And to all those parents I say: You first. Remove the beam from your own eye first. Ditch your own smartphone and delete your social media accounts first. Go on. I mean, you wouldn't want to be a bunch of flaming hypocrites, right?
The data does not show the same effect on the adult brain as it does the undeveloped adolescent brain. The issue is not the tech, the issue is the effect of the tech on a developing brain. If the entire world agrees that drugs and alcohol are bad for the undeveloped brain, and that an undeveloped brain cannot give proper consent for driving, voting, sexual relationships, etc., it is ludicrous to believe that those same brains can handle tech that causes the brain to respond in the exact same fashion as it does with cocaine/meth.
I don't think @rhymes was advocating for banning it for adults. But rather about the fact that just like in all those other aspects you mentioned we must lead by example.
So not giving them phones is a good first step, but parents must then prove to their kids they're not slaves to it.
Indeed. I am actually not advocating banning it for anyone. But adults need to lead by example. And do we really even know that these devices are so safe for adults?
Ok, so what is the magic age when it becomes safe then? Is it like tobacco, which is known to be unsafe at any age or any dose, but nonetheless we allow adults the autonomy to make such decisions for themselves starting at 18 almost everywhere the world (even the USA until a few years ago)? Or is it like alcohol, where there is apparently a safe dose and a safe age when used in moderation, but we arbitrarily we set the age limit a full three years higher than the age of majority in the USA but almost nowhere else in the world? Or is it like cocaine/meth, banned completely for all ages? Or is it like driving, where it is a privilege that has to be earned by demonstrating one's skills and responsibility in some way no matter how old one is? Or is it like sex, which the USA is totally perpetually schizophrenic about, while much of the rest of the world does at least some degree of nuance about it?
You need to show them what its like to live an interesting life unattached to algorithms. We need to guide by example, that means no porn, mindless scrolling, binge watching adults!
Lol. It is how I regarded my phone, begrudgingly, til I finally ditched it for a dumb phone about a month ago. Best decision ever and now I feel like I have a leg to stand on in limiting screen time for my kids.
I love seeing this, and I commend you for taking that step. As an X-ennial, myself, it's not nearly as challenging as for younger folks to pull off because of the advantage we had with growing up completely analog before college ushered in the "glory days" of the Internet and all of it's techno-optimism at the time. It's a lot like going back to that, in a way, and using the phone for what it is: a tool that we can use. It's not a tool that uses US. Sadly, it takes strong will and clear intentions to accomplish this, but your example proves that, yes, it IS possible. Right on!
I think there is just one thing missing: parents themselves need to get off their phones. How can we impose a no smart phone rule in our household when our kids see us staring at our own devices for hours every day? This conundrum led me to ditch my smart phone for a dumb phone a few weeks ago and it's been incredibly liberating. For many folks, such a drastic step may not be necessary, but for me it was - I l simply lacked the self control to put down the smart phone.
Amen. I see this. Parents want to be numbing themselves out on their phones, which means they don’t want to be interrupted by their children so they give them a screen to keep them occupied. Another book I recommend is The Comfort Crisis, by Michael Easter. He talks about how we are too comfortable. Smart phones are a part of that.
It is so true. Our 3yo was hopelessly addicted to TV and the various children's computer games on PBS. During a particularly brutal illness that took down the whole family recently, it got really bad - we would just let her sit there zoning out for hours. About a week ago my husband and I realized she was becoming a vegetable so we made the decision to cut out all screens, cold turkey. We had one or two rough days where she was clearly in a withdrawal, but since then she has absolutely blossomed. She and her sister are playing together a lot more now, they're outside more, and finding ways to occupy themselves through creative play. I am not sure we will continue with a total ban on screens forever but taking this step has revealed that what we THOUGHT was the "easy way" (relying on screens to occupy our kid) really wasn't.
I have put in place extremely strict access rules on my smartphone, otherwise I'm hopelessly drawn to a zombie-like state reading tweets and watching YouTube shorts.
"our brains are better developed to handle it" is not true.
Yes, I was averaging 4-5 hours of screen time a day on my phone. Most of that was zoning out on social media. Absolutely hideous waste of time, and it meant I was missing my children's childhood, for nothing. This is why it boggles my mind when people try to act like Haidt is wrong about phones being bad for kids...like how many peer reviewed studies do you need to believe a truth that you can see with your own eyes in terms of how the device affects YOU, an adult?!?
I tried putting limits on the phone but I always found a way around them, because I have no self control - and you know what, I no longer feel guilty about that because the damn thing was DESIGNED to be addictive. Anyway, my problem was I always felt like I needed to have my smartphone on me at all times in case my kid's school called or my husband called or or or or or. And if it was right next to me, I'd find myself drawn to it all day like a magnet. Now with a dumbphone that issue is solved - I can only text and call on the dumbphone, nothing else, so keeping it on me 24/7 is about as interesting as keeping a pebble on me 24/7. I still have my smartphone that works on wifi at home because I need for random things like Venmo or Facetiming the grandparents, but I'm able to put it in the closet upstairs for the entire day more or less. I feel so free and don't miss it at all!
I mean, great I suppose. I just find it sad that parents need a support group to stop them from giving a phone to their 5 year old. Maybe the issue is less about the damage phones do, and more about the parents who buy it for them.
I think the problem stems to the adults as well. When you are addicted to a smartphone yourself, you want to give your child a screen to entertain them while you stare at your screen. Recognizing the problem is the first step and it is a critical step.
This! How do we suppose IG or TikTok addicted parents are supposed to teach children to be free from the algorithms?
After all don't kids learn by watching? I've seen the failure of parents on one hand telling their kids not to curse, but talking like sailors when they think the kids aren't listening.
IMO the world we live in today requires parents to take extreme measures and fight for their values. That means truly stopping or extremely limiting social media use ourselves.
Except that the core issue making it more difficult is your child feeling isolated from other children, and so building a community of other parents who are also against giving phones to their kids sends a message that your child won't be complete outcasts because of your decision.
Contemporary adolescent social life largely takes place on phones. This is bad, for reasons outlined in great detail on this blog, but bringing up your kid in a cabin in the woods isn't ideal, however tempting. A parent can be committed to not giving their children smartphones and still want them to have friends, and that's what the coordination is attempting to accomplish here.
