So which is it? Do you support or oppose the use of mobile devices by children?
What have we learned about Smartphone Free Childhood? The Great Rewiring of Children’s Brains and Their Effects on Their Mental Health Over 20 Years
The anti-smartphone movement is having a moment. On March 25, the Florida governor signed a bill that prohibited children under 14 from using social media. In February, the UK government backed tighter guidance to keep children from using their smartphones at school. As parents worry about the mental health of their children due to the damage that screens and social media are causing, grassroots organizations like Smartphone Free Childhood have risen to national prominence.
Of course, our current understanding is incomplete, and more research is always needed. As a psychologist who has studied children’s and adolescents’ mental health for the past 20 years and tracked their well-being and digital-technology use, I appreciate the frustration and desire for simple answers. As a parent of adolescents, I would also like to identify a simple source for the sadness and pain that this generation is reporting.
Haidt asserts that the great rewiring of children’s brains has taken place by “designing a firehose of addictive content that entered through kids’ eyes and ears”. This has changed childhood and changed human development on an almost unimaginable scale. It’s necessary for such claims to have serious evidence.
This is Haidt’s Great Rewiring in a nutshell: Childhood has switched from being predominantly play-based to being phone-based, and as a result, young people are less happy as children and less competent as adults. They are boring according to Haidt. The percentage of US high school seniors who have drunk alcohol, sex, or have a driving license is lower today than it was in the past. Wrapped in cotton wool by their parents and absorbed by their online lives, young people aren’t transitioning into adulthood in a healthy way, Haidt argues.
Hundreds of researchers have searched for the large effects suggested by Haidt. Our efforts have produced a mix of no, small and mixed associations. Most data are correlative. They say that young people with mental-health problems use social-media platforms in different ways, but not because of depression or the other way around.
No simple answers are available. The onset and development of mental disorders, such as anxiety and depression, are driven by a complex set of genetic and environmental factors. For the past 20 years, the United States has seen a steady increase in suicide rates among most age groups. Researchers cite access to guns, exposure to violence, structural discrimination and racism, sexism and sexual abuse, the opioid epidemic, economic hardship and social isolation as leading contributors8.
The current generation of adolescents was raised in the aftermath of the great recession of 2008. The unemployment rate has gone down so the deprivation is not a factor. Families in the bottom 20% of the income distribution continue to experience harm when there are shocks to the economy. The United States has close to one in six children who live below the poverty line and are also growing up at a time of increased unrest because of racial and sexual discrimination and violence.
The good news is that more people are talking about their problems than ever before. The bad news is that insufficient services are available to address their needs. In the United States, there is, on average, one school psychologist for every 1,119 students10.
The elephant rider’s tale: how we should not be the rider dragged along by the elephant, or why we shouldn’t believe the world is flat
Haidt’s work on emotion, culture and morality has been influential; and, in fairness, he admits that he is no specialist in clinical psychology, child development or media studies. He has used the analogy of an elephant and its rider to argue that our gut reactions can drag along our rational minds. It is easy to get evidence to support our initial reaction to an issue. That we should question assumptions that we think are true carefully is a lesson from Haidt’s own work. Everyone used to think the world was flat. The falsification of previous assumptions by testing them against data can prevent us from being the rider dragged along by the elephant.
A third truth is that we have a generation in crisis and in desperate need of the best of what science and evidence-based solutions can offer. Our time is being wasted telling stories that are unreliable and that don’t support people who need more.
The evidence is equivocal on whether screen time is to blame for rising levels of teen depression and anxiety — and rising hysteria could distract us from tackling the real causes.
