An anti-smartphone movement is growing. On March 25, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill banning children under the age of 14 from using social media platforms. In February, the UK government backed tougher guidance to prevent children from using smartphones in schools. Grassroots groups like Smartphone-Free Childhood have risen to prominence across the country in the last year as parents worry about the damage screens and social media can take on young people’s mental health.
Underlying all these concerns is an extremely difficult question: What impact are smartphones having on our mental health? The answer depends on who you ask. For some, there is overwhelming evidence that smartphones are eroding our well-being. Others counter that it’s not that powerful. There are blogs, and then there are counter-blogs, each often pointing to the same scientific papers and reaching opposite conclusions.
Now we can add to this maelstrom two books, published within a week, that are in exactly opposite corners of this struggle.exist The Anxious Generation: How the Great Reinvention of Childhood Is Leading to an Epidemic of Mental IllnessSocial psychologist and author Jonathan Haidt lays out his argument that smartphones and social media are key drivers of the decline in adolescent mental health in many countries since the early 2010s.
Haidt believes that the early 2010s are crucial because that’s when smartphones really started to transform childhood into something unrecognizable. In June 2010, Apple launched its first front-facing camera, and Instagram was launched on the App Store a few months later. For Haight, it was a fateful combination. Children are suddenly always online, always on display, and connected in ways that are often not conducive to their well-being. The result is a “wave” of anxiety, depression and self-harm, primarily affecting young girls.
However, Haidt said smartphones are only part of the problem. He believes that Western children are not growing up healthily because of a “safetyist” culture that keeps children indoors, shields them from risks, and replaces rough-and-tumble free play with adult-directed organized sports, or worse Yes – video games. To demonstrate how safetyism actually works, Haidt compared an image of a 1970s playground carousel (“the greatest piece of playground equipment ever invented”) with a modern set of play equipment designed with safety in mind. , so children have less opportunity to learn from dangerous games.
This, in a nutshell, is Haidt’s great reinvention: childhood has shifted from being primarily about gaming to being about cell phones, and as a result, young people are less happy as children and less capable as adults.Haidt seems to think that there are more of them too boring. Today’s American high school students are less likely than their predecessors to drink alcohol, have sex, have a driver’s license or work. Haidt believes that young people are wrapped in cotton wool by their parents and addicted to online life, and they are not transitioning into adulthood in a healthy way.
These arguments are common in Haidt’s 2018 book, The doting of American thoughtCo-authored with journalist and activist Greg Lukianoff. Not only is the mental health of American children worse than before, but their transition to adulthood is now hampered by modern parenting and technology, Haidt said. “Once a new generation gets hooked on smartphones forward As adolescence begins, the flow of information entering their eyes and ears leaves little room for guidance from mentors in real-world communities. period Adolescence,” Haidt writes in his latest book.