Anxious Wondering: How Many ‘Likes’ Will My Blog Get?
(Spoiler Alert: my blog doesn’t have anything to do with the title…I just like irony)
So many thoughts, so few words.
That is my first response as I sit down to write a blog on Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Anxious Generation, which asserts that, “overprotection in the real world and underprotection in the virtual world—are the major reasons why children born after 1995 became the anxious generation.” (1)
Haidt argues that the decline of a play-based childhood combined with the rise of a phone-based childhood has harmed children. Specifically, a phone-based childhood creates social deprivation, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation, and addiction. (2) To address this issue, Haidt spends the last third of his book making suggestions for governments, schools, and parents.
Some thoughts on the book…
First, as someone married to a counsellor that specializes in counselling teenage and young adult females, and as a parent to two young adult boys and a young adult girl, I was well aware that phones were a problem. Whether it was discussing with my daughter why some of her friends felt compelled to excessively edit their bodies on Instagram, or telling my daughter to get off her phone and do something ‘productive’, or speaking to my boys about the allure and horrors of pornography, or observing the social spaces I exist in where people are together but remain completely isolated as everyone stares down at their device…it is abundantly clear that there is a problem. Haidt’s book isn’t good because it drops a new idea on the reader; it’s good because it helps us name the problem more specifically and it provides a larger context to understand the various societal forces that combined to create the issue. That is his great contribution to this important topic (beyond raising the societal awareness of the issue with his book).
Second, while Haidt’s book has been widely read and generally well-received, I was interested to note the push-back from other social psychologists and researchers (3). After going farther down the ‘rabbit hole’ than I needed to (damn internet!), it seems a somewhat shared critique is that Haidt’s argument is primarily built on ‘correlation’ and does not sufficiently engage with research that is proving ‘causation’ (i.e. teen problems are the direct result of social media & excessive phone use). I have neither the time nor expertise to assess the validity of such critiques, but I will note two things:
(1) Even those who critique Haidt’s methodology or conclusions eventually come around to stating that phones/social media are creating, or at least contributing to, the problem of anxious and depressed youth, so the push-back seems to be more related to methodology (an important point!) and the fact that Haidt posits this one issue and the primary (perhaps even sole issue?) to the mental health crisis in our young people. In my mind, these critiques are important but do not diminish his primary argument. It might not be the only reason why youth are struggling, but it certainly is one significant contributing factor.
(2) Second, I have a good friend who is part-way through her PhD, studying the effects of social media on teenage girls—specifically examining the question on whether a teens attachment style is a predictor in how social media will negatively or positively impact a teenage girl (incidentally…and quite disturbingly…there is currently no research that shows that a healthy attachment style mitigates or decreases the negative effects of social media on female teenagers. However (and hopefully) this could be simply related to lack of research in this area). Anyways…I asked her if there are published research studies showing ‘causation’ (directly linking social media usage to negative mental health) and her response was an unequivocal, “yes”. As someone currently neck-deep in this issue, I’ll take her word for it…she’s smart.
Third, a lament and a hope. If you are somewhere around 50 years of age, you raised children during the arrival of smart phones and social media. As I read Haidt’s book, I felt relatively content as I assessed my parenting style in relation to my kids having space to discover, explore and risk (4). My wife and I parented in such a way that would raise eyebrows among our peer group, sometimes eliciting the question, “You let your kids do that?” I don’t think we were irresponsible (ok…sometimes I may have been!), but we did give them lots of freedom and didn’t naturally gravitate to ‘helicopter parenting’. Yet when I reflect on our how we parented and practically managed our kid’s relationship with technology…I have some regrets. I wish we were more intentional and structured; I wish we were more careful. I wish we were more aware of the science, the addiction, and the harm that these devices and sites can create. Up to this point we have not dealt with significant challenges with our kids as it relates to social media (at least that we know of), but we still would have done things differently. Of course, we can’t ‘go back’—in some respects social media is like cigarettes in past generations: ‘If we knew then what we know now…”—but we can do better in the future. My friend doing her PhD told me that there is legislation in the US that is looking to mandate a surgeon general warning on social media sites (much like cigarettes now have). That’s a start, but there is much more to do. My hope is that responsible adults will assert their collective will to motivate (force?) governments, schools and social media sites to make the necessary changes to protect future generations. In some senses, our kids were the generation inadvertently harmed by our collective ignorance of this massive societal shift during our kid’s growing up years. Haidt’s book and a growing body of research ensures we are ignorant no more. What are we going to do about it?
(1) Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness (London: Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Books, 2024) 9.
(2) Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness (London: Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Books, 2024) Chapter 5.
(3) This article on ‘The Guardian’ lists several different critiques of the book and the research process: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/apr/27/anxious-generation-jonathan-haidt
(4) Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness (London: Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Books, 2024) Chapter 4.
