Review here.
Haidt does recognize that nuance complicates the issue. Online — but not in the book — he and colleagues report that adolescent girls from “wealthy, individualistic and secular nations” who are “less tightly bound into strong communities” are accounting for much of the crisis. So perhaps smartphones alone haven’t destroyed an entire generation. And maybe context matters. But this rarely comes through in the book.
His first step is to convince us that youth are experiencing a “tidal wave” of suffering. In a single chapter and with a dozen carefully curated graphs, he depicts increases in mental illness and distress beginning around 2012. Young adolescent girls are hit hardest, but boys are in pain, too, as are older teens.
The timing of this is key because it coincides with the rise of what he terms phone-based childhood. From the late 2000s to the early 2010s, smartphones, bristling with social media apps and fueled by high-speed internet, became ubiquitous. Their siren call, addictive by design and perpetually distracting, quickly spirited kids to worlds beyond our control.
It wasn’t phones alone. A second phenomenon coincided with the rise of the machines: the decline of play-based childhood. This change started in the 1980s, with kidnapping fears and stranger danger driving parents toward fear-based overparenting. This decimated children’s unsupervised, self-directed playtime and restricted their freedom of movement.
Summary: Children are in crisis, but there's no real evidence that social media is to blame. Over-focusing on social media distracts our attention from interventions that might truly matter.
When 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.
Two things can be independently true about social media. First, that there is no evidence that using these platforms is rewiring children’s brains or driving an epidemic of mental illness. Second, that considerable reforms to these platforms are required, given how much time young people spend on them. Many of Haidt’s solutions for parents, adolescents, educators and big technology firms are reasonable, including stricter content-moderation policies and requiring companies to take user age into account when designing platforms and algorithms. Others, such as age-based restrictions and bans on mobile devices, are unlikely to be effective in practice — or worse, could backfire given what we know about adolescent behaviour.
Review of TAG here ; note: the review also contains several links to other critiques of TAG.
Summary: Haidt is too polemical, undermining trust. His fear tactics push parents towards panic, rather than meaningful action.
I want to start with some big picture thoughts. I agree with many of Haidt’s recommendations. He talks about the benefits of free play and the importance of granting kids autonomy. I concur. I also agree with him that the explosion in access to phones and social media over the past few decades has likely contributed to the overall decline in mental health among teens. I think it’s important for parents to think about safety and structure when they are considering their kids’ access to devices and social media, as he suggests.
But there are elements of the book that do not sit right with me and, frankly, make me mad. Haidt argues that it’s clear based on the science that phones and social media are a key driver of the recent rise in teen mental health problems. I do not agree. And I think in over-stating the research the way he does, he undermines faith and trust in science in worrying ways.
I also think he relies on fear tactics to make parents — mostly mothers, because mothers are typically the ones who read parenting books — feel terrified and guilty in ways that are both unproductive and unfair. I recently ran into several moms on the school playground who were totally panicked about the book, wondering if they should steal their kids’ phones and throw them into the Hudson river. Maybe they were half-kidding, but there’s no question they were freaked out.
Review of TAG here.
Summary: The issues are more systemic, and can't really be dealt with at an individual level. Adults are perhaps even more vulnerable that children. Banning phones is too simplistic; smartphones are important sources of information, community, and agency for kids.
Laying the responsibility at the feet of overburdened parents (let’s be real, mothers) and suggesting that we should be the ones to resolve it is not only insulting, it’s pushing conservative notions of individual responsibility while ignoring the broader societal structures at play.
As parents, there is only so much we can do individually without greater societal support. We aren’t handing off phones to our kids because we prefer spending our leisurely summer days indoors in front of a screen; we’re doing it because camps cost upward of our entire salaries and we don’t have 12 weeks of paid vacation. Our kids aren’t choosing to play Minecraft instead of hitting the swimming pool during yet another record-breaking heatwave — the pool’s closed because there’s no funding for lifeguards, and anyways, the air quality index is off the charts again because the oil companies won’t stop pumping or adhere to emissions limits. After all, kids can’t pass a math test if there are no math classes taking place. What are they supposed to do: log in to Khan Academy and take lessons on their phone?
