Another flaw that we should focus on, is our overreliance on scientific data to lead our life decisions. We should not only rely on statistics to confirm that smartphones remove children from real life living, playing, and interacting, that they need to grow and thrive.
As a friend once pointed out, if a man is standing with one foot in a bucket of ice water and his other foot in a fire, or average, he's comfortable. There is much that statistics do NOT tell us.
big tech with their tools shaped the mental landscape of parents to stop trusting their guts and the mental landscape of public opinion to dismiss tradition and ancient wisdom as old-fashioned - they also shaped the mental landscape of politicians by framing Accountability as a loss of geopolitical Power - French philosopher said they have the power to shape the external conditions to fit their goal (Lockdown?) (bottom line they removed from the thinking process anything that could hamper their global exploitation of children)
The baby adult (narcissistic irresponsible and seeking approval and attention obsessively)and the adultized baby works well for Big Tech business but poorly for growing / educating healthy children.
We re back to middle Age minor protection standards (The disappearance of childhood by Neil Postman)
The second requirement – that the two groups must not differ substantially in wellbeing for reasons other than the use of smartphones – is violated because kids with higher-income and better-educated parents have by far the worst wellbeing outcomes and, at the same time, the lowest rates of smartphone ownership.
---
is causing confusion as I did not make it crystal clear that this applies *solely* to one particular survey and its particular wellbeing measures.
So I asked Zach Rausch to modify it to state:
---
The second requirement – that the two groups must not differ substantially in wellbeing for reasons other than the use of smartphones – is violated because, ***in this survey***, kids with higher-income and better-educated parents seem to have by far the worst wellbeing outcomes and, at the same time, the lowest rates of smartphone ownership.
Also curious if you've looked into the funding for this 20 year "study". This org (Poynter Institute) does take money from tech and media companies. Why is there no disclaimer like you see on pharmaceutical research?
This reminds me of a click-baity article I read recently that claimed to answer the question of why kids are addicted to Minecraft.
The answer? Kids are biologically wired to build! It's evolutionary! They can't stop building on Minecraft because their lizard brains have the compulsion to create. There were quotes from parents about how their brilliant kids spent hours building, with the overall message of the article being "Get your kids Minecraft now! See the movie! Meet their biological drive to create or wallow in the guilt of being an inadequate parent!"
The thing is, I have never met a kid that's addicted to Lego. Obsessed, yes. But not addicted. Never met a kid addicted to blocks, tinker toys, or Picasso tiles. Something else is driving the addiction, obviously, but the average parent is left without the clear knowledge of why.
I also saw a recent article about Tik-Tok and tummy time. Tummy Time. For infants. I did not read that article because I did not feel like introducing myself to rage that day.
But it does feel like there is push back on smart phone and technology use for kids now that most adults are seeing the problems (whether they have read "The Anxious Generation" or not. When you experience something first hand, it's not a leap to apply it to children). Maybe that's just my own biases, seeing a couple of articles and feeling the creep settle in. Perhaps I've watched too much Black Mirror.
The weird leaps in this survey give me the ick. It feels like now that states are banning smart phone use in schools and it's a bipartisan issue that we can all agree on, the discord is being sewn again. "You're a good parent, it's your choice. See? It's not even harmful. They are lying to you. They don't want you to reach your child when he or she is at school. Give your second grader a smart phone, or wallow in the guilt of being an inadequate parent."
But again, maybe I've been primed by my Black Mirror binge.
I appreciated the take down of the survey and the opinion article. Now it's time for me to log off for a good long while.
What frosts me when I read survey results is we never get to see the questions asked and how the entire thing was framed. How questions are worded is important and also the context. I answer surveys a few times a week from two sites and some surveys and questions are so biased one cannot give a true answer.
Corruption comes in many forms, especially these days when it involves the media. The motive behind the publication of an opinion piece like this, that 'smells wrong', should always trigger a second look at the potential motivation behind it.