Let's say there was a situation where every single high schooler smoked except for your kid, and the agreed upon socialisation area, where people chat, gossip, flirt, whatever, is in the smoking area. I'm not going to give my kids cigarettes, but I'd really like the school and other parents to cooperate in this endeavour of reducing cigarettes use so it's easier both on me as a parent and on my kid as a social being.
Of all the things to be sad about in this world, parents banding together to save children from the harmful affects of smartphones and social media is not it. People are finally waking up to the harm of these devices and taking steps to make societal level change - and belittling that effort as "sad" is pretty sad itself.
This particular issue is the damage phones do. Just because they aren’t saving the entire world doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be supported in their efforts.
Signed up for the webinar! I see the problem everywhere (adults included) and want to better equip myself to guide others out of this mess. I can forward the message in spanish speaking circles
Excellent news! My grandson is 9, living in Switzerland, growing up without smartphone. (His mother, my daughter, grew up without TV, or mobile phone until her late teens and now appreciates it.)
I also grew up without TV and although I felt like an alien, I‘m very grateful now as an adult! I read a lot, wrote stories, spent time outdoors and never missed the TV except those 10Min before school when all the kids aaked each other „Have you seen the movie x, the series y, the reality show z?“
I survived the bit of humiliation when they mobbed me for never having watched anything. They thought my parents were freaks but they were a bit out of the ordinsry anyway to say it nicely, soo..
Still, I‘m grateful to my dad- he stood firm: „NO TV as long as you live under my roof“
I wish there was this type of solidarity with dealing with the underlying problems in society, not just the symptoms. Smartphones aren’t great, but scapegoating them for teens mental illnesses is not going to help.
They’re not scapegoating, they’re dealing with a specific problem that this site lays out extensively. Read the evidence before you throw out flippant terms like scapegoating. These are serious people.
This. Haidt has gone to a lot of effort to collect and share significant, quality evidence of the correlation (and possible causation) of smartphone and social media use to childhood and adolescent social and mental heath problems. Calling it "scapegoating" implies that there is not a relationship. It's a lot easier to just say that than it is to back it up with evidence.
The data is inconclusive at best, and actually shows positive trends in many areas for mental health. Even the sources Haidt uses suggests there’s more going on that just the use of smartphones. There is more commentary on this than just this Substack. It’s always better to get information from many sources.
As the article says, "We don’t need longitudinal peer-reviewed studies to tell us what we can see before our eyes."
This is what it boils down to for me and I suspect the millions of other people across political lines for whom Haidt's book is resonating. I can see with my own two eyes how addictive social media is and how addictive my smart phone is. I know how jittery and empty I feel after hours of scrolling. Why would I think it would be a good idea to expose a young child to all that?
Unlike (it seems) most people in this thread, I agree with you. Nobody doubts the reality of the problems being addressed, but Luddite reactions like this cannot possibly be the "solution". Would they have us beg the Church bring back the Index Librorum Prohibitorum as well? Or strip our houses of TVs, radios and desktop and laptop computers?
And yes, smartphones *are* great, bringing enormous utility, assistance and enrichment to children and adults alike, alongside frivolity, danger and harm; what innovation can you think of, at any time in history, which brought *only* good or *only* bad in its wake? In the modern world, to reach the age of 16 with no idea how to use a smartphone is effectively to be disabled, as though we (I am 68) had grown up without knowing how to dial a number on a landline telephone, or change TV channels.
I am old enough to have got most of my sexual education behind the proverbial bikesheds, like very many of my contemporaries, some of whom also smoked and drank there. But schools across the country did not contemplate tearing down their bikesheds, nor would such a response have eradicated the phenomenon, merely displaced it.
says the guy who obviously hasn’t read Coddling or AG. Should be also allow children to smoke, drink, gamble, and work twelve hours in factories again. These childhood protections are so Luddite
That's a very mixed bag of "protections". If you have ever played a game of Monopoly with your children, you have taught them to gamble, albeit with pretend money. Gambling can be an excellent way of improving maths skills.
In England in the 1960s, my father taught me all manner of dice and card games (pontoon, poker, poker-dice, three- and five-card brag...) which would be utterly pointless without the opportunity of winning or losing a few pennies or shillings, and explained to me various complicated horse-racing wagers (accumulator, Yankee, Canadian, Super Yankee...), the details of which I have long forgotten -- but I did not acquire any addiction to gambling, and have never even bought a lottery ticket.
In Belgium in the 2000s, we served wine (initially diluted with water) to our son with dinner from the age of 11 or so. I believe our neighbours in France often introduce their offspring to wine much earlier, but alcoholism and rowdy binge-drinking are both much less common there than in countries where parents fail to educate their children in sensible consumption, and at some magic age (16, 18 or 21), they discover booze for themselves with their peers.
This from Haidts post today. Did you allow your 11 year child imagery of beheadings, porn and masturbation? (diluted with water of course to make it age appropriate)
from Haidt
“ While I was in London, I was reminded of these quotes by an essay about the UK’s Children’s Commissioner, Rachel de Souza, whose office has found that one in ten children have viewed pornography by the age of nine.² The essay also noted that de Souza said that, in a room of 15 and 16-year-olds with whom she was conversing, three-quarters of them said that they had been sent at least one video of a beheading. (It was one such video, sent to her nine year old daughter during choir practice, that prompted Hannah Oertel to found DelaySmartphones.) ”
Yes. Great point, agreed. Did you let your 16 year old drink alcohol 9 hours a day? Did you allow your 11 year old to only interact with other children if there was alcohol consumed first? One glass of dilute wine for an 11 year old is like 15 minutes allowed on social media daily, not nine hours a day which is average. Would you allow your kid to sit in front of a slot machine 9 hours a day?
My real point was that drinking and gambling do not obviously deserve to be dropped casually into the same list as smoking and exploitative working practices.
But otherwise, we may not disagree as much as we appear to, though our approach is certainly different. I would prefer to frame these things, not in terms of “allowing” and “forbidding”, but rather in terms of educating our children to use the resources available to them in a sensible way. Our 16-year-old did not *want* to drink nine hours a day, and I like to think that was at least partly because we taught him a better way to drink from a sensible earlier age. It's true that he was rather fonder of cannabis than we were altogether happy with, but my own generation was in a weak moral position to “stamp down” on that, and like us, he “grew out” of it and moved on.