Haidt’s not wrong that we are all, as a collective, on our phones too damned much, and our kids are no exception. Children learn what they live. But have you seen the way adults behave online? Blame phone overuse on the underdeveloped prefrontal cortex all you want, but even if they can’t put it down, many teens today have a better understanding of what’s appropriate behavior online than their grandparents stuck in the newstainment outrage cycle do. And as one researcher, Christopher Ferguson, a psychology professor at Stetson University, told Platformer via email, “Middle aged white men are three to five times more likely to kill themselves than are teen girls. There’s just no evidence for the common but largely mythical idea that somehow young people are more vulnerable to media effects than are adults.”
Child safety online requires not only kids (and their parents) turn off the social media spigot, it also demands the implementation of actual guardrails on those platforms; still, Haidt’s shifting arguments for how best to establish those guardrails worry those with knowledge of the industry. It’s important to protect kids, without removing vital pathways for connection and community. “It’s difficult to separate the technology of smartphones from the fact that they’re important sources of information, including about mental health, and even agency for young people,” Bradford Vivian, a professor in Penn State University’s Department of Communication Arts and Science and author of Campus Misinformation: The Real Threat to Free Speech in American Higher Education, told me. “Banning phones will restrict many young peoples’ access to both, and possibly their rights in the process.”
In any case, credit where it’s due: Haidt recognizes a problem and the necessity of collective action to pull us out of the tailspin. We do, as a culture, need to stop entertaining ourselves to death. But why is the solution that we all make a pledge to do it alone? Go ahead and put down your own experience blocker, as Haidt calls them, and sign an unbinding commitment that your kids won’t get smartphones until eighth grade or be on social media until 16. Pull out your high school memory boxes and teach them the dynamics of 10-digit texting on their new flip phones, a retro throwback that’ll go well with the wide-bottomed JNCOs they’ve revitalized. Maybe they’ll even learn some responsibility by getting jobs at the mall — if they’re lucky enough to live within walking distance of one that’s still open. It won’t necessarily slow climate change or reverse learning loss or stop any wars or bring back the joy we had living through ’90s latchkey childhoods, but it will give us some illusion that we are each as individuals still in control of our children’s lives. At least those of us who can afford to be.
But I’ll be over here, reflecting on what one child-free friend who spent years peacebuilding in war zones reminded me about parenting: Once our kids reach a certain age, it’s not our job to protect our children but rather to accompany them through life’s hard stuff. That’s where I think we will find our middle ground in this war for attention — not by signing arbitrary pledges that further divide our kids between those who have the privilege of a play-based childhood and those who have unfettered access to tech. We need to establish firm boundaries of what we will tolerate in our society and contribute to one that fosters all of our kids in their growth as they navigate what feels like uncharted waters.
Review here.
Summary: Argues that Haidt has insufficient evidence for his claims about smartphones. Suggests that Haidt doesn't sufficiently account for the impacts of COVID school closures. Haidt uses fallacious reasoning: "if it's not social media, what is it?"
If the first part of Haidt’s book – teens suffering, phones to blame – reads as sensational generalization, the second half is full of recommendations you have probably heard before, because Haidt cites nationwide professional associations of doctors and authorities.
The Anxious Generation proposes four solutions to the epidemic: “No smartphones before high school. No social media before 16. Phone-free schools. Far more unsupervised play and childhood independence.” With the exception of age-gating policies, these are not unreasonable things. Schools have seen remarkable results when they ban smartphones. Many educators are in favor of such prohibitions. Teenagers do struggle with appropriate use of social media, and many say it makes them feel worse about themselves. Allowing children playtime free of surveillance does not seem beyond the pale. Parents limiting children’s phone use before bed and in the early morning, as Haidt advises, is decent counsel.
The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry goes a step further, advising that parents themselves should attempt to model the habits of screen time they wish to see in their children.
That same organization that declared a mental health emergency among young people offers a measured approach to technology and teens in general: “Screens are here to stay and can offer many positives,” its website reads. But Haidt can see none of these positives in smartphones or social media, an unrealistic attitude. He rightfully points out that social media can be a nightmare of compare and despair, of the fear of missing out. The other side of the same coin is that it forms aspirational and inspirational communities, and outlets for creativity. Smartphones are likewise tools of productivity for young people: in 2012, squarely in the years that Haidt says the ruination of childhood began, Reuters reported that more than a third of surveyed American teenagers were doing homework on their phones. “Influencer” has become a derisive term, but the job of creating content for social media has minted a generation of young business owners. And how do you think the teenage students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school organized a global movement against gun violence?