As parents, teachers and people, human beings do not understand their own development. We do not know what happens that creates self-consciousness in us at 2 years old and the continues to mold that emotional reality into self-awareness at 11-14 years old and then potentially into autonomy and personal responsibility at 21-25 years old. Until we learn about who we are, we cannot learn how to govern our children’s lives. In the past, traditions and religions helped us with these milestones. They still help if a family has them, but the parents and others may not be able to understand why the milestones are important. Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff have made some of this information available to parents in “The Coddling of the American Mind,” movie and book, and then Jonathan Haidt in “The Anxious Generation.” Pay attention to your own understanding of HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS — Know Thyself. You really cannot live well without this map. Keep your kids off smartphones until 14 years old.
I read about this University of South Florida study with skepticism. It's conclusion did not ring true with my experience, which is smartphones have a clear negative effect on children and communities. I was waiting for a response from After Babel or Haidt and I'm glad you finally gave it!
I am very curious about this statistic from the survey: "At the same time, the report reveals that kids from higher-income families – as well as kids with more educated parents – are far more likely to agree that life feels meaningless: 31% in households making $150,000 or more vs. 10% in households making less than $50,000 and 29% among children of a college graduate vs. 5% among children whose parent has a high school degree or less."
I appreciate your point about how this is a confounder for the conclusions they are trying to draw in their article, but is this a generally replicable finding? Are other negative mental health outcomes, like depression, anxiety and suicide also worse in kids/teens from high-income/high-education families? And has that always been true, or is that a more recent phenomenon? Is it also true in general (not just in this survey) that kids from high-SES families are less likely to have access to digital technology and social media than kids from lower-SES families?
I ask because if it is both true that:
1) the worsening mental health of the last 15 years has been much more pronounced in upper-SES kids than lower-SES kids, and
2) upper-SES kids have had no more access (and possibly less access) to harmful digital technology,
then wouldn't that mean that digital technology CAN'T be the primary driver of the worsening mental health? That it must instead be something that has influenced the life of upper-income kids more so than lower-income kids?
I'm doing some heavy speculation based on one statistic in one survey, but I'm really curious to know the actual facts here, if you all are aware of them, as well as how you'd interpret their implications for the hypothesis that digital technology is the _primary_ driver of worsening youth mental health in the last 15-20 years.
This result is based *solely* on one survey of kids aged 11 to 13 in Florida in 2024 for one particular aspect of well-being. Also, note that the survey is incapable of revealing any trends.
I have some reservations about the survey, such as that per p. 83 the fraction of kids in private schools seems to be far far higher than expected.
Until professor Martin replies to my April 2 inquiries, we will be largely in the dark about details and soundness of the survey as well as the survey report methodology.
Regarding the decline of well-being among adolescents:
1) Wealthier families might have been giving their kids tablets at an earlier age and then reacting to the problematic use of these. Until the survey data is released we will not know.
2) I've seen no evidence that affluent well-educated families were restricting tech use by kids when the mental health of teens was in free fall (roughly 2012-2018), which is the time period that matters if one wishes to explain the decline. Concerns about tech impacts did not become widespread among the public until it was too late -- and then the pandemic complicated everything.
3) Tweens tend to be very different from teens, so results that apply to one group need not apply to the other.
In general though I'd suspend speculation about any results from this survey until the survey results and data are released in full and questions about survey methodology are answered -- without transparency and willingness to communicate there is no reliability in science.
Not many though as the awakening Is contagious across the world thanks also to After Babel. It may also be a positive sign that Big Tech Is freaking out. :)
I am full of admiration for your patience and legendary perseverance.
Do these people have children?
Given how often people without children appear pro-smartphone until they have their own kids It should be stated along with the conflict of interest.
Also, I recommend all future research should include the opinion of predators, child abusers, ideological cults, extremist movement etc. It may be eye opening to hear how much the owe to big Tech for their "deregulated" unlimited access to Kids across the planet...
