I’m definitely in the camp of smartphones causing mental health issues, and like many others, have a hard time seeing how they don’t, but applaud the contrarian perspective / stats
As a former professor who taughts young adults between 18-21, I definitely noticed a difference in how students engaged with me and other students when smart phone started to come into the picture. But that's just novelty. The human brain loves it and social media feeds it.
I think if parents are so concerned about their children's use of smartphones, maybe they can, I don't know, engage their children in non internet activities. I see a huge different in families that do stuff together and families who are just plugged in while in the same room. Have game night, ride bikes, etc.
While forums may help some kids feel connected, my worry has always been bullying. I was bullied in school but lived in a different neighborhood, so when I got home, it was tuned out. I had neighborhood friends. Nowadays kids who are bullied can not tune it out. It's in person and then in in chats and social media. They don't get a break.
What about the anecdotal reports of teens or young adults that say their mental health improves once they got off phones? Sometimes the best evidence is real life example that can't be captured in a "study".
And I wonder what we did back in the day when we didn't text our parents ten times a day? At some point we need to separate from our parents. We need experience of disconnecting and becoming self, and reconnecting. It's actually a developmental skill that starts as a bay throughout life. I feel like we haven't done that week. So when kids get separated from their parents, they decompensate and they mentally and emotionally fail. It's quite sad. We lack skills for this.
When you look at those studies you often see the slightest of effects. @Gurwinder had a post that linked to a study about an experiment of deactivating, so going cold turkey, on various social media apps.
Here’s the conclusion. Not impressive causation. 100% cutoff led to very slight changes in mood.
“We estimate the effect of social media deactivation on users’ emotional state in two large randomized experiments before the 2020 U.S. election. People who deactivated Facebook for the six weeks before the election reported a 0.060 standard deviation improvement in an index of happiness, depression, and anxiety, relative to controls who deactivated for just the first of those six weeks. People who deactivated Instagram for those six weeks reported a 0.041 standard deviation improvement relative to controls. Exploratory analysis suggests the Facebook effect is driven by people over 35, while the Instagram effect is driven by women under 25.”
You're citing studies but you're not really digging in. I wonder what the discontinuation protocol was. Is it possible that without Instagram, people compensated by spending more time on alternate social media platforms like reddit?
I think what's difficult about these studies is understanding the absolute abysmal isolation it is to be deactivated (as I've been for quite some time) when so many others are not. Others you're close to. Others who start sounding like they're speaking a foreign language you once knew and no longer remember.
You realize how much you're actively choosing to miss out on, and it's disorienting and disappointing -- at first. The joy of it takes a bit to fully sink in and even if you hear people talk about the bliss of the first days or weeks off, that's usually euphoria. I think it takes A LOT LONGER than 6 weeks to come close to crawling out of the hole social media can put you in. Which I think is rather telling at its grips on great portions of society.
Any psyche studies that rely on self-reporting are to be taken with enormous grains of salt. Whereas hard data; like 5150 incidents broken down by age, for example, are potentially much more useful. Also the growing body of evidence that kids of every grade level do better academically when denied access to their phones at school is a strong tell. But any purported benefits of blanket denying all kids internet/phone up to a certain age...is just fishing.
Bottom line, is there's not yet enough data to square the rozy tale told by cell phone manufacturers and app companies, with the doomsday predictions of naysayers like Haidt.
My college roommate (Columbia 1981) teaches at USC and says his young students are "way smarter" than we were. If by that he means knowledgeable, why wouldn't they be? They've had all of human knowledge in their pockets since childhood. Do we want to take that away? And if they're more anxious, maybe it's because of all the things they know -- and they're right to be.
Which brings to mind the collective fate of child prodigies. Geniuses who attend Harvard et al at age sixteen, and thrive academically...until their relative lack of emotional maturity results in various forms of self-destruction.
Years ago I'd watched a documentary made by such a person, who was a member of cohort of eight similar students...all of whom ended up dead or various shades of ruined. Anecdotal, yes, but makes sense. Now it seems we've got an entire generation of young brainiacs.