About the Author
Scott Dickie
14 responses to “Anxious Wondering: How Many ‘Likes’ Will My Blog Get?”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Nice post, Scott. I had heard there were some significant critiques of Haidt’s research, but I hadn’t run across this particular article. You did a great job summarizing it, after your deep-dive, and it’s interesting that the main conclusion is that Haidt’s thesis is still probably correct! It would be interesting to see some of those studies your friend referenced.
Hi Scott,
Thanks for diving deeper.
My three children are of this generation and I have to say, that I may have failed in so many ways in setting up guard rails at the start.
We did LEARN about parental controls, but perhaps too late!
Still sports and play were a big part of my kids lives so perhaps not all is lost.
Sigh…what is a daddy to do.
PRAY HARD.
Shalom
Hi Russell,
Yes….pray….and then pray some more!
You do bring up a good point regarding sports. They can cause their own challenges for youth, but I seem to recall a study that reflected the reality that kids that are engaged in sports, or other social hobbies, tend to have a healthier relationship with social media that those who don’t have an activity to devote themselves to. It’s not exactly the same as Haidt’s ‘free play’, but it seems to be a beneficial aspect to kids healthy development.
(I can’t remember or verify the source of those comments…so take them with a grain of salt)
Hi Scott,
Great post! Thank you for highlighting that there are critiques of Haidt’s work, but also that his critics come to his same conclusions. Common sense tells us that smart phones and social media have impacted not only our youth but our world! Having just spent time with my grandchildren (in person) it is worrisome that even the infants are attracted to the devices all the adults have within arms reach (usually to take photos!) And though their first exploration is to stick the smartphone they’ve grabbed into their mouths, it causes concern. We lead by example with little eyes watching our every move. My smart phone is largely a family photo album and though I will hate to miss out on some great pics, my phone is going to stay hidden away during family gatherings so I can stay more fully engaged. And…I’m grateful that while I’m away I can video call my grandchildren over the next few months. It feels like a Catch-22!
You bring up a great point Jenny…I know (and at times can be) parents that are concerned and lament about their kids addiction to their phones while they scroll their own social feeds at the lunch where we are talking about the problem! I suspect the failure to apply reasonable guardrails for our children’s interaction with social media also largely apply to those of us who were in our mid-thirties when smartphones took off. I’m hopeful the more educated younger parents will more wisely engage and thus parent more effectively.
You mentioned the legislation in the U.S. about a possible warning label for social media sites. The U.S. Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, who is advocating for the warning label has some helpful data (Cathy Glei included this in her post). I’ve referenced his book “Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World” in my research. His commentary around loneliness and group dynamics has been super helpful.
Our kids are around the same ages — Are you hearing stories from your children about them and/or their friends pushing back against the constant use of social media and/or smartphones? My oldest son was here over the weekend, and he shared about an event he attended recently, where he wished (better word is “complained”) there had been less mobile device usage there. I’m thinking there will be more stories of rebellion against the use of smart devices in the years to come. Right now those stories seem to be outliers.
Hey Travis….yes…there seems to be some pushback from young adults. I hear of phone free gatherings where everyone puts their phone in a basket at the front door, not to be touched again until they leave the person home; another version of that is everyone putting their phone face down in the middle of a table at a restaurant and the first person to touch their phone pays the bill. A few young adults I know have gone back to the flip phone…and apparently those phones are starting to sell well again (that’s hearsay…I haven’t verified). So there seems to be a growing awareness and at least some attempts to shift behaviour, but I would agree they tend to remain outliers and not movements…at least not yet (but we can hope!)
Scott, so much of what you said resonated deeply with me. I too, found the critics and thought what they were saying had some merit, even if I generally agreed with Haidt. Mostly though I resonated with my regret about my parenting around technology. It sounds like we may have parented in many of the same ways, giving our kids quite a bit of freedom. We adopted the theory that we would never be able to keep up with technology and how to “protect” our kids so we’d try to make sure we talked to them about it regularly. Well, I’m sure you can guess how often we “talked” to them about it and how well, they listened when we did actually make it happen. I found out from my oldest son that my middle son was competing some major video game tournament and he was one of the top players….I mean, who knew? Not me nor my husband!
That said, I think my kids are turning out okay. Not perfect. But pretty definitely okay.
I now have a 12 year old daughter and I thought I would parent her differently. I wanted to parent her differently – especially when it comes to technology use. I am finding however that I am tired. We just got her a phone. I have put all kinds of controls on it and she doesn’t have social media access but I have to admit, though I’d like to parent differently I’m just not sure I have the energy.
