I don't ordinarily comment on Substack posts, but as a millennial, I just want to say: Freya, there are so many people older than you who understand and resonate with what you say here. Some may "cringe at Gen Z for not coping," but many others fully understand why you feel the way you do. It's unfair that Gen Zers couldn't enjoy screen-free childhoods. Your willingness to speak on this subject is a gift to Gen Alpha, who can still be spared much of that technocratic infection. And it's a gift to our society more broadly.
The good news is that embodied presence is always available to those who make the conscious choice to fight for it. And one of the glorious parts of adulthood is learning to recognise and prioritise the things you need to flourish—including freedom from screens. I hope that Gen Z increasingly finds that to be true in the coming years.
I got Instagram at 13 and just got off it just a couple months ago at 24. Having a baby daughter of my own made me see the sickness of pixelating your identity. I imagined going online as a teenager and being able to watch her life story unfold from day one through my social accounts—and I didn't want that for her. I want her to tell her own stories and hold onto her own memories and to own her own life. I want her to be able to be a joyous nobody. Undocumented and free. Because I didn't have that. I hope my gift to her at 18 will be zero search results on the internet for her name.
Thanks Freya for delving into the grief of what has been lost to remind us that we can go beyond the present lament and have agency to change what lies ahead. We, especially us parents, are not powerless to return to: “Delayed gratification. Deeper connection. Play and fun. Risk and thrill. Life with less obsessive self-scrutiny.” Thanks for your important work in turning the tide Freya!
I'm so glad Freya wrote this. Maybe many people know about this "phenomenon" - anemoia among today's young people - but my feeling is most people don't. I didn't have a word for it but I started to pick up on this as a trend as a high school English teacher. Especially when I asked my students to write about their phone lives.
I'm not a teacher anymore but last month I spent a day in a high school classroom talking to students about why their school plans to ban phones next year. Last week I wrote about this visit. I shared quotes (about phones) from my former students and invited these students to discuss them and later write about them within their class. In one quote I shared a kid bemoaned the fact that, when they wake up every morning, all they do is search for their phone in their bed so they can check TikTok and SnapChat. This kid was hard on himself for not "thanking God for a new day."
I've read MANY, MANY quotes like this, from 16-18 year-olds, and I see this as an expression of anemoia. It's as though this kid imagines that, prior to smartphones, all human beings used to just wake up and actively thank their creator for another day. Talk about an idealized imagining of the past! This makes me so sad and so worried for my own kids and all kids.
I've seen a comment or two asking whether anything can actually be done about this. I will argue all day every day that the place to start is removing phones from schools and being honest about why - ALL the reasons - this must be done. It would not be inaccurate, for example, to tell kids: Phones are not allowed in our school because we want our children to experience fewer feelings of anemoia.
Self-pub makes me feel ill as do internet comments as a general proposition...but I think this is a very important time so I do hope you'll take a moment to check out what's happening here in Des Moines, as a Phone School attempts to become the kind of school Gen Zers are so sweetly nostalgic for.
I ended reading this piece in tears, looking back at my childhood and grieving those days when I went to Sam goody over the weekend to buy the new spice girls single on cassette, going to school on Monday and looking forward to coming home and listening to it. Or knocking on my neighbors doors to ask if they could come out to play and running around until the sun set and our parents made us come in for dinner. Or walking to school, slipping notes in lockers… just so much simpler and raw connections. Iphones and social media are heartbreaking to me, and as a millennial with a 3 year old, I can’t help but get sad at the thought that things will never be the same for him. My husband and I are doing our best to work toward a more technology free life, but it is HARD.
Thank you for writing this. It made me feel a lot.
Freya, we millennial parents don't mock you. I do feel sorry that your generation was part of the experiment. Technology moved too fast over the last 20 years and we don't have a good handle on it, as it continues to race even faster in a direction we can't even comprehend yet. So the desire to want to take a pause and be nostalgic is totally understandable. I am very conscious about media for my kids (7 & 10) and I'm taking all of this seriously. We all need to pause and reassess the situation before another generation is wasted.