A nine-hour drinking binge is a very stupid way to use alcohol, but enjoying a glass of wine with a meal or a beer on a bar terrace, even occasionally having “one over the eight” while having fun at a party, is not. Feeding coins into a slot-machine is a very stupid way to gamble, but betting on your own ability in a game of skill, or placing a well-considered wager on a horse race after studying the form of runners and riders is not.
We certainly had access to pornography when I was 13 in 1969, though in magazine rather than video form, and almost all of it a great deal “tamer” than what is accessible now, just as the cannabis on offer in the 1970s was a great deal less potent that what is available on the streets today.
I am grandparent-age now, and willingly concede that those who are currently parents of children are better placed than I am to assess the dangers and decide what action needs to be taken. The world is full of bad (mostly corporate) actors who cause harm to children (including by inciting them to cause harm to each other), and often deliberately and explicitly target them.
Restrictions are definitely necessary, but I would always be inclined to favour supply-side, rather than (likely counter-productive) consumer-side restrictions. In other words, just as in the cases of alcohol, tobacco and street drugs, it is the providers of social media platforms who must be held responsible and called to account, rather than our own children who use them.
No you’re right, the average american kid spends 9 hours in front of a screen and Big Tech gets paid for it. Maybe we should put them back in factories. At least they’d be getting the paycheck
I don’t know, they’d learn a great work ethic, they don’t play or talk with actual kids anymore anyway. Plus they’d earn money for the family. And the only one hurt is Zuckerberg pocketbook Show me the hard data that kids going to work earlier in life instead of being on a smartphone during school is bad for them. Yes. Facetious.
That’s the problem when people only get their opinions from one source. The data is, at best, inconclusive as to the role smartphones play towards mental health. But you can sell a lot of books if you tell everyone you’ve got the secret formula.
You guys have it all backwards. It’s so painful to watch you engage in the same non-sense reasoning as all the other Haidt-ers out there. You think Haidt needs to prove smartphones are dangerous. But that is backwards. The null hypothesis is the play based childhood, which all mammals engage in and smartphones disrupt, not vice versa. Hence the burden falls on you, sirs , to prove smartphone are a worthwhile addition to a child’s life, not for Haidt to prove they are not. Your starting point matters. I apply the same precautionary principle Taleb invokes in this brief: You only get to raise your kid once, stick w a million years of play based evolution or 12 years of making Zuckerberg rich. Easy. Just substitute smartphone for his main point here and your kid for the planet.
Of course, if something is a truly existential threat like climate change, then a hard, "no regrets" precautionary principle applies. But the debate about smartphone and social media is less like that, and more like the beginning of the Covid pandemic, during which the precautionary principle was turned completely on its head.
Perhaps we should declare a state of emergency and "quarantine" all social media platforms for "just two weeks" (right!). For all ages. I am only half-joking about that.
This is a really wonderful example of people power - perhaps we can also call on all parents to get more active about climate change - which is going to devastate their children's future
I’m in Australia and speaking at schools to kids and parents around this exact topic. I’ve been supporting families around screen time solutions since I detoxed my son back in 2016. I’m very a very passionate advocate and would love to start a group for parents who want to have a smart phone free childhood. My website is digitox.com.au see you on the webinar - thank you! 🤗
I appreciate personal stories that show humans are individuals to whom “rules” don’t always apply. The rule here, using the Centers for Disease Control’s definitive 2021 ABES of 7,000 teens, is that violent and emotional abuse by parents and household adults (questions 105, 106) is by far the biggest predictor of teen risks, 13 times more important than screen time in predicting poor teenage mental health.
It is true that 16% of teens who report no parental abuse still report poor mental health – as do 39% of teens who report some abuses and 64% of teens who suffer frequent parental abuse. Abused teens comprise 77% of those who are severely depressed, 88% of those who attempt suicide, and 91% of those who self-harm. This is the population everyone is concerned about. I don’t think confronting the high levels of parental/grownup abuses can simply be put off until politically convenient (which will be never), especially given the surprisingly high levels US teens reported to the CDC.
Compared to teens who report “never” being abused by parents, those who report frequent abuse are 4 times more likely to report poor mental health (question 85); 12 times more likely to attempt suicide (q 28); 26 times more likely to be hospitalized for self-harm (q 29); 4 times more likely to binge drink (q 42); 11 times more likely to abuse pharmaceuticals (q 94); 12 times more likely to try heroin (q 52); 5 times more likely to be cyberbullied (q 24); 7 times more likely to be bullied at school (q 89, 90); 7 times more likely to be raped (q 19); 2.4 times more likely to get less than 6 hours of sleep a night (q 86); and 1.2 times more likely to be physically inactive (q 99); among other risks.
There’s a larger problem with prioritizing reducing or banning teens’ use of social media, and this part is the most shocking.
The CDC survey finds that compared to teens with little or no screen time (less than 1 hour a day, or none), teens who use screens the most (5-plus hours a day) (q 78) are indeed 1.5 times more likely to report poor mental health. That gets cited a lot. What does not get cited is that the same frequently-onscreen teens on the same survey report they are 29% less likely to attempt suicide; 52% less likely to be hospitalized for self-harm; 3% less likely to binge drink (not significant); 22% less likely to abuse pharmaceuticals; 88% less likely to try heroin; 66% more likely to be cyberbullied; 59% less likely to be bullied at school; 17% less likely to be raped; 18% more likely to get fewer than 6 hours of sleep a night; and 53% less likely to be physically inactive.
Note that the CDC survey finds screen time generally is associated with fewer teen risks, and, even where negative, is associated with far smaller risks than is parental/adult abuse. Further, teens abused by parents are 56% more likely to obtain medical and mental health services online and 20% more likely to report frequent contacts with friends, family, and groups online, and teens who are frequently online have 55% more contact with people who can help them.
If you’re thinking – understandably – the above can’t possibly be right, else we’d be hearing these things from the Surgeon General and major psychological authorities. Fine to be skeptical; I certainly am. So, I suggest downloading and analyzing the CDC survey yourself. I provided the question numbers to aid reanalysis. I think you'll be as surprised as I was.