Appreciate your honesty Kally…because you bring up a very real issue–the amount of mental effort it takes to parent nowadays is being recognized as substantively different than previous generations…and smartphones have added to the complexity and stress for parents. Most of our children are so far ahead of our tech capacities that even if we have guardrails put in place, a moderately tech-wise child can get around, bury, delete and hide anything they don’t want seen/known. Yet to not try is opening our kids up to all sorts of disastrous sites that can screw up our kids in ways we never had to deal with. As I type this…I wonder if some of the exhaustion is the ‘powerlessness’ we might feel as parents as the only two options seems to be (1) Keep them off it all…and deal with all the challenges of them being socially isolated and out of the loop with friends etc… or (2) Let them have access and ‘hope for the best’. Neither seems too positive…and it exemplifies the importance of maintaining healthy relationships and open communication channels with our kids. If we’re going to invest anywhere…that’s probably the best place to put our efforts. Oh….and pray….a lot.
Scott~ Thank you for posting about those who critique Haidt’s methodology. By shinging light on the arguments, it helps me connect the dots of my own thinking.
You wrote: “Even those who critique Haidt’s methodology or conclusions eventually come around to stating that phones/social media are creating, or at least contributing to, the problem of anxious and depressed youth, so the push-back seems to be more related to methodology (an important point!) and the fact that Haidt posits this one issue and the primary (perhaps even sole issue?) to the mental health crisis in our young people. In my mind, these critiques are important but do not diminish his primary argument. It might not be the only reason why youth are struggling, but it certainly is one significant contributing factor.”
It certainly is one significant factor. Something I would like to explore with you is an article written by Ryan Burge called, “How Has Religion Changed Among High School Seniors?” You can read that article here:
https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/how-has-religion-changed-among-high.
The reason I bring it up is that the data Burge is looking at demonstrates that religious attitudes among high school seniors have undergone significant changes over the last couple of decades. Is that change only connected to social media use? What other factors are at play? My point is might there be something lacking in these young people’s lives that social media use is somehow meeting that need?
I think you are a good one to think this through!!
Hi Pam…I can’t believe you are assigning me more reading in your response!
Unfortunately, the link takes me to a blog that needs a subscription…so unless you cut and paste me the article…I won’t be able to interact with it. All I could see was the one graph that showed a decline in attending religious services among teenagers from 1995 to 2022.
That’s no surprise…but there could be lots of different explanations to that, not least of which is parents no longer attending church as consistently for a variety of reasons. I would suspect most high school students are still commuting to Sunday services with their parents in America…so I would be interested to see if there is a corresponding decline among adults.
That’s all I can comment on until you pay my subscription!
Thanks for the post and for catching the 1 sentence synopsis of the book:
“Overprotection in the real world and underprotection in the virtual world—are the major reasons why children born after 1995 became the anxious generation.”
I think for me, the ‘what am I going to do?’ response is personal. I know that if I can ditch compulsion to be on social media and smart phone, I’ll have better ability to live counterculturally and invite people into a better way.
Hi Tim…thanks for interacting. Your personal response (that I wrestle with myself) can easily morph into a philosophy of ministry question as well: To what degree to we (our church) embrace and leverage social media as a means to help us grow people and achieve our vision statement…and to what degree is the medium the message, and thus needs to be rejected?
Certainly not the first time churches have had to wrestle with this (basically every advancement in tech has created this question)…but it doesn’t feel any easier to answer when in the cultural moment.
Should we posting clips on our church’s social media site? Is that encouraging people to be on their phones or…since they’re gonna be on their phones anyways, should we be proactively there with our content?
Should I invite people during my sermon to pull out their phones and take a pic of a particular slide that has important info on it for reference later on….or am I just encouraging people to grab their phone again when they could use 30 mins without it in their hands?
I could go on and on…but I’ll ask you…beyond your own personal practices that are good for your own soul….do you guys have a well-developed theology of technology and social media as a church?
I’d be interested to read it if you do…
Scott, what a great question.
I’ve wrestled with this over and over again. We do not have a well-built theology of technology and social media. We do have a philosophy of ministry that says church can’t truly happen online, but in the ministry of proximity, social media is a ubiquitous tool that ‘everyone’ in our culture accesses and can be used for good or evil.
But I’m well aware that the dangers of social media and youtube are more sinister than we want to admit. And I/we struggle with using a tool that can be so toxic (not just the message, but the medium).
In the meantime, we’re still using it.
Small things I do are to use a physical bible in the pulpit and encourage people to use a physical bible in church. We have very little screen content during the mesage (besides the IMAG we use to help the room see the platoform), and never encourage people to take pictures of it (I never say “take your phones out” for any reason). Post infrequently (not daily) on our social media.
I know it’s not nearly enough; as we navigate this ‘brave new world” we will have to develop a better theology of this stuff. I agree.