considered the "First Amendment" of the Internet, must be repealed since it permits the dissemination of "disinformation" and "misinformation". Clinton cites The Anxious Generation's arguments about the harmful effects of social media and argues that statewide school bans demonstrate the necessity and "right" of the government to limit Internet free expression.
Although an unintended consequence, this mission-creep infringement of First Amendment rights was completely foreseeable. The Anxious Generation is being weaponized to attack everyone's human, civil, and constitutional rights.
Speech First
https://youtu.be/8PlZMEMNVho?si=V6stzCeqdefzBb1H
Excellent and thoughtful article as usual.
I choose to focus on the causal source of the psychological distress which is the thwarting and neglecting of the psychological needs. From this perspective even if a ban produces some level of improvement it will not solve the problem. Here’s my essay called Calming the Anxious Generation: https://www.holisticequity.org/anxious-generation.html
I had listened to the author of the book, Who’s Raising the Kids, speak on the podcast called Scrolling 2 Death. Here is the link if you’re interested.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/scrolling-2-death/id1700331740?i=1000659622752
Peter, I am out of my depth in this debate. When I was growing up, the only phone we had was the family phone, which was so expensive to use that we kids were strictly told not to talk on it for more than three minutes. I'm inclined to think that schools, rather than smart phones, are the cause of children's loneliness and anxiety, but I just escaped the endless pressure of testing by Ace-ing fact tests and psyching out the tester. Somehow, I escaped into books. I still love public libraries and I greatly respect private collections. Amazon is one of those high-tech media corporations that I regard as a public good. But, by the time I retired from college teaching (2018), the phones and tablets and computers in class made it almost impossible to cultivate a rational conversation. I fear
AI if it makes possible fake papers challenging the professor to find the source. It may not be possible any more to Google a line in a suspect paper and find the original on the Web. In the future, I suspect that teachers will have to assume that every student will be cheating by SnapChat so that the task of education will be to collectively master the new tools of artificial intelligence. Nobody will bother to find evidence, not already digitized, interpret it creatively, and construct new knowledge, as in the revolutions of Copernicus and Darwin and Madison and Hamilton. Kids will assume that everything is already on the Web. Why learn? You can just Google it! We will become a nation of sheep, ready for Orwell's 1984, in the grip of the software engineers. —Joseph Baratta
I really appreciate your detailed responses and also striving towards scientific rigor. There's been way too much sliding of "because Science" to justify certain policy preferences and it might be helpful to some goals in the short term but I think we're worse off overall because of it.
That said, on this topic, I think my honest stance is that I don't really care that much about what the research says for larger trends or whether there's a moral panic going on. I think my own intuition and personal observations are sufficient for being wary of giving unlimited access to the Internet to my kids at young ages (my oldest is 6 and is attending a Sudbury school). I'm also very skeptical of image/video-based social media specifically, because there are some use cases for which it is excellent and yet even for myself, I usually stick to text-focused platforms and I think it's only barely net positive (and I don't even post, I am mostly talking about groups related to parenting advice!)
Perhaps you could more clearly define, what you mean by child-driven freedoms Peter? On the one hand you support self-directed education and unlimited free play whether on a device, or not. But simultaneously state very clear boundaries and suggested rules against such devices, which would indeed limit the “freedom" of children:
1. “I think phones should be tucked away someplace out of reach during class time.”
2. “I also think phones should be banned at summer camps. Camp should be a place to play and socialize in physical space, and phones interfere with that.”
3. “Phones should also be banned in every family at dinner time- for the adults as well as the kids.”
4. “The worst thing about the cell phone is it is an invisible umbilical cord that never gets cut.”
5. “Wouldn’t it be better to teach safety rules and introduce a few constraints than to take the tools away?”
I agree with the boundaries you’ve stated above, but it would appear to negate the theory you are espousing.
You believe “Most kids choose a balance.” Perhaps that can be your next research project? Because as more adults are becoming attached to their devices, socializing in physical spaces is decreasing for all humans. That, I believe, is what is leading to greater mental health demise.
I agree, Common Core is detrimental to the freedoms and creativity of teachers, thus making education more boring. But the causality of growing mental health issues isn’t so cut and dry. There are multiple factors plaguing humanity. But devices are pulling people further away from active socialization. And as a result, critical skills like reading social cues, collaborative problem-solving, perspective taking, flexibility, and associative play, is suffering as a result.
https://www.substack.com/@playfulintervention
"There are multiple factors plaguing humanity." Yes, and there always have been. A quick perusal of the history of the last century turns up: two world wars, a catastrophic economic depression, the daily threat of nuclear annihilation spanning several decades, another devastating crash in 2008, etc. Young people have always had to cope with these events and yet have somehow weathered them, so I find it laughable that a new technology could be their undoing. It's much more credible that the denial of a deep-seated need (for independence and lots of time spent in free play) is to blame for the current maelstrom. I agree that Peter appears to contradict himself in advising specific limits on screen time, but he has never advocated for hands-off parenting. I grew up when kids were trusted with independent time much more, and I work with kids today, and his explanation for the crisis strikes me as spot on. Many people focus on kids already steeped in screens and social media, but I believe you can see the prelude to their anxiety and decreased resilience in younger kids, such as I work with. They're generally timid, unfamiliar with decision-making, and they think the most mundane things are high adventures because they've never done anything scary or, in truth, interesting. (They're also overly knowledgeable about material things, such as the varieties of various brands of products, materialism being the main compensation we allow them for our having ruined childhood.) In fact, I'll bet that kids growing up before the 1990s had many more stories to tell from their lived experience than kids do today, and were simply more interesting people. (Having adventures is really the main source of great stories about one's life, whether young or old.) My two cents.