Yes, there are problems and inconsistencies within and among the surveys. I’d love to see a major, large-sample survey that asks specific questions about different types of social media, parents’ abuses and drug/alcohol issues in detail, and what, exactly, is making teens feel sad, unhappy, and in poor mental health. It shocks me that amid all the hullaballoo over teens’ mental health, we don’t have answers to those basic questions.
I agree – unfortunately, grownups of 2024 would rather take the easy road of simply blaming teens’ social media habits and stampeding to impose yet another politically-easy teen ban rather than to confront difficult, troubling, far more crucial issues like adult abuses and imposed problems that social media might actually be helping the most troubled teens cope with.
Can two things be true: 1) Excessive social media and smartphone usage among children under the age of 16 is linked with poor mental health; and 2) abusive parenting is an even stronger cause of poor mental health?
If so, do you think there's a way to address #1 without worsening outcomes for children affected by #2? Because I feel like there is a false choice at play here - this notion that we must choose between helping the children who've been harmed by abusive parents and helping the children who've been harmed by excessive social media/phone usage.
The problem is, by the best evidence (it would really help if we had more than one major survey beyond the CDC's 2021 ABES addressing this issue), teens who use social media the most may report poorer mental health, but (compared to teens who rarely use social media) these same teens also report being LESS likely to attempt suicide, self-harm, use drugs abusively, experience or perpetrate violence, and to be disconnected from others who can help them. Now, how can that be? How does 5+hours/day of screen time associate both with more depression and less actual self-destructive behavior? The most obvious answer is that we are looking at a reverse correlation: abused/depressed teens, especially girls, go online more in part to seek connections, and that's what makes it appear that being online causes depression. However, I suspect the answer is more complex even than that. We know abusive parenting is harmful across the board, and social media use is generally beneficial. Yet, there is a small subset of teens (9% in the Pew poll) and adults whose social media use is part of their mental health problem, and it seems more productive to address that subset individually rather than with sweeping, one-size-fits-all statements, "advice to parents," and bans. We forget that teens are individuals, and how much social media a teen "should" use depends far more on their individual characteristics than mass assumptions. That's why I have urged caution and better incorporation of these huge areas of findings no one wants to talk about.
I have not had a chance to look closely at the CDC data you're referencing. But I'm wondering: is socioeconomic status controlled for in this data? I would think, generally, teens with greater access to social media (via smart phones) come from higher socioeconomic status, vs those with less access come from lower socioeconomic status. And obviously, socioeconomic status is a major factor in destructive behavior like suicide attempts, self harm, drug abuse, violence, etc. It is also a major factor in domestic violence.
In Haidt's work he cites studies that show a global decline in teen mental health particularly among girls starting in the early 2010s, which he attributes to children's access to smart phones and social media. Do you think his interpretation is wrong? What do you think might be causing that decline if it's not this technology? Parental abuse, unfortunately, has existed since the dawn of time.
On a more personal note, I'm not an economist and have no training in statistics or anything like that. You could show me two academic studies, one that's well done and one with serious issues, and I don't know if I could tell the difference because I don't have that training. So finding the "truth" can be challenging and often comes down to just putting your faith in someone or another who is an expert and trusting that they're being honest.
Failing that, all we have is evidence we can see with our own eyes. And I can't speak for anyone else but I can say that in my own experience, my smartphone is addictive and it has done more harm than good in my life. Before I put up some healthy boundaries, I'd spend hours scrolling social media and would feel empty and gross after. I was devoting an appalling amount of time to that. I don't think I'm alone in this given how well Haidt's message is being received across the globe and across political lines.
And it's not just mental health either. I have some teacher friends who have almost 20 years of experience in the classroom. They have observed that kids in recent years are simply not able to handle the content that kids 15-20 years ago could handle. They lack the attention span to handle longer readings, because they are used to having their attention jerked around every few seconds as it is when we scroll. And honestly, this tracks, as I've felt my own attention span and intelligence declining for years now as I increasingly spent any down time staring at my phone.
So you're saying, "we know...social media use is generally beneficial," and all I can say is that I know what my own two eyes can see, and no, it's not beneficial, not for me anyway and not for most people I know. For many people, social media is doing more harm than good, and we don't need peer reviewed studies to confirm this self evident fact.
Jonathan, if you read these comments, do you know of an existing site to easily organize a school district level group of parents on this issue. Yes i can make a social media page, but i was thinking more website type hosting. Ie a website specifically for our district called something like Free XYZ School District.
I have successfully and happily eliminated social media from my life after watching Social Dilemma on Netflix. I’ve noticed going onto Facebook , for even a worthwhile cause, inevitably sucks me into a million other attention seeking posts. The thought I’d need to resort to Facebook, Instagram etc to keep my kids of Facebook and Instagram is not a good enough answer.
I would love an easy, reproducible, community level site focused only on this issue to share to local friends and neighbors tailored specifically for our district.
Fantastic! Although I find the 'Online Harms Bill' goes way too far and will be used for censorship. Daddy Government and the Nanny State have done far too much damage as it is.
And to all those parents I say: You first. Remove the beam from your own eye first. Ditch your own smartphone and delete your social media accounts first. Go on. I mean, you wouldn't want to be a bunch of flaming hypocrites, right?
The data does not show the same effect on the adult brain as it does the undeveloped adolescent brain. The issue is not the tech, the issue is the effect of the tech on a developing brain. If the entire world agrees that drugs and alcohol are bad for the undeveloped brain, and that an undeveloped brain cannot give proper consent for driving, voting, sexual relationships, etc., it is ludicrous to believe that those same brains can handle tech that causes the brain to respond in the exact same fashion as it does with cocaine/meth.
Exactly. So permitted smartphone use needs to join a range of other age-sanctioned activities: drinking, driving, smoking, marrying, voting etc.
I don't think @rhymes was advocating for banning it for adults. But rather about the fact that just like in all those other aspects you mentioned we must lead by example.
So not giving them phones is a good first step, but parents must then prove to their kids they're not slaves to it.
Indeed. I am actually not advocating banning it for anyone. But adults need to lead by example. And do we really even know that these devices are so safe for adults?