Many years ago on British TV I saw a documentary made by a tv man who wanted to know what happened to The Quiz Kids,some 1940s tv little kids on a quiz show who could answer all the questions and it wasn't fixed. So he researched and found out they were all just normal people living normal lives. In fact they were extra smart because they knew not to chase after wealth and fame etc but that living an obscure life is great. So in a way they were high IQ. And he featured a few others of note and they too went ordinary. And some scientists studying this phenomenon (not that I put much belief in scientists)but they found that when these superbrain kids reached puberty and became adult their minds went normal which is good news for the likes me. Im just like a genius!!
So much to say here… I do believe cell phone/social media use has had a profound effect on the mental health of all ages. Gen Z being the first to grow up not knowing life before social media and the constant presence of cell phones are becoming less adept at face to face interaction and more prone to depression due to comparison (instagram anyone?). My kids are both Millennials. My daughter (32, a PA by profession) will occasionally deactivate her instagram because she feels so much pressure to compete. Ridiculous, I know, but it’s there. Yes, cell phones and social media are here to stay and yes, there are so many benefits of connectivity - but to dismiss the connection to anxiety based on parsing studies doesn’t change the fact that there is a mental health crisis. Yes, previous generations probably had undiagnosed anxiety as well, but I think this generation is up against something more nefarious. I am hopeful that now that we realize that, we can use the same technology to find ways to prevent or ameliorate the negative aspects of these powerful tools. I am hopeful because whats’ the alternative? AI has the potential to do wonderful things and also irreparable harm.
I think the connection between smartphone use and mental distress remains unproven. The evidence is not there. Maybe we will find out new evidence that will prove the causality.
Well, I notice it in my own personal use. I am more stressed/anxious when I’m on my phone more frequently. When I put it down, I’m more relaxed. Anecdotal, but a lot of people I talk to feel the same way. Also, better for relationships, family time not to be glued to the phone. I’m guessing there are some studies out there…
I can’t disagree with anything you’ve written. Except for Substack I don’t use social media. I think regulating use as individuals and families males sense if it’s displacing IRL connections. but there are also connections that are additional or would never have happened but for the smartphone. I think there are pros and cons.
I think even as adults, we need to have a set of rules with phones. My husband (45) has a nasty habit of dealing with work stuff (ie looking at his phone) during dinner. I don’t. Our son is 6 1/2. I’ve spoken to my husband about it and he needs to be constantly reminded. As for the kid, I’m leaning dumb phone at 10 and smart phone at 15. He’ll have a laptop at school anyway so good, old fashioned email can be used for communication.
Parents are the best judge of how to raise their children. I don't want to see institutions create unenforceable bans. It makes all other rules appear ridiculous to kids.
This. I’ve been criticized for allowing my son to use the iPad at home. He uses it at school for supplementary learning (math and literacy, but mostly the latter) and does some extra work at home on the same app. He finished the literacy program last year but his teacher made him go back for review (not great for his ego 🤣). He also watched art instruction videos at home. I don’t see anything wrong with that. Watching art videos is a lot easier than printed images!
So I understand that people who go a bundle on enjoying figures such as „RFK jr.“, „Tulsi Gabbard“, „Candace Owens“ a.m.o., who „protest“ pro Hamas or who hold any jew they meet accountable „for Israel“ (consisting of 21% muslims, of Druze, Circassian, Christian, atheist a.o.), feel they have to „protect“ younger people „from harm“.
So that when they´re grown up and graciously get granted the allowance for doing sth. the „adults“ obviously can´t cope with themselves, they’ ll be unprepared when getting to know the idiocies named above and so many more ?
Look, „adults“, when you „feel“ like taking away smartphones from „your“ children: instead, LOOK into the MIRROR - cry cry cry -, and then gently turn to „your“ children.
Apart from that, I know hundreds of people born between 1951 and 60, 61 and 70, 71 and 80, 81 and 90 and so on, and they’ re all very different! Maybe they didn´t have a „Jonathan Haidt“ telling them they aren´t.