Beautiful piece, Freya. The 90s were a magical time to grow up with no phones, wokeness, and algorithms. Older generations have succumbed to screen addiction too and zoomers’ parents should never have handed them this addiction so young, just like cigarettes. If everyone puts down their phones and talks to each other across generations, race, gender, politics, etc we might be able to make 90s style magic again and break the fever of our current tech enabled madness. I always enjoy talking to zoomers and hope you all continue your awakening.
Truly appreciate your perceptive writing, Freya, and grieve with you. I am almost ashamed to say I had the phone free childhood -- much of it outdoors. I am old.
I can’t help but wonder after reading a piece like this: “what is the solution? How can this be resolved?” The simplest solution would be to eschew social media and get rid of your smart phone. But unless you are part of a larger community also doing the same thing (which I think is the most likely avenue for success), the impact wouldn’t be quite the same. Obviously we can never return to pre-smartphone days, but still, I wonder: can this be solved?
A powerful statement Freya. I'm a septuagenarian and often think about how different the world you are growing up in is from the world I grew up in. Thank you for the word anemoia. I think that it is understandable, and very sad.
Freya, thank you for this piece, and your important Substack writings. You're encouraging us to think broadly and deeply about this moment in time and what steps we can each take towards a better path for ourselves, our families, and our society. Personally, this took the form of relocating cross-country to a place that prioritizes community. Seeing kids riding bikes to school, occasionally with siblings or friends on the handlebars, not a phone in sight, is refreshing. Having a group of like-minded parents and school leaders certainly helps. Time will tell if it's the right choice, but we felt it was a move we had to make for our children. It's not easy to "wait until 8th", or longer. High school teachers we speak to say there's a tangible drop-off in academic and social skills among teens with phones and/or video games vs. those without. The science is slowly catching up to that reality. As more of us wake up and take action, your voice will be even more important. Keep up the good work.
I don't ordinarily comment on Substack posts, but as a millennial, I just want to say: Freya, there are so many people older than you who understand and resonate with what you say here. Some may "cringe at Gen Z for not coping," but many others fully understand why you feel the way you do. It's unfair that Gen Zers couldn't enjoy screen-free childhoods. Your willingness to speak on this subject is a gift to Gen Alpha, who can still be spared much of that technocratic infection. And it's a gift to our society more broadly.
The good news is that embodied presence is always available to those who make the conscious choice to fight for it. And one of the glorious parts of adulthood is learning to recognise and prioritise the things you need to flourish—including freedom from screens. I hope that Gen Z increasingly finds that to be true in the coming years.
Thank you for sharing your perspective.
I got Instagram at 13 and just got off it just a couple months ago at 24. Having a baby daughter of my own made me see the sickness of pixelating your identity. I imagined going online as a teenager and being able to watch her life story unfold from day one through my social accounts—and I didn't want that for her. I want her to tell her own stories and hold onto her own memories and to own her own life. I want her to be able to be a joyous nobody. Undocumented and free. Because I didn't have that. I hope my gift to her at 18 will be zero search results on the internet for her name.
Thanks Freya for delving into the grief of what has been lost to remind us that we can go beyond the present lament and have agency to change what lies ahead. We, especially us parents, are not powerless to return to: “Delayed gratification. Deeper connection. Play and fun. Risk and thrill. Life with less obsessive self-scrutiny.” Thanks for your important work in turning the tide Freya!
I'm so glad Freya wrote this. Maybe many people know about this "phenomenon" - anemoia among today's young people - but my feeling is most people don't. I didn't have a word for it but I started to pick up on this as a trend as a high school English teacher. Especially when I asked my students to write about their phone lives.
I'm not a teacher anymore but last month I spent a day in a high school classroom talking to students about why their school plans to ban phones next year. Last week I wrote about this visit. I shared quotes (about phones) from my former students and invited these students to discuss them and later write about them within their class. In one quote I shared a kid bemoaned the fact that, when they wake up every morning, all they do is search for their phone in their bed so they can check TikTok and SnapChat. This kid was hard on himself for not "thanking God for a new day."
I've read MANY, MANY quotes like this, from 16-18 year-olds, and I see this as an expression of anemoia. It's as though this kid imagines that, prior to smartphones, all human beings used to just wake up and actively thank their creator for another day. Talk about an idealized imagining of the past! This makes me so sad and so worried for my own kids and all kids.