Ok, so what is the magic age when it becomes safe then? Is it like tobacco, which is known to be unsafe at any age or any dose, but nonetheless we allow adults the autonomy to make such decisions for themselves starting at 18 almost everywhere the world (even the USA until a few years ago)? Or is it like alcohol, where there is apparently a safe dose and a safe age when used in moderation, but we arbitrarily we set the age limit a full three years higher than the age of majority in the USA but almost nowhere else in the world? Or is it like cocaine/meth, banned completely for all ages? Or is it like driving, where it is a privilege that has to be earned by demonstrating one's skills and responsibility in some way no matter how old one is? Or is it like sex, which the USA is totally perpetually schizophrenic about, while much of the rest of the world does at least some degree of nuance about it?
any of those choices is better than none.
This is the only way!
You need to show them what its like to live an interesting life unattached to algorithms. We need to guide by example, that means no porn, mindless scrolling, binge watching adults!
The irony of doing it on WhatsApp.
yes! this is the "step" that's missing.
"MY PRECIOUS!" is how they regard their own phones, apparently.
Lol. It is how I regarded my phone, begrudgingly, til I finally ditched it for a dumb phone about a month ago. Best decision ever and now I feel like I have a leg to stand on in limiting screen time for my kids.
I love seeing this, and I commend you for taking that step. As an X-ennial, myself, it's not nearly as challenging as for younger folks to pull off because of the advantage we had with growing up completely analog before college ushered in the "glory days" of the Internet and all of it's techno-optimism at the time. It's a lot like going back to that, in a way, and using the phone for what it is: a tool that we can use. It's not a tool that uses US. Sadly, it takes strong will and clear intentions to accomplish this, but your example proves that, yes, it IS possible. Right on!
This is great, thank you!
I think there is just one thing missing: parents themselves need to get off their phones. How can we impose a no smart phone rule in our household when our kids see us staring at our own devices for hours every day? This conundrum led me to ditch my smart phone for a dumb phone a few weeks ago and it's been incredibly liberating. For many folks, such a drastic step may not be necessary, but for me it was - I l simply lacked the self control to put down the smart phone.
Amen. I see this. Parents want to be numbing themselves out on their phones, which means they don’t want to be interrupted by their children so they give them a screen to keep them occupied. Another book I recommend is The Comfort Crisis, by Michael Easter. He talks about how we are too comfortable. Smart phones are a part of that.
It is so true. Our 3yo was hopelessly addicted to TV and the various children's computer games on PBS. During a particularly brutal illness that took down the whole family recently, it got really bad - we would just let her sit there zoning out for hours. About a week ago my husband and I realized she was becoming a vegetable so we made the decision to cut out all screens, cold turkey. We had one or two rough days where she was clearly in a withdrawal, but since then she has absolutely blossomed. She and her sister are playing together a lot more now, they're outside more, and finding ways to occupy themselves through creative play. I am not sure we will continue with a total ban on screens forever but taking this step has revealed that what we THOUGHT was the "easy way" (relying on screens to occupy our kid) really wasn't.
I have put in place extremely strict access rules on my smartphone, otherwise I'm hopelessly drawn to a zombie-like state reading tweets and watching YouTube shorts.
"our brains are better developed to handle it" is not true.
Yes, I was averaging 4-5 hours of screen time a day on my phone. Most of that was zoning out on social media. Absolutely hideous waste of time, and it meant I was missing my children's childhood, for nothing. This is why it boggles my mind when people try to act like Haidt is wrong about phones being bad for kids...like how many peer reviewed studies do you need to believe a truth that you can see with your own eyes in terms of how the device affects YOU, an adult?!?
I tried putting limits on the phone but I always found a way around them, because I have no self control - and you know what, I no longer feel guilty about that because the damn thing was DESIGNED to be addictive. Anyway, my problem was I always felt like I needed to have my smartphone on me at all times in case my kid's school called or my husband called or or or or or. And if it was right next to me, I'd find myself drawn to it all day like a magnet. Now with a dumbphone that issue is solved - I can only text and call on the dumbphone, nothing else, so keeping it on me 24/7 is about as interesting as keeping a pebble on me 24/7. I still have my smartphone that works on wifi at home because I need for random things like Venmo or Facetiming the grandparents, but I'm able to put it in the closet upstairs for the entire day more or less. I feel so free and don't miss it at all!
I mean, great I suppose. I just find it sad that parents need a support group to stop them from giving a phone to their 5 year old. Maybe the issue is less about the damage phones do, and more about the parents who buy it for them.
I think the problem stems to the adults as well. When you are addicted to a smartphone yourself, you want to give your child a screen to entertain them while you stare at your screen. Recognizing the problem is the first step and it is a critical step.
BINGO. Behold, the elephant in the room!
This! How do we suppose IG or TikTok addicted parents are supposed to teach children to be free from the algorithms?
After all don't kids learn by watching? I've seen the failure of parents on one hand telling their kids not to curse, but talking like sailors when they think the kids aren't listening.
IMO the world we live in today requires parents to take extreme measures and fight for their values. That means truly stopping or extremely limiting social media use ourselves.
Indeed the hypocrisy is so thick you could cut it with a knife.
Except that the core issue making it more difficult is your child feeling isolated from other children, and so building a community of other parents who are also against giving phones to their kids sends a message that your child won't be complete outcasts because of your decision.
Why would they be? Because the grown ups tell them they will?
Contemporary adolescent social life largely takes place on phones. This is bad, for reasons outlined in great detail on this blog, but bringing up your kid in a cabin in the woods isn't ideal, however tempting. A parent can be committed to not giving their children smartphones and still want them to have friends, and that's what the coordination is attempting to accomplish here.
Let's say there was a situation where every single high schooler smoked except for your kid, and the agreed upon socialisation area, where people chat, gossip, flirt, whatever, is in the smoking area. I'm not going to give my kids cigarettes, but I'd really like the school and other parents to cooperate in this endeavour of reducing cigarettes use so it's easier both on me as a parent and on my kid as a social being.
Wait, what? We‘re now equating friends with having a phone? Wow. Parenting is in more trouble than I originally thought.
We're trying not to!!! That's the whole point of this!!!