I wish it wasn’t true, but as the father of a 14 year old girl and 10 year old boy - the phones and tablets offer a massive and intense distraction to real life activities and socialization. We believe in responsible use - not draconian bans, so no devices on school nights (including Nintendo, PS5) for the 10 year old, and our daughter has to leave her phone in our room over night.
We also allow a lot of free play and our kids can bike and walk to friends houses. Lack of socialization is not really an issue, as I spend most weekends as my daughter’s uber driver.
That said, I applaud the in-school bans, because distracted kids aren’t learning - but I think the issue is far more nuanced from the front lines of parenting, than the discourse lets on.
Excellent. So easy to jump to conclusions, and it's great to see some reporting that captures the complexity. I'm going to share this with a therapist and a Gen-Z cousin (a U.S. kid who just graduated from a UK university with honors.)
If giving children smartphones was an acceptable experiment, surely it is also an acceptable experiment to withhold smartphones. Parents are required to provide food, shelter, care. They are not required to provide expensive gadgets.
Not everything is a two way street in experimenting as you suggest. Parents should feel free to experiment with their kids' social media use. Keep institutions out of it.
I really appreciate this take. I'm deeply suspicious of smartphones and most tech in general, having been raised without a TV in the deep woods. I feel that my analog, nature-forward youth was critical in the development of my imagination, and I wish the same for my kids. Perhaps because I was such a Luddite, I find the smartphone to be quite overwhelming, even to me, a 40-year old woman. On the days when I use it for more than a couple of hours I can hear the anxiety, crackling like static between my ears. I can't imagine it's healthy to have that woven into a persons' neurological development, if only because we haven't evolved for it. (Yet.) Still, I take solace in your points, as these are practical issues ahead. My husband and I DO use our phones, often in front of our kids. The eldest is almost 12 and such an imbalance won't last long. One upside is that having our kids as witnesses has prompted better phone hygiene from both of us. I suppose the only hope is to model using these modalities with intention.
Definitely parental models of behavior mean the most, Isabel. If there is evidence of real harm that outweighs benefits, I'd change my mind. But each family is going to have a different set of circumstances and approach to this. I worry about taking away the connectivity from kids who are poor and who see and use the smartphone as a lifeline.
I don't think social media exposure relating to mental health is as straightforward as Haidt suggests, but I know its a real effect. Social media is pretty bad for adults, let alone children who cant yet control their impulses. Its also pretty obvious that it facilitates social contagions/fads, the explosion in gender ideology being one.
Agreed. Jean Twenge has a good Substack relating to tech and youth mental health. Gen Z self-reported transgenderism quintupled since 2014, skyrocketing during the pandemic when everyone was locked down and glued to screens.
Amen, brother. An intellectual debate is so easy to Shanghai in this soundbite-bitten age. Plenty of swank ideas like this Haidt-full one don't bare scrutiny.
My father recently passed away at 84 years old. Pops had a iPhone and was an active texter with all of his grandchildren. Sending messages and photos back and forth with the GenZers. He would give birthday wishes and congratulation messages routinely. And they to him.
My mother in law on the flip side is about the same age and never kept up with stuff like that.
They both saw their grandchildren in person about the same amount of time but my father was woven into the lives of his grandchildren in a much richer and more fulfilling way. He also followed them all on facebook!
Interesting take DJ. I really value our family text chain where we send around pictures and jokes. It's an addition not a replacement for IRL connections. Just as it was for your father.
I do think there’s something to the argument that living in a virtual rather than IRL world isn’t great for our mental health. But you make a good point about increased diagnosis being at least one possible reason for the rise in reported mental health problems among young people. Cremieux wrote an excellent post on how a similar dynamic is fueling panic over an “epidemic” of early-onset cancer. https://open.substack.com/pub/cremieux/p/early-onset-cancer-fast-facts?r=ggixk&utm_medium=ios
I’m definitely in the camp of smartphones causing mental health issues, and like many others, have a hard time seeing how they don’t, but applaud the contrarian perspective / stats
As a former professor who taughts young adults between 18-21, I definitely noticed a difference in how students engaged with me and other students when smart phone started to come into the picture. But that's just novelty. The human brain loves it and social media feeds it.
