The screen time battle with my niece is already in full swing.
He turned 2 in January. He walks around the house at lunch time, whining that he wants his iPad. He refuses to eat even though I know he’s not hungry. He gets even more upset when I tell him he can watch Cocomelon for 10 minutes if he eats more than 3 bites of lunch.
If I could, I would throw away “her” iPad. I’m not kidding. I can’t stand to see her, one of the smartest, most thoughtful toddlers I’ve ever met, so completely absorbed and distracted by a screen.
She taps and swipes and stares, magnetically captivated. The screen is already her means of solace, her favorite treat even more than candy, and, all too often, an on-demand babysitter for overwhelmed parents trying to get through the day.
There’s a lot to unravel and I don’t know how to help. To be fair, when we all go out to dinner, I’m the one who pulls out my phone before anyone else and the crayons and puzzles get stuck. All we need is some food and five minutes of adult conversation, right?
To make matters worse, I often feel powerless against the lure of screens. There’s no doubt that smartphones have reshaped our brains for the worse — not just because a slew of new studies suggest so, but because of how I feel and what’s going on in the world around me.
The always-on gadgets that were supposed to make my life easier, more enjoyable and more productive now often disrupt my sleep, ruin my work-life balance and erase my self-esteem. I feel lost every time I pick up my smartphone and helpless when it comes to doing anything about it.
As terrible as I feel about my own smartphones and screens, I feel even worse about my kids, who I’ve seen suffer the most from our addiction to our devices and their own.
Giving kids a full access pass to smartphones and social media too early carries staggering rates of risk for “depression, anxiety, self-harm and suicide,” but being the only strict parent in the neighborhood who denies access could stunt your child’s development in an ever-evolving digital world and lead to social isolation.
The “Anxious Generation”: Have Smartphones “Reshaped” Childhood?
Everyone I know is talking about the new book, “The Anxious Generation: How Mass Rewiring of Childhood is Driving an Epidemic of Mental Illness,” in which social psychologist, author, and New York University professor Jonathan Haidt presents mounting evidence correlating the rise of smartphones with a precipitous decline in children’s happiness.
Haidt argues that the shift from play-based to mobile phone-based adolescence has “altered the structure of childhood,” and that it has “impeded social and neurological development, contributing to social anxiety, sleep deprivation, attentional disorganization, and addiction.”
Haidt says the problem has been surging since about 2012. Citing hundreds of scientific studies and other high-quality data, he portrays smartphones, tablets and social media as unstoppable forces that are pulling Gen Z (people born after 1996) away from reality and into a digital world where the rules aren’t always clear, where people hide behind anonymous social media accounts and where rumors spread faster than wildfire.
But smartphones and social media are not the only culprits. To be sure, smartphones and social media have created troubling problems by providing unlimited access to meticulously orchestrated algorithms that lure and train kids to use them again and again. But Haidt says that these factors, combined with the rise of fear and overprotective parenting “that began in the 1980s and continues to the present,” have created a perfect storm for our ability to raise healthy human beings.
“We’ve altered the structure of childhood and created an epidemic of mental illness,” Haidt said in several recent interviews. “After more than a decade of stability or improvement, adolescent mental health plummeted in the early 2010s. We’ve overprotected our kids in the real world and underprotected them online.”
Critics have accused Haidt and his colleagues of mistaking correlation for causation. Critics I haven’t actually read the book, the authors have been next level transparent and have published their data and sources online.
Is this just the latest “parental panic”?
As a parent, I have to admit, this is not the easiest thing to read. What’s most frustrating, at least for me, is that I’ve known this deep down for over a decade. I think most parents probably feel the same way. And despite our best efforts, we often fall back on the excuse, “Well, the train has already left the station,” or, “The other day there was too much TV, and the other day there was too much risqué rock music. It’s only recently that I’ve started to panic.”
But it’s clear that we rely too much on technology to soothe our kids. If life were a horror movie, we’d be at this point realizing that the call was coming from inside the house all along.
Of course, tech companies are happy to oblige. Most have detailed “terms of use” that prohibit children of a certain age from using their services, but the guidelines are effectively not enforced. Ask anyone under the age of 13 how they got around age restrictions on social media, and they’ll likely say they lied about their age. Well, naturally.
Kids also love gaming and connecting with friends online, but knowing when these habits are crossing into problem territory is proving to be more complicated than many parents might imagine.