Of all the things to be sad about in this world, parents banding together to save children from the harmful affects of smartphones and social media is not it. People are finally waking up to the harm of these devices and taking steps to make societal level change - and belittling that effort as "sad" is pretty sad itself.
This particular issue is the damage phones do. Just because they aren’t saving the entire world doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be supported in their efforts.
And who's providing these phones to the kids?
Not the people in these groups. That’s the point.
They're delaying them, not banning them outright. And they need to create a support group to do that? Sad state of parenthood in our society.
Are you a parent?
Why does it matter?
Signed up for the webinar! I see the problem everywhere (adults included) and want to better equip myself to guide others out of this mess. I can forward the message in spanish speaking circles
Excellent news! My grandson is 9, living in Switzerland, growing up without smartphone. (His mother, my daughter, grew up without TV, or mobile phone until her late teens and now appreciates it.)
I also grew up without TV and although I felt like an alien, I‘m very grateful now as an adult! I read a lot, wrote stories, spent time outdoors and never missed the TV except those 10Min before school when all the kids aaked each other „Have you seen the movie x, the series y, the reality show z?“
I survived the bit of humiliation when they mobbed me for never having watched anything. They thought my parents were freaks but they were a bit out of the ordinsry anyway to say it nicely, soo..
Still, I‘m grateful to my dad- he stood firm: „NO TV as long as you live under my roof“
I wish there was this type of solidarity with dealing with the underlying problems in society, not just the symptoms. Smartphones aren’t great, but scapegoating them for teens mental illnesses is not going to help.
They’re not scapegoating, they’re dealing with a specific problem that this site lays out extensively. Read the evidence before you throw out flippant terms like scapegoating. These are serious people.
This. Haidt has gone to a lot of effort to collect and share significant, quality evidence of the correlation (and possible causation) of smartphone and social media use to childhood and adolescent social and mental heath problems. Calling it "scapegoating" implies that there is not a relationship. It's a lot easier to just say that than it is to back it up with evidence.
The data is inconclusive at best, and actually shows positive trends in many areas for mental health. Even the sources Haidt uses suggests there’s more going on that just the use of smartphones. There is more commentary on this than just this Substack. It’s always better to get information from many sources.
As the article says, "We don’t need longitudinal peer-reviewed studies to tell us what we can see before our eyes."
This is what it boils down to for me and I suspect the millions of other people across political lines for whom Haidt's book is resonating. I can see with my own two eyes how addictive social media is and how addictive my smart phone is. I know how jittery and empty I feel after hours of scrolling. Why would I think it would be a good idea to expose a young child to all that?
Unlike (it seems) most people in this thread, I agree with you. Nobody doubts the reality of the problems being addressed, but Luddite reactions like this cannot possibly be the "solution". Would they have us beg the Church bring back the Index Librorum Prohibitorum as well? Or strip our houses of TVs, radios and desktop and laptop computers?
And yes, smartphones *are* great, bringing enormous utility, assistance and enrichment to children and adults alike, alongside frivolity, danger and harm; what innovation can you think of, at any time in history, which brought *only* good or *only* bad in its wake? In the modern world, to reach the age of 16 with no idea how to use a smartphone is effectively to be disabled, as though we (I am 68) had grown up without knowing how to dial a number on a landline telephone, or change TV channels.
I am old enough to have got most of my sexual education behind the proverbial bikesheds, like very many of my contemporaries, some of whom also smoked and drank there. But schools across the country did not contemplate tearing down their bikesheds, nor would such a response have eradicated the phenomenon, merely displaced it.
says the guy who obviously hasn’t read Coddling or AG. Should be also allow children to smoke, drink, gamble, and work twelve hours in factories again. These childhood protections are so Luddite
That's a very mixed bag of "protections". If you have ever played a game of Monopoly with your children, you have taught them to gamble, albeit with pretend money. Gambling can be an excellent way of improving maths skills.
In England in the 1960s, my father taught me all manner of dice and card games (pontoon, poker, poker-dice, three- and five-card brag...) which would be utterly pointless without the opportunity of winning or losing a few pennies or shillings, and explained to me various complicated horse-racing wagers (accumulator, Yankee, Canadian, Super Yankee...), the details of which I have long forgotten -- but I did not acquire any addiction to gambling, and have never even bought a lottery ticket.
In Belgium in the 2000s, we served wine (initially diluted with water) to our son with dinner from the age of 11 or so. I believe our neighbours in France often introduce their offspring to wine much earlier, but alcoholism and rowdy binge-drinking are both much less common there than in countries where parents fail to educate their children in sensible consumption, and at some magic age (16, 18 or 21), they discover booze for themselves with their peers.
This from Haidts post today. Did you allow your 11 year child imagery of beheadings, porn and masturbation? (diluted with water of course to make it age appropriate)
from Haidt
“ While I was in London, I was reminded of these quotes by an essay about the UK’s Children’s Commissioner, Rachel de Souza, whose office has found that one in ten children have viewed pornography by the age of nine.² The essay also noted that de Souza said that, in a room of 15 and 16-year-olds with whom she was conversing, three-quarters of them said that they had been sent at least one video of a beheading. (It was one such video, sent to her nine year old daughter during choir practice, that prompted Hannah Oertel to found DelaySmartphones.) ”
Yes. Great point, agreed. Did you let your 16 year old drink alcohol 9 hours a day? Did you allow your 11 year old to only interact with other children if there was alcohol consumed first? One glass of dilute wine for an 11 year old is like 15 minutes allowed on social media daily, not nine hours a day which is average. Would you allow your kid to sit in front of a slot machine 9 hours a day?
My real point was that drinking and gambling do not obviously deserve to be dropped casually into the same list as smoking and exploitative working practices.
But otherwise, we may not disagree as much as we appear to, though our approach is certainly different. I would prefer to frame these things, not in terms of “allowing” and “forbidding”, but rather in terms of educating our children to use the resources available to them in a sensible way. Our 16-year-old did not *want* to drink nine hours a day, and I like to think that was at least partly because we taught him a better way to drink from a sensible earlier age. It's true that he was rather fonder of cannabis than we were altogether happy with, but my own generation was in a weak moral position to “stamp down” on that, and like us, he “grew out” of it and moved on.