I think if parents are so concerned about their children's use of smartphones, maybe they can, I don't know, engage their children in non internet activities. I see a huge different in families that do stuff together and families who are just plugged in while in the same room. Have game night, ride bikes, etc.
While forums may help some kids feel connected, my worry has always been bullying. I was bullied in school but lived in a different neighborhood, so when I got home, it was tuned out. I had neighborhood friends. Nowadays kids who are bullied can not tune it out. It's in person and then in in chats and social media. They don't get a break.
I'm all for IRL activities for adults and kids. Bullying has had tragic consequences and social media can add a vicious arrow to that quiver.
What about the anecdotal reports of teens or young adults that say their mental health improves once they got off phones? Sometimes the best evidence is real life example that can't be captured in a "study".
And I wonder what we did back in the day when we didn't text our parents ten times a day? At some point we need to separate from our parents. We need experience of disconnecting and becoming self, and reconnecting. It's actually a developmental skill that starts as a bay throughout life. I feel like we haven't done that week. So when kids get separated from their parents, they decompensate and they mentally and emotionally fail. It's quite sad. We lack skills for this.
When you look at those studies you often see the slightest of effects. @Gurwinder had a post that linked to a study about an experiment of deactivating, so going cold turkey, on various social media apps.
Here’s the conclusion. Not impressive causation. 100% cutoff led to very slight changes in mood.
“We estimate the effect of social media deactivation on users’ emotional state in two large randomized experiments before the 2020 U.S. election. People who deactivated Facebook for the six weeks before the election reported a 0.060 standard deviation improvement in an index of happiness, depression, and anxiety, relative to controls who deactivated for just the first of those six weeks. People who deactivated Instagram for those six weeks reported a 0.041 standard deviation improvement relative to controls. Exploratory analysis suggests the Facebook effect is driven by people over 35, while the Instagram effect is driven by women under 25.”
You're citing studies but you're not really digging in. I wonder what the discontinuation protocol was. Is it possible that without Instagram, people compensated by spending more time on alternate social media platforms like reddit?
The study is available publicly as are the others. I've "dug in." I'm hoping others will and correct me if I'm mistaken in anything.
I think what's difficult about these studies is understanding the absolute abysmal isolation it is to be deactivated (as I've been for quite some time) when so many others are not. Others you're close to. Others who start sounding like they're speaking a foreign language you once knew and no longer remember.
You realize how much you're actively choosing to miss out on, and it's disorienting and disappointing -- at first. The joy of it takes a bit to fully sink in and even if you hear people talk about the bliss of the first days or weeks off, that's usually euphoria. I think it takes A LOT LONGER than 6 weeks to come close to crawling out of the hole social media can put you in. Which I think is rather telling at its grips on great portions of society.
Any psyche studies that rely on self-reporting are to be taken with enormous grains of salt. Whereas hard data; like 5150 incidents broken down by age, for example, are potentially much more useful. Also the growing body of evidence that kids of every grade level do better academically when denied access to their phones at school is a strong tell. But any purported benefits of blanket denying all kids internet/phone up to a certain age...is just fishing.
Bottom line, is there's not yet enough data to square the rozy tale told by cell phone manufacturers and app companies, with the doomsday predictions of naysayers like Haidt.
My college roommate (Columbia 1981) teaches at USC and says his young students are "way smarter" than we were. If by that he means knowledgeable, why wouldn't they be? They've had all of human knowledge in their pockets since childhood. Do we want to take that away? And if they're more anxious, maybe it's because of all the things they know -- and they're right to be.
Which brings to mind the collective fate of child prodigies. Geniuses who attend Harvard et al at age sixteen, and thrive academically...until their relative lack of emotional maturity results in various forms of self-destruction.
Years ago I'd watched a documentary made by such a person, who was a member of cohort of eight similar students...all of whom ended up dead or various shades of ruined. Anecdotal, yes, but makes sense. Now it seems we've got an entire generation of young brainiacs.