Social media and video games are among the most egregious offenders. “They hooked kids at a vulnerable developmental stage when their brains are rapidly rewired in response to stimuli,” Haidt writes. “By engineering a flood of addictive content for kids’ eyes and ears, and eliminating physical play and face-to-face interaction, these companies have rewired childhood and altered human development on a scale that is almost unimaginable.”
The damage, he says, is clear: epidemic pain and suffering among young people around the world, creating a generation of boys who “cannot stand up for themselves” and weak, depressed girls.
Is it possible to develop healthy humans alongside modern technology?
It’s a question I’ve asked myself and hundreds of other people over the past decade while covering consumer technology and raising my now 23-year-old daughter.
What I know for sure is that extremes don’t work. “Zero technology” homes are a lot like no-sugar homes. Kids sneak and hide or lie about the inevitable screen time to get away from friends, other family, and even school. They often have less self-control than their peers.
On the flip side, giving a child a smartphone before age 10 creates a kind of zombie apocalypse. I’m thinking of a friend whose daughter is now 10 years old, and who spends more than nine hours a day on TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube. She told me recently that she would “die” without a smartphone.
Anecdotally, “extremely controlled” screen time seems to produce the best results, but for most parents it’s extremely difficult and time-consuming to manage.
The problems are overwhelming. The peer pressure from other kids and even other parents is extreme.
Many teens I speak to wish there were clear requirements and boundaries, like the minimum age for a driver’s license or drinking. One recent survey even said that a majority of college students “wish TikTok and Instagram had never been invented.” My daughter says the same thing.
“The biggest challenge we face isn’t that parents (or young people) are against us, but that many feel hopeless,” Haidt’s lead researcher, Zach Rausch, said in an email. “Our goal is to show that there really is a lot that can be accomplished, especially if we act together.”
Smartphone replacement?: The Humane AI Pin isn’t going to replace your smartphone anytime soon, but it does have some impressive features.
The book recommends four “new norms” to reverse childhood addiction to cell phones.
◾ Smartphones are prohibited until high school.
◾ Do not use social media until you are 16 years old.
◾ The use of mobile phones is prohibited during lessons at school and students must keep their mobile phones in a mobile phone locker or Yondr pouch.
◾ Finally, we need to give our children more independence, freedom, and responsibility to play and hang out on their own in the real world, just as most of us did when we were their age.
Screen time isn’t always bad
Rausch is quick to point out that “not all screen time is bad.” To encourage healthier uses of technology, he and Haidt recommend families watch age-appropriate movies together or play games in real time with friends and family.
The problem, they say, has to do with sites like YouTube and other products “designed to maximize time spent on the platform (e.g., TikTok),” and “asynchronous activities like social media posting and scrolling are keeping kids occupied and away from real-world interactions that are essential to their social development.”
Haidt recommends flip phones before high school, and I’ve been preaching this for the past few years. (I use a $20 Straight Talk Wireless Nokia 2760 flip phone on nights and weekends to combat my smartphone addiction, and I recently gave some to friends with kids in middle school.)
Haven’t you heard all this before?
We’ve heard and proposed most of these proposals before, but we haven’t seen any real change. What’s different now? Can we actually undo the damage caused by technology and create a healthier future for our kids? Can we get tech giants to stop kids from using the devices and apps they create, and put age limits and realistic guardrails on their inventions? We have to try.
Haidt set a deadline, saying we could “end mobile childhood by the end of 2025.” It’s a lofty goal, but Haidt says we’re at a tipping point and he believes the goal is achievable and will be achieved.
“It turns out we don’t need to convince many people of the nature of the problem; most people understand it,” Haidt wrote on Substack. “Our main enemies are despair and resignation. The Four Codes offer a way out of the trap.”
Height has also put together some “take action” resources for parents, schools and anyone interested in the issue.
I’m going to bring a copy of Generation Anxiety to my niece’s family, and I’m not sure what else I can do for them except to do my best and set an example. That means putting my phone down when I’m with her (even though I might miss a cute photo or two). I’m also going to take her outside and teach her how to make mud balls. The messier we both can get, the better.
Jennifer Jolie is an Emmy Award-winning consumer technology columnist and on-air correspondent.
The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of USA TODAY. Contact him at JJ@Techish.com.