A nine-hour drinking binge is a very stupid way to use alcohol, but enjoying a glass of wine with a meal or a beer on a bar terrace, even occasionally having “one over the eight” while having fun at a party, is not. Feeding coins into a slot-machine is a very stupid way to gamble, but betting on your own ability in a game of skill, or placing a well-considered wager on a horse race after studying the form of runners and riders is not.
We certainly had access to pornography when I was 13 in 1969, though in magazine rather than video form, and almost all of it a great deal “tamer” than what is accessible now, just as the cannabis on offer in the 1970s was a great deal less potent that what is available on the streets today.
I am grandparent-age now, and willingly concede that those who are currently parents of children are better placed than I am to assess the dangers and decide what action needs to be taken. The world is full of bad (mostly corporate) actors who cause harm to children (including by inciting them to cause harm to each other), and often deliberately and explicitly target them.
Restrictions are definitely necessary, but I would always be inclined to favour supply-side, rather than (likely counter-productive) consumer-side restrictions. In other words, just as in the cases of alcohol, tobacco and street drugs, it is the providers of social media platforms who must be held responsible and called to account, rather than our own children who use them.
Apples, meet oranges.
No you’re right, the average american kid spends 9 hours in front of a screen and Big Tech gets paid for it. Maybe we should put them back in factories. At least they’d be getting the paycheck
I really hope you are being facetious...
I don’t know, they’d learn a great work ethic, they don’t play or talk with actual kids anymore anyway. Plus they’d earn money for the family. And the only one hurt is Zuckerberg pocketbook Show me the hard data that kids going to work earlier in life instead of being on a smartphone during school is bad for them. Yes. Facetious.
That’s the problem when people only get their opinions from one source. The data is, at best, inconclusive as to the role smartphones play towards mental health. But you can sell a lot of books if you tell everyone you’ve got the secret formula.
You guys have it all backwards. It’s so painful to watch you engage in the same non-sense reasoning as all the other Haidt-ers out there. You think Haidt needs to prove smartphones are dangerous. But that is backwards. The null hypothesis is the play based childhood, which all mammals engage in and smartphones disrupt, not vice versa. Hence the burden falls on you, sirs , to prove smartphone are a worthwhile addition to a child’s life, not for Haidt to prove they are not. Your starting point matters. I apply the same precautionary principle Taleb invokes in this brief: You only get to raise your kid once, stick w a million years of play based evolution or 12 years of making Zuckerberg rich. Easy. Just substitute smartphone for his main point here and your kid for the planet.
https://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/climateletter.pdf
Of course, if something is a truly existential threat like climate change, then a hard, "no regrets" precautionary principle applies. But the debate about smartphone and social media is less like that, and more like the beginning of the Covid pandemic, during which the precautionary principle was turned completely on its head.
Perhaps we should declare a state of emergency and "quarantine" all social media platforms for "just two weeks" (right!). For all ages. I am only half-joking about that.
The burden of proof is always on the one asserting something, regardless. And the precautionary principle has long since jumped the shark.
Heh, you obviously don’t have young kids.
Well-said
says that guy that probably works for Apple or Facebook or their paid troll service
Very true
This is a really wonderful example of people power - perhaps we can also call on all parents to get more active about climate change - which is going to devastate their children's future
If only there was even a smidgeon of this level of energy applied to true existential threats like climate change!
Great Daisy!
I’m in Australia and speaking at schools to kids and parents around this exact topic. I’ve been supporting families around screen time solutions since I detoxed my son back in 2016. I’m very a very passionate advocate and would love to start a group for parents who want to have a smart phone free childhood. My website is digitox.com.au see you on the webinar - thank you! 🤗
I appreciate personal stories that show humans are individuals to whom “rules” don’t always apply. The rule here, using the Centers for Disease Control’s definitive 2021 ABES of 7,000 teens, is that violent and emotional abuse by parents and household adults (questions 105, 106) is by far the biggest predictor of teen risks, 13 times more important than screen time in predicting poor teenage mental health.
It is true that 16% of teens who report no parental abuse still report poor mental health – as do 39% of teens who report some abuses and 64% of teens who suffer frequent parental abuse. Abused teens comprise 77% of those who are severely depressed, 88% of those who attempt suicide, and 91% of those who self-harm. This is the population everyone is concerned about. I don’t think confronting the high levels of parental/grownup abuses can simply be put off until politically convenient (which will be never), especially given the surprisingly high levels US teens reported to the CDC.
Compared to teens who report “never” being abused by parents, those who report frequent abuse are 4 times more likely to report poor mental health (question 85); 12 times more likely to attempt suicide (q 28); 26 times more likely to be hospitalized for self-harm (q 29); 4 times more likely to binge drink (q 42); 11 times more likely to abuse pharmaceuticals (q 94); 12 times more likely to try heroin (q 52); 5 times more likely to be cyberbullied (q 24); 7 times more likely to be bullied at school (q 89, 90); 7 times more likely to be raped (q 19); 2.4 times more likely to get less than 6 hours of sleep a night (q 86); and 1.2 times more likely to be physically inactive (q 99); among other risks.
There’s a larger problem with prioritizing reducing or banning teens’ use of social media, and this part is the most shocking.
The CDC survey finds that compared to teens with little or no screen time (less than 1 hour a day, or none), teens who use screens the most (5-plus hours a day) (q 78) are indeed 1.5 times more likely to report poor mental health. That gets cited a lot. What does not get cited is that the same frequently-onscreen teens on the same survey report they are 29% less likely to attempt suicide; 52% less likely to be hospitalized for self-harm; 3% less likely to binge drink (not significant); 22% less likely to abuse pharmaceuticals; 88% less likely to try heroin; 66% more likely to be cyberbullied; 59% less likely to be bullied at school; 17% less likely to be raped; 18% more likely to get fewer than 6 hours of sleep a night; and 53% less likely to be physically inactive.
Note that the CDC survey finds screen time generally is associated with fewer teen risks, and, even where negative, is associated with far smaller risks than is parental/adult abuse. Further, teens abused by parents are 56% more likely to obtain medical and mental health services online and 20% more likely to report frequent contacts with friends, family, and groups online, and teens who are frequently online have 55% more contact with people who can help them.
