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The Case Against The Phone-Based Childhood

Does Early Access to Social Media Harm Later Learning? New Evidence from Italy
Students who got social media accounts by age 12 progressed less than those who waited until age 14
 • Marco Gui and Giovanni Abbiati
Limbic Capitalism Has Been Driving Addiction for Hundreds of Years
A chapter from historian David Courtwright’s magnificent book, The Age of Addiction, helps us understand how we got here and what’s likely to come.
Phones at School: Less Learning, More Loneliness
Laptops aren't great either.
 • Jean M. Twenge
EdTech is Borrowing Zuckerberg's Playbook
The "No Evidence of Harm" Refrain is a Familiar Deflection
 • Jared Cooney Horvath
Mountains of Evidence
Two new projects catalogue research on social media’s many harms to adolescents. Some of the strongest evidence comes from Meta.
 • Jon Haidt and Zach Rausch
How Tech Companies Rig Parental Guilt
Platforms profit from children’s attention while parents absorb the blame
 • Daniel Frost, Sarah Coyne, and Jane Shawcroft
Meta’s Child Sex-Trafficking Problem
A newly unsealed court filing shows the tech giant connected children to predators on a scale much larger than previously understood
 • Nathan Witkin
The Devil’s Plan to Ruin the Next Generation
I asked ChatGPT how it would destroy America’s youth. Its answers were unsettling — and all too familiar.
 • Jon Haidt
Don’t Give Your Child Any AI Companions
Some dangers are already clear; others won’t be known for many years.
 • Jon Haidt and Zach Rausch
Does Social Media Use at One Time Predict Teen Depression at a Later Time?
Reviewing longitudinal evidence
 • Alec McClean and Jakey Lebwohl
Reclaiming Conversation in the Age of AI
Sherry Turkle on AI, empathy, and the fight for human connection
 • Sherry Turkle
Artificial Intimacy: The Next Giant Social Experiment on Young Minds
How emotionally intelligent chatbots could trigger a new mental health crisis
 • Kristina Lerman and David Duc Chu
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