"Careless People" dont mind who buys the kids data.
Finally: Would 32 million dead children and 500 millions a range of dysfuctions due to smartphone and social media products (of those 20% of minors in Italy alone!) be a good enough reason to stop the nonsense and Just get kids out of the burning building?
No but French philosopher Gaspard Koenig on Liberation wrote that banning smartphone below 16 was an act of social Justice because lower educated families let Kids use the smartphone much longer without rules-
The fact that children with greater resources have lower well being is difficult for me to grasp. How do you understand this counterintuitive phenomenon?
That text was meant to be *solely* about the results from that one particular survey of kids aged 11 to 13 based on the particular aspects of well-being asked in the survey. (See the Demographics section for details)
I requested the passage to be edited so that this is clearer.
I have some reservations about the survey, such as that per p. 83 the fraction of kids in private schools seems to be far far higher than expected.
Until professor Martin replies to my April 2 inquiries, we will be largely in the dark about details and soundness of the survey as well as the survey report methodology.
In general though, even if those results are sound for that particular population, the results might be different for different ages (such as teens) and different wellbeing measures and different time periods (such 2012-2018 when adolescent mental health was in decline).
So this issue needs further research -- my critique was meant to point out flaws in Martin's arguments, not to generalize one particular result of one survey to all kids at all times.
My apologies for not being clearer in that passage.
Another flaw that we should focus on, is our overreliance on scientific data to lead our life decisions. We should not only rely on statistics to confirm that smartphones remove children from real life living, playing, and interacting, that they need to grow and thrive.
As a friend once pointed out, if a man is standing with one foot in a bucket of ice water and his other foot in a fire, or average, he's comfortable. There is much that statistics do NOT tell us.
This is exactly the point,
big tech with their tools shaped the mental landscape of parents to stop trusting their guts and the mental landscape of public opinion to dismiss tradition and ancient wisdom as old-fashioned - they also shaped the mental landscape of politicians by framing Accountability as a loss of geopolitical Power - French philosopher said they have the power to shape the external conditions to fit their goal (Lockdown?) (bottom line they removed from the thinking process anything that could hamper their global exploitation of children)
The baby adult (narcissistic irresponsible and seeking approval and attention obsessively)and the adultized baby works well for Big Tech business but poorly for growing / educating healthy children.
We re back to middle Age minor protection standards (The disappearance of childhood by Neil Postman)
Join NCOSE action to repeal #Section230 -
Did the authors disclose any potential conflicts of interest? Seems like a "study" that the tech companies would like to fund.
My first thought and very plausibile given the playbook described
Hi all,
The passage
---
The second requirement – that the two groups must not differ substantially in wellbeing for reasons other than the use of smartphones – is violated because kids with higher-income and better-educated parents have by far the worst wellbeing outcomes and, at the same time, the lowest rates of smartphone ownership.
---
is causing confusion as I did not make it crystal clear that this applies *solely* to one particular survey and its particular wellbeing measures.
So I asked Zach Rausch to modify it to state:
---
The second requirement – that the two groups must not differ substantially in wellbeing for reasons other than the use of smartphones – is violated because, ***in this survey***, kids with higher-income and better-educated parents seem to have by far the worst wellbeing outcomes and, at the same time, the lowest rates of smartphone ownership.
---
Apologies about not being clearer on this.
- David
Also curious if you've looked into the funding for this 20 year "study". This org (Poynter Institute) does take money from tech and media companies. Why is there no disclaimer like you see on pharmaceutical research?
Oh dear! I thought the same -I Will call tomorrow!!
This reminds me of a click-baity article I read recently that claimed to answer the question of why kids are addicted to Minecraft.
The answer? Kids are biologically wired to build! It's evolutionary! They can't stop building on Minecraft because their lizard brains have the compulsion to create. There were quotes from parents about how their brilliant kids spent hours building, with the overall message of the article being "Get your kids Minecraft now! See the movie! Meet their biological drive to create or wallow in the guilt of being an inadequate parent!"
