I first heard of Johnathan Haidt\u2019s book, The Anxious Generation, when a friend from church suggested I read it. Instead, my husband, daughter and I listened to a very long podcast about it on a car trip from northern California back to Bend, Oregon. I feel the need to clarify that as my twelve-year-old daughter was and still is campaigning for her own phone, she was not happy about listening to this podcast.<\/p>\n
As we listened, I nodded along, saying things like, \u201cSee, Eve, this is why I don\u2019t feel like you should have a phone yet!\u201d or, \u201cI don\u2019t want you to surround yourself in social media pressures, especially as you are in a critical time period of brain development!\u201d Even though, these comments were coming from a place of love for my daughter, she did not see them this way, and continued to argue in favor of phones for tweens.<\/p>\n
The Great Rewiring of Childhood<\/strong><\/p>\n In his book, The Anxious Generation, Haidt explores the rising rates of mental illness among young people, attributing much of the blame to smartphones and social media. Haidt argues that since the early 2010s, there has been a shift from a \u201cplay-based childhood\u201d to a \u201cphone-based childhood,\u201d which he believes has negatively impacted children\u2019s mental health.[1]<\/a> Referring to it as the \u201cgreat rewiring of childhood\u201d Haidt blames the rise of smartphones in the 2010s for the rise of mental illness in teens. He proposes several solutions, including delaying smartphone access until high school and implementing age verification for social media use.[2]<\/a><\/p>\n I agreed with everything he said: hook, line, and sinker.<\/p>\n But There Are Critics<\/strong><\/p>\n And it\u2019s not that I totally disagree. It is true that when we lived in Tennessee in the early 2000\u2019s I\u2019d throw my boys outside, lock the doors, and tell them unless one of them was actively dying they could not come back inside. (I exaggerate, a bit.) They played outside with other neighbor boys, negotiating, imagining, running, doing all the things kids do when they have a \u201cplay-based\u201d childhood. Along comes my daughter in 2011, and though she played outside quite a bit as a young child, she\u2019s definitely spent more time in front of screens at a younger age than her older brothers. And now she wants her own phone.<\/p>\n Seeing how my daughter\u2019s mood changes for the worse when she spends a day on an iPad versus engaging with those of us physically present with her, my anxiety was already at an all-time high about giving her a phone when I read Haidt\u2019s Anxious Generation. One might say I was primed to believe him, to accept his information as truth, to let it shape how I would parent my daughter.<\/p>\n That\u2019s because I was using \u201cFast Thinking\u201d instead of \u201cSlow Thinking.\u201d[3]<\/a> If I had taken a minute to slow down and actually engage in the conversation around this book, I would have found a slew of credible critics critiquing Haidt\u2019s work.<\/p>\n Critics of Haidt\u2019s work argue that there is insufficient evidence to support his claims, suggesting that observed correlations between social media use and mental health issues do not imply causation. A widely-cited review of the book in Nature<\/em> argues that there is \u201cno evidence that using these platforms is rewiring children\u2019s brains or driving an epidemic of mental illness.\u201d[4]<\/a> Instead, they found that \u201cWhen associations over time are found, they suggest not that social-media use predicts or causes depression, but that young people who already have mental-health problems use such platforms more often or in different ways from their healthy peers.\u201d[5]<\/a> An analysis done in 72 countries shows no consistent or measurable associations between well-being and the roll-out of social media globally. Moreover, findings from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study, the largest long-term study of adolescent brain development in the United States, has found no evidence of drastic changes associated with digital-technology use.\u201d[6]<\/a> In other words, Haidt, while perhaps on to something important, needs to provide more research-backed, peer-reviewed, evidence for his claims.<\/p>\n Critics also express concerns about the practicality and potential overreach of his proposed solutions. On one podcast I listened to, upon reading Haidt\u2019s suggestion that social media platforms require proof of age, a host asked if perhaps we\u2019d be required to provide eye or fingerprint authentication. In response, the other host laughed, \u201cIt would be more dangerous for social media to have access to our fingerprints or our eyes than to let kids use the platform.\u201d[7]<\/a><\/p>\n Respond. Don\u2019t React<\/strong><\/p>\n The critiques of this book came as a surprise to me as I still don\u2019t think it best for my twelve-year-old daughter to have her own phone. However, after slowing down, and engaging with the critiques, I have come to understand that while Haidt might have an important message, the research is ongoing and at this point in time, there are no easy answers to the rise in mental illness in our youth. Instead of allowing my reptilian brain to be triggered by fear,[8]<\/a> I hope to respond rather than react, talking with my daughter, giving her access to a phone, to social media, to independence, at a rate she can handle well.<\/p>\n (I promised my daughter we\u2019d go look at phones this weekend\u2026with the caveat that there will be super-parental controls on it and she will not have social media accounts.)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [1]<\/a> Johnathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation, Penguin Press, New York, 2024, 7.<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> Ibid, 236, 287.<\/p>\n [3]<\/a> Daniel Kahneman,\u00a0Thinking, Fast and Slow<\/em>, 1st edition. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2011, Kindle.<\/p>\n [4]<\/a> Candice L. Odgers, The great rewiring, unplugged; Is social media really behind an epidemic of teenage mental illness?<\/em>, Nature, Vol. 628, April 2024, 29.<\/p>\n [5]<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n [6]<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n