Many years ago on British TV I saw a documentary made by a tv man who wanted to know what happened to The Quiz Kids,some 1940s tv little kids on a quiz show who could answer all the questions and it wasn't fixed. So he researched and found out they were all just normal people living normal lives. In fact they were extra smart because they knew not to chase after wealth and fame etc but that living an obscure life is great. So in a way they were high IQ. And he featured a few others of note and they too went ordinary. And some scientists studying this phenomenon (not that I put much belief in scientists)but they found that when these superbrain kids reached puberty and became adult their minds went normal which is good news for the likes me. Im just like a genius!!
So much to say here… I do believe cell phone/social media use has had a profound effect on the mental health of all ages. Gen Z being the first to grow up not knowing life before social media and the constant presence of cell phones are becoming less adept at face to face interaction and more prone to depression due to comparison (instagram anyone?). My kids are both Millennials. My daughter (32, a PA by profession) will occasionally deactivate her instagram because she feels so much pressure to compete. Ridiculous, I know, but it’s there. Yes, cell phones and social media are here to stay and yes, there are so many benefits of connectivity - but to dismiss the connection to anxiety based on parsing studies doesn’t change the fact that there is a mental health crisis. Yes, previous generations probably had undiagnosed anxiety as well, but I think this generation is up against something more nefarious. I am hopeful that now that we realize that, we can use the same technology to find ways to prevent or ameliorate the negative aspects of these powerful tools. I am hopeful because whats’ the alternative? AI has the potential to do wonderful things and also irreparable harm.
I think the connection between smartphone use and mental distress remains unproven. The evidence is not there. Maybe we will find out new evidence that will prove the causality.
Well, I notice it in my own personal use. I am more stressed/anxious when I’m on my phone more frequently. When I put it down, I’m more relaxed. Anecdotal, but a lot of people I talk to feel the same way. Also, better for relationships, family time not to be glued to the phone. I’m guessing there are some studies out there…
I can’t disagree with anything you’ve written. Except for Substack I don’t use social media. I think regulating use as individuals and families males sense if it’s displacing IRL connections. but there are also connections that are additional or would never have happened but for the smartphone. I think there are pros and cons.
I think even as adults, we need to have a set of rules with phones. My husband (45) has a nasty habit of dealing with work stuff (ie looking at his phone) during dinner. I don’t. Our son is 6 1/2. I’ve spoken to my husband about it and he needs to be constantly reminded. As for the kid, I’m leaning dumb phone at 10 and smart phone at 15. He’ll have a laptop at school anyway so good, old fashioned email can be used for communication.
Parents are the best judge of how to raise their children. I don't want to see institutions create unenforceable bans. It makes all other rules appear ridiculous to kids.
This. I’ve been criticized for allowing my son to use the iPad at home. He uses it at school for supplementary learning (math and literacy, but mostly the latter) and does some extra work at home on the same app. He finished the literacy program last year but his teacher made him go back for review (not great for his ego 🤣). He also watched art instruction videos at home. I don’t see anything wrong with that. Watching art videos is a lot easier than printed images!
So I understand that people who go a bundle on enjoying figures such as „RFK jr.“, „Tulsi Gabbard“, „Candace Owens“ a.m.o., who „protest“ pro Hamas or who hold any jew they meet accountable „for Israel“ (consisting of 21% muslims, of Druze, Circassian, Christian, atheist a.o.), feel they have to „protect“ younger people „from harm“.
So that when they´re grown up and graciously get granted the allowance for doing sth. the „adults“ obviously can´t cope with themselves, they’ ll be unprepared when getting to know the idiocies named above and so many more ?
Look, „adults“, when you „feel“ like taking away smartphones from „your“ children: instead, LOOK into the MIRROR - cry cry cry -, and then gently turn to „your“ children.
Apart from that, I know hundreds of people born between 1951 and 60, 61 and 70, 71 and 80, 81 and 90 and so on, and they’ re all very different! Maybe they didn´t have a „Jonathan Haidt“ telling them they aren´t.