The thing is, I have never met a kid that's addicted to Lego. Obsessed, yes. But not addicted. Never met a kid addicted to blocks, tinker toys, or Picasso tiles. Something else is driving the addiction, obviously, but the average parent is left without the clear knowledge of why.
I also saw a recent article about Tik-Tok and tummy time. Tummy Time. For infants. I did not read that article because I did not feel like introducing myself to rage that day.
But it does feel like there is push back on smart phone and technology use for kids now that most adults are seeing the problems (whether they have read "The Anxious Generation" or not. When you experience something first hand, it's not a leap to apply it to children). Maybe that's just my own biases, seeing a couple of articles and feeling the creep settle in. Perhaps I've watched too much Black Mirror.
The weird leaps in this survey give me the ick. It feels like now that states are banning smart phone use in schools and it's a bipartisan issue that we can all agree on, the discord is being sewn again. "You're a good parent, it's your choice. See? It's not even harmful. They are lying to you. They don't want you to reach your child when he or she is at school. Give your second grader a smart phone, or wallow in the guilt of being an inadequate parent."
But again, maybe I've been primed by my Black Mirror binge.
I appreciated the take down of the survey and the opinion article. Now it's time for me to log off for a good long while.
David Brooks has a typically insightful discussion of the decline in literacy among American youngsters that supports the Haidt thesis: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/10/opinion/education-smart-thinking-reading-tariffs.html?unlocked_article_code=1.-04.qKcu.WTOCzTuLDLWW&smid=url-share
Thank you for bringing up David Brooks. I strongly recommend his talk at the Alliance for responsible citizenships !
What frosts me when I read survey results is we never get to see the questions asked and how the entire thing was framed. How questions are worded is important and also the context. I answer surveys a few times a week from two sites and some surveys and questions are so biased one cannot give a true answer.
Corruption comes in many forms, especially these days when it involves the media. The motive behind the publication of an opinion piece like this, that 'smells wrong', should always trigger a second look at the potential motivation behind it.
This sounds like the type of “study” that somebody like Facebook would gladly fund.
As parents, teachers and people, human beings do not understand their own development. We do not know what happens that creates self-consciousness in us at 2 years old and the continues to mold that emotional reality into self-awareness at 11-14 years old and then potentially into autonomy and personal responsibility at 21-25 years old. Until we learn about who we are, we cannot learn how to govern our children’s lives. In the past, traditions and religions helped us with these milestones. They still help if a family has them, but the parents and others may not be able to understand why the milestones are important. Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff have made some of this information available to parents in “The Coddling of the American Mind,” movie and book, and then Jonathan Haidt in “The Anxious Generation.” Pay attention to your own understanding of HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS — Know Thyself. You really cannot live well without this map. Keep your kids off smartphones until 14 years old.
I read about this University of South Florida study with skepticism. It's conclusion did not ring true with my experience, which is smartphones have a clear negative effect on children and communities. I was waiting for a response from After Babel or Haidt and I'm glad you finally gave it!
I am very curious about this statistic from the survey: "At the same time, the report reveals that kids from higher-income families – as well as kids with more educated parents – are far more likely to agree that life feels meaningless: 31% in households making $150,000 or more vs. 10% in households making less than $50,000 and 29% among children of a college graduate vs. 5% among children whose parent has a high school degree or less."
I appreciate your point about how this is a confounder for the conclusions they are trying to draw in their article, but is this a generally replicable finding? Are other negative mental health outcomes, like depression, anxiety and suicide also worse in kids/teens from high-income/high-education families? And has that always been true, or is that a more recent phenomenon? Is it also true in general (not just in this survey) that kids from high-SES families are less likely to have access to digital technology and social media than kids from lower-SES families?