I've seen a comment or two asking whether anything can actually be done about this. I will argue all day every day that the place to start is removing phones from schools and being honest about why - ALL the reasons - this must be done. It would not be inaccurate, for example, to tell kids: Phones are not allowed in our school because we want our children to experience fewer feelings of anemoia.
Self-pub makes me feel ill as do internet comments as a general proposition...but I think this is a very important time so I do hope you'll take a moment to check out what's happening here in Des Moines, as a Phone School attempts to become the kind of school Gen Zers are so sweetly nostalgic for.
Phone School: https://sistermimons.substack.com/
Join the Phone Free Schools Movement: https://phonefreeschoolsmovement.org/
I ended reading this piece in tears, looking back at my childhood and grieving those days when I went to Sam goody over the weekend to buy the new spice girls single on cassette, going to school on Monday and looking forward to coming home and listening to it. Or knocking on my neighbors doors to ask if they could come out to play and running around until the sun set and our parents made us come in for dinner. Or walking to school, slipping notes in lockers… just so much simpler and raw connections. Iphones and social media are heartbreaking to me, and as a millennial with a 3 year old, I can’t help but get sad at the thought that things will never be the same for him. My husband and I are doing our best to work toward a more technology free life, but it is HARD.
Thank you for writing this. It made me feel a lot.
Freya, we millennial parents don't mock you. I do feel sorry that your generation was part of the experiment. Technology moved too fast over the last 20 years and we don't have a good handle on it, as it continues to race even faster in a direction we can't even comprehend yet. So the desire to want to take a pause and be nostalgic is totally understandable. I am very conscious about media for my kids (7 & 10) and I'm taking all of this seriously. We all need to pause and reassess the situation before another generation is wasted.
In other words, social media is not for making friends, but for keeping in touch with friends you already made as your lives drift apart.
Beautiful piece, Freya. The 90s were a magical time to grow up with no phones, wokeness, and algorithms. Older generations have succumbed to screen addiction too and zoomers’ parents should never have handed them this addiction so young, just like cigarettes. If everyone puts down their phones and talks to each other across generations, race, gender, politics, etc we might be able to make 90s style magic again and break the fever of our current tech enabled madness. I always enjoy talking to zoomers and hope you all continue your awakening.
Authentic human intelligence is far superior to machine artificial intelligence: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/artifcial-intelligence-ai-authentic-intelligence
Truly appreciate your perceptive writing, Freya, and grieve with you. I am almost ashamed to say I had the phone free childhood -- much of it outdoors. I am old.
When I was reading the comments under the video of the 1999 high school class, I was surprised to find tears welling up in my eyes.
I can’t help but wonder after reading a piece like this: “what is the solution? How can this be resolved?” The simplest solution would be to eschew social media and get rid of your smart phone. But unless you are part of a larger community also doing the same thing (which I think is the most likely avenue for success), the impact wouldn’t be quite the same. Obviously we can never return to pre-smartphone days, but still, I wonder: can this be solved?
Wow. Heartbreaking.
BRILLIANT!!!
Beautiful, Freya. With people like you, Jonathan and Zach in the world, there is definitely hope.
A powerful statement Freya. I'm a septuagenarian and often think about how different the world you are growing up in is from the world I grew up in. Thank you for the word anemoia. I think that it is understandable, and very sad.
Freya, thank you for this piece, and your important Substack writings. You're encouraging us to think broadly and deeply about this moment in time and what steps we can each take towards a better path for ourselves, our families, and our society. Personally, this took the form of relocating cross-country to a place that prioritizes community. Seeing kids riding bikes to school, occasionally with siblings or friends on the handlebars, not a phone in sight, is refreshing. Having a group of like-minded parents and school leaders certainly helps. Time will tell if it's the right choice, but we felt it was a move we had to make for our children. It's not easy to "wait until 8th", or longer. High school teachers we speak to say there's a tangible drop-off in academic and social skills among teens with phones and/or video games vs. those without. The science is slowly catching up to that reality. As more of us wake up and take action, your voice will be even more important. Keep up the good work.