I wish it wasn’t true, but as the father of a 14 year old girl and 10 year old boy - the phones and tablets offer a massive and intense distraction to real life activities and socialization. We believe in responsible use - not draconian bans, so no devices on school nights (including Nintendo, PS5) for the 10 year old, and our daughter has to leave her phone in our room over night.
We also allow a lot of free play and our kids can bike and walk to friends houses. Lack of socialization is not really an issue, as I spend most weekends as my daughter’s uber driver.
That said, I applaud the in-school bans, because distracted kids aren’t learning - but I think the issue is far more nuanced from the front lines of parenting, than the discourse lets on.
Excellent. So easy to jump to conclusions, and it's great to see some reporting that captures the complexity. I'm going to share this with a therapist and a Gen-Z cousin (a U.S. kid who just graduated from a UK university with honors.)
If giving children smartphones was an acceptable experiment, surely it is also an acceptable experiment to withhold smartphones. Parents are required to provide food, shelter, care. They are not required to provide expensive gadgets.
Not everything is a two way street in experimenting as you suggest. Parents should feel free to experiment with their kids' social media use. Keep institutions out of it.
I really appreciate this take. I'm deeply suspicious of smartphones and most tech in general, having been raised without a TV in the deep woods. I feel that my analog, nature-forward youth was critical in the development of my imagination, and I wish the same for my kids. Perhaps because I was such a Luddite, I find the smartphone to be quite overwhelming, even to me, a 40-year old woman. On the days when I use it for more than a couple of hours I can hear the anxiety, crackling like static between my ears. I can't imagine it's healthy to have that woven into a persons' neurological development, if only because we haven't evolved for it. (Yet.) Still, I take solace in your points, as these are practical issues ahead. My husband and I DO use our phones, often in front of our kids. The eldest is almost 12 and such an imbalance won't last long. One upside is that having our kids as witnesses has prompted better phone hygiene from both of us. I suppose the only hope is to model using these modalities with intention.
Definitely parental models of behavior mean the most, Isabel. If there is evidence of real harm that outweighs benefits, I'd change my mind. But each family is going to have a different set of circumstances and approach to this. I worry about taking away the connectivity from kids who are poor and who see and use the smartphone as a lifeline.
I don't think social media exposure relating to mental health is as straightforward as Haidt suggests, but I know its a real effect. Social media is pretty bad for adults, let alone children who cant yet control their impulses. Its also pretty obvious that it facilitates social contagions/fads, the explosion in gender ideology being one.
Agreed. Jean Twenge has a good Substack relating to tech and youth mental health. Gen Z self-reported transgenderism quintupled since 2014, skyrocketing during the pandemic when everyone was locked down and glued to screens.
I’ve read Jean Twenge’s book on generations. Very enlightening. I’ll check out her Substack as well.
Amen, brother. An intellectual debate is so easy to Shanghai in this soundbite-bitten age. Plenty of swank ideas like this Haidt-full one don't bare scrutiny.
PS. I meant bear in the preceding.
The Tale of 2 Grandparents -
My father recently passed away at 84 years old. Pops had a iPhone and was an active texter with all of his grandchildren. Sending messages and photos back and forth with the GenZers. He would give birthday wishes and congratulation messages routinely. And they to him.
My mother in law on the flip side is about the same age and never kept up with stuff like that.
They both saw their grandchildren in person about the same amount of time but my father was woven into the lives of his grandchildren in a much richer and more fulfilling way. He also followed them all on facebook!
Interesting take DJ. I really value our family text chain where we send around pictures and jokes. It's an addition not a replacement for IRL connections. Just as it was for your father.
I do think there’s something to the argument that living in a virtual rather than IRL world isn’t great for our mental health. But you make a good point about increased diagnosis being at least one possible reason for the rise in reported mental health problems among young people. Cremieux wrote an excellent post on how a similar dynamic is fueling panic over an “epidemic” of early-onset cancer. https://open.substack.com/pub/cremieux/p/early-onset-cancer-fast-facts?r=ggixk&utm_medium=ios