I ask because if it is both true that:
1) the worsening mental health of the last 15 years has been much more pronounced in upper-SES kids than lower-SES kids, and
2) upper-SES kids have had no more access (and possibly less access) to harmful digital technology,
then wouldn't that mean that digital technology CAN'T be the primary driver of the worsening mental health? That it must instead be something that has influenced the life of upper-income kids more so than lower-income kids?
I'm doing some heavy speculation based on one statistic in one survey, but I'm really curious to know the actual facts here, if you all are aware of them, as well as how you'd interpret their implications for the hypothesis that digital technology is the _primary_ driver of worsening youth mental health in the last 15-20 years.
Dear Sarah,
This result is based *solely* on one survey of kids aged 11 to 13 in Florida in 2024 for one particular aspect of well-being. Also, note that the survey is incapable of revealing any trends.
I have some reservations about the survey, such as that per p. 83 the fraction of kids in private schools seems to be far far higher than expected.
Until professor Martin replies to my April 2 inquiries, we will be largely in the dark about details and soundness of the survey as well as the survey report methodology.
Regarding the decline of well-being among adolescents:
1) Wealthier families might have been giving their kids tablets at an earlier age and then reacting to the problematic use of these. Until the survey data is released we will not know.
2) I've seen no evidence that affluent well-educated families were restricting tech use by kids when the mental health of teens was in free fall (roughly 2012-2018), which is the time period that matters if one wishes to explain the decline. Concerns about tech impacts did not become widespread among the public until it was too late -- and then the pandemic complicated everything.
3) Tweens tend to be very different from teens, so results that apply to one group need not apply to the other.
In general though I'd suspend speculation about any results from this survey until the survey results and data are released in full and questions about survey methodology are answered -- without transparency and willingness to communicate there is no reliability in science.
Best regards,
- David
I would have said "yeah, right" the minute I read that papers title. All this paper is going to do is allow parents to keep their heads in the sand.
Not many though as the awakening Is contagious across the world thanks also to After Babel. It may also be a positive sign that Big Tech Is freaking out. :)
Thank you all!
I am full of admiration for your patience and legendary perseverance.
Do these people have children?
Given how often people without children appear pro-smartphone until they have their own kids It should be stated along with the conflict of interest.
Also, I recommend all future research should include the opinion of predators, child abusers, ideological cults, extremist movement etc. It may be eye opening to hear how much the owe to big Tech for their "deregulated" unlimited access to Kids across the planet...
"Careless People" dont mind who buys the kids data.
Finally: Would 32 million dead children and 500 millions a range of dysfuctions due to smartphone and social media products (of those 20% of minors in Italy alone!) be a good enough reason to stop the nonsense and Just get kids out of the burning building?
God help us!
I read recently that Hispanic and black kids are more negatively affected by social media and phone use. Did anyone else read that?
No but French philosopher Gaspard Koenig on Liberation wrote that banning smartphone below 16 was an act of social Justice because lower educated families let Kids use the smartphone much longer without rules-
The fact that children with greater resources have lower well being is difficult for me to grasp. How do you understand this counterintuitive phenomenon?
Hi Dan,
That text was meant to be *solely* about the results from that one particular survey of kids aged 11 to 13 based on the particular aspects of well-being asked in the survey. (See the Demographics section for details)
I requested the passage to be edited so that this is clearer.
I have some reservations about the survey, such as that per p. 83 the fraction of kids in private schools seems to be far far higher than expected.
Until professor Martin replies to my April 2 inquiries, we will be largely in the dark about details and soundness of the survey as well as the survey report methodology.
In general though, even if those results are sound for that particular population, the results might be different for different ages (such as teens) and different wellbeing measures and different time periods (such 2012-2018 when adolescent mental health was in decline).
So this issue needs further research -- my critique was meant to point out flaws in Martin's arguments, not to generalize one particular result of one survey to all kids at all times.
My apologies for not being clearer in that passage.
Best regards,
- David
Yes, I see, an oddity like that might suggest a higher range of measurement error. From 30 miles up it looks noisy at best.