A Video Preview of The Anxious Generation for Educators and Legislators

How you can help to end the youth mental health crisis

In November, I was invited to speak at the national summit meeting of the Foundation for Excellence in Education (ExcelinEd), which former Florida governor Jeb Bush launched in 2008. Its mission is to “support state leaders in transforming education to unlock opportunity and lifelong success for each and every child.” The participants were mostly state legislators and high-ranking staff from state departments of education. It was thrilling to hear from people who live in political worlds yet discussed education in a pragmatic way, all trying to figure out what works to help kids learn and develop. (It was also thrilling to meet Gov. Bush, who is as gracious and kind as could be.) 

This was a high-value audience for me because a central theme of The Anxious Generation is that we are all stuck in a series of collective action traps. Most parents and even most members of Gen Z don’t like the new phone-based childhood, yet somehow we’re all stuck with it.  For example, even if most of the parents of kids at a middle school want to delay the age at which their kids get smartphones and social media, they find it really hard to act on their wishes because once some kids get these things, anyone who doesn’t have them feels excluded, and no parent wants that for their child. It’s the same for childhood independence. Even if you want to provide your children with the kind of healthy independence that kids had before the 1990s, as long as nobody else is doing it, your kid has nobody to play with and you risk a visit from the police if a neighbor calls 911 to report a sighting of the rare free-range child. To break out of such traps, somebody needs to suggest clear norms and find ways to incentivize people to stick to them. Schools and legislators are well placed to do that.

So I put together my first full talk about the new book. I gave a summary of the main ideas and then I showed what school leaders and legislators can do to improve adolescent mental health on a vast scale, at an extremely low cost (since most of my suggested remedies cost nothing at all). 

Here’s the outline of the talk:

Here are the four “foundational norms” that I suggest in the book and in my talk:

1. No Smartphone Before High School (give only flip phones in middle school)

2. No Social Media Before 16

3. Phone Free Schools (all phones go into phone lockers or Yondr pouches)

4. Far more free play and independence (e.g., more and better recess, and give students the “Let Grow Experience”)

And here’s the talk itself:

(My lecture runs for the first 40 minutes. Then I am joined for discussion by Hanna Skandera, president of the Daniels Fund.)

One of the most hopeful signs that America is ready to roll back the phone-based childhood is that many schools are starting to go phone-free, rather than just going with the common norm of requiring that students not use their phones during class time. (The class time “ban” merely forces students to hide their phones in their laps while texting, and it encourages them to spend most of their time outside the classroom on their phones.) I made the case last April for phone-free schools, and Governor Spencer Cox just did so as well, laying out the benefits they are already seeing in Utah. 

Going phone-free is the easiest and fastest step we can take to improve youth mental health. We could, in theory, have all K-12 schools in the U.S. enact the policy for this coming September. That would give all young people six or seven hours a day away from TikTok and texting, freeing up enormous amounts of time for learning from their teachers and developing friendships with other students. 

How can we make the U.S. a phone-free school nation by this September?

With a major push from parents. Most principals and teachers hate the phones for the chaos and distraction that they bring into the school, but the main pressure they get is from parents who insist on being able to reach their children by phone or text throughout the school day. If school leaders see that most parents would support going phone-free, they’ll be much more likely to act. If legislators see that most constituents would support going phone-free, they will be more likely to pass laws or take other steps to support schools in going phone-free (such as allocating the small amount of money it would cost to buy phone lockers or contracts with Yondr, for lockable phone pouches). 

If you want to be part of the solution, part of the movement to reinvent the play-based childhood for the 21st century, I hope you’ll consider forwarding this post to any teachers, school administrators, school board members, or legislators that you know, as well as to other parents in your friendship circles. I hope you’ll also consider pre-ordering The Anxious Generation, for yourself or for anyone who cares for or about children.