If you’re thinking – understandably – the above can’t possibly be right, else we’d be hearing these things from the Surgeon General and major psychological authorities. Fine to be skeptical; I certainly am. So, I suggest downloading and analyzing the CDC survey yourself. I provided the question numbers to aid reanalysis. I think you'll be as surprised as I was.
Yes, there are problems and inconsistencies within and among the surveys. I’d love to see a major, large-sample survey that asks specific questions about different types of social media, parents’ abuses and drug/alcohol issues in detail, and what, exactly, is making teens feel sad, unhappy, and in poor mental health. It shocks me that amid all the hullaballoo over teens’ mental health, we don’t have answers to those basic questions.
I agree – unfortunately, grownups of 2024 would rather take the easy road of simply blaming teens’ social media habits and stampeding to impose yet another politically-easy teen ban rather than to confront difficult, troubling, far more crucial issues like adult abuses and imposed problems that social media might actually be helping the most troubled teens cope with.
Indeed, so many elephants in this room that get ignored.
Can two things be true: 1) Excessive social media and smartphone usage among children under the age of 16 is linked with poor mental health; and 2) abusive parenting is an even stronger cause of poor mental health?
If so, do you think there's a way to address #1 without worsening outcomes for children affected by #2? Because I feel like there is a false choice at play here - this notion that we must choose between helping the children who've been harmed by abusive parents and helping the children who've been harmed by excessive social media/phone usage.
The problem is, by the best evidence (it would really help if we had more than one major survey beyond the CDC's 2021 ABES addressing this issue), teens who use social media the most may report poorer mental health, but (compared to teens who rarely use social media) these same teens also report being LESS likely to attempt suicide, self-harm, use drugs abusively, experience or perpetrate violence, and to be disconnected from others who can help them. Now, how can that be? How does 5+hours/day of screen time associate both with more depression and less actual self-destructive behavior? The most obvious answer is that we are looking at a reverse correlation: abused/depressed teens, especially girls, go online more in part to seek connections, and that's what makes it appear that being online causes depression. However, I suspect the answer is more complex even than that. We know abusive parenting is harmful across the board, and social media use is generally beneficial. Yet, there is a small subset of teens (9% in the Pew poll) and adults whose social media use is part of their mental health problem, and it seems more productive to address that subset individually rather than with sweeping, one-size-fits-all statements, "advice to parents," and bans. We forget that teens are individuals, and how much social media a teen "should" use depends far more on their individual characteristics than mass assumptions. That's why I have urged caution and better incorporation of these huge areas of findings no one wants to talk about.
I have not had a chance to look closely at the CDC data you're referencing. But I'm wondering: is socioeconomic status controlled for in this data? I would think, generally, teens with greater access to social media (via smart phones) come from higher socioeconomic status, vs those with less access come from lower socioeconomic status. And obviously, socioeconomic status is a major factor in destructive behavior like suicide attempts, self harm, drug abuse, violence, etc. It is also a major factor in domestic violence.
In Haidt's work he cites studies that show a global decline in teen mental health particularly among girls starting in the early 2010s, which he attributes to children's access to smart phones and social media. Do you think his interpretation is wrong? What do you think might be causing that decline if it's not this technology? Parental abuse, unfortunately, has existed since the dawn of time.
On a more personal note, I'm not an economist and have no training in statistics or anything like that. You could show me two academic studies, one that's well done and one with serious issues, and I don't know if I could tell the difference because I don't have that training. So finding the "truth" can be challenging and often comes down to just putting your faith in someone or another who is an expert and trusting that they're being honest.
Failing that, all we have is evidence we can see with our own eyes. And I can't speak for anyone else but I can say that in my own experience, my smartphone is addictive and it has done more harm than good in my life. Before I put up some healthy boundaries, I'd spend hours scrolling social media and would feel empty and gross after. I was devoting an appalling amount of time to that. I don't think I'm alone in this given how well Haidt's message is being received across the globe and across political lines.
And it's not just mental health either. I have some teacher friends who have almost 20 years of experience in the classroom. They have observed that kids in recent years are simply not able to handle the content that kids 15-20 years ago could handle. They lack the attention span to handle longer readings, because they are used to having their attention jerked around every few seconds as it is when we scroll. And honestly, this tracks, as I've felt my own attention span and intelligence declining for years now as I increasingly spent any down time staring at my phone.
So you're saying, "we know...social media use is generally beneficial," and all I can say is that I know what my own two eyes can see, and no, it's not beneficial, not for me anyway and not for most people I know. For many people, social media is doing more harm than good, and we don't need peer reviewed studies to confirm this self evident fact.
https://drdunckley.com/reset-your-childs-brain/ is a fantastic resource
A FOUR-WEEK PLAN TO…
END MELTDOWNS, RAISE GRADES, & BOOST SOCIAL SKILLS
BY REVERSING THE EFFECTS OF ELECTRONIC SCREEN-TIME
Thank you Daisy and Jon etc.
Here is hoping that Senator Cruz's opposition to Wi-fi on school buses is a kindling point in the U.S.
https://patriciaburke.substack.com/p/the-fcc-is-the-bully-boarding-the-school-bus-the-eyes-are-not-having-it
Jonathan, if you read these comments, do you know of an existing site to easily organize a school district level group of parents on this issue. Yes i can make a social media page, but i was thinking more website type hosting. Ie a website specifically for our district called something like Free XYZ School District.
I have successfully and happily eliminated social media from my life after watching Social Dilemma on Netflix. I’ve noticed going onto Facebook , for even a worthwhile cause, inevitably sucks me into a million other attention seeking posts. The thought I’d need to resort to Facebook, Instagram etc to keep my kids of Facebook and Instagram is not a good enough answer.
I would love an easy, reproducible, community level site focused only on this issue to share to local friends and neighbors tailored specifically for our district.
Yes. Wait Until 8th is a community & school district level way to organize parents locally.
I'm a member.
https://www.waituntil8th.org/
Begin teaching kids budgeting by giving them dumb phones with pre-paid minutes, a kind of “allowance”
Fantastic! Although I find the 'Online Harms Bill' goes way too far and will be used for censorship. Daddy Government and the Nanny State have done far too much damage as it is.
Tremendous work. Thank you and good luck.
Bravo! Uniting parents and educators is the first step in really igniting a movement to withdrawn the tentacles of big tech from our children's lives.