Children have always inhabited worlds that seem foreign and foreboding to their parents – the internet is one such place. It is unsettling and unfamiliar to those who did not grow up with it. What The Anxious Generation does successfully is smooth on a salve over the hurt of being disregarded by a loved one in favor of a phone. It provides an answer to the painful parental question of “Why is my child ignoring me? Why are they spending so much time online and alone in their room?”
But the question of teen mental health is complicated and resistant to any single explanation. And overlooking all that smartphones can be for teens and adults – maps, digital cameras, novels, encyclopedias, Walkmen and whatever else Haidt dismisses as “other internet-based activities”– is a reductive understanding of our devices as mere gaming and gabbing machines. In 2024, these devices contain our lives.
Review here.
Summary: Haidt overstates the evidence that social media is to blame for the rise in rates of teenage depression. There are also many other possible sources for increasing anxiety and depression among kids.
Haidt’s investment in his “Great Rewiring” theory also leaves him with some blind spots. His call for anxious adults to let kids roam assumes that all overprotective parents live in areas that are basically safe, where kids can bike around or run errands or go house to house to play without, say, having to cross a six-lane highway. He misses the mark when he writes of Gen X parents “gleefully and gratefully” recalling their childhood independence; the kind of loud laughter he hears when he raises the topic, in my experience, is often more angry than nostalgic, children of the 1970s parenting as they do in reaction to the emotional absenteeism of their own parents. And his recollection of free and fun suburban childhood overlooks the fact that growing up is brutal for many — above all for kids who don’t fit the norms that prevail in their communities. To mock, as Haidt does, a playground sign at an elementary school in Berkeley, Calif., that includes “Tag Rules” like “Include everyone,” “No ball tag” and “If a player doesn’t want to play tag, then other players must respect that,” is to ignore that when children “manage their own affairs,” it’s often a “Lord of the Flies”-like experience.
Haidt also minimizes to the point of outright dismissal the sick-making potential of the unabating storm of miseries that Gen Z has endured in its not-terribly-long life span: 9/11 and its fearful fallout, the Great Recession, the climate crisis, hundreds of school shootings, crushing student loan debt, increased economic inequality, the opioid epidemic, and the spike in words and acts of hate targeting nearly every vulnerable group in turn. All are toxic stressors, and in the 2010s, all acted upon kids’ nervous systems, affecting them to different degrees, depending on their life experiences and their genetic propensity for mental illness.
Haidt could have done a lot with all that material. Because, when he steps away from his data — when he writes, as he puts it, “less as a social scientist than as a fellow human being” — his book can be quite wonderful. His chapter about the “spiritual degradation” of the phone-based life for all of us, regardless of age, beautifully grounds his critique in Buddhist, Taoist and Christian thought traditions. There’s no quibbling with Haidt’s suggestion, borrowing a phrase from the Tao Te Ching, that most of social media is “dust on the pedestal of the spirit.” His common-sense recommendations for actions that parents, schools, governments and tech companies can take (I should say “ought to take” in the case of governments and tech companies, because they won’t) are excellent. They include putting phones away in special pouches or lockers during the school day; keeping smartphones out of the hands of kids before high school (“basic” phones without internet connections are fine); and keeping younger kids off social media by raising the threshold for “Internet adulthood” (when a kid can sign a contract with a company to give away their data and some of their rights) from the current ridiculous age of 13 to 16, while also instituting enforceable methods for age verification.
There are a couple of big-picture questions Haidt doesn’t ask, much less answer: How did we end up putting electronic devices in the hands of children for hours on end in the first place? Why were we so collectively admiring of the “heroes, geniuses, and global benefactors” of Silicon Valley, who by their own admission sociopathically exploited “a vulnerability in human psychology,” as Sean Parker, the first president of Facebook, put it — our hard-wired need for connection, validation and approval, especially acute in middle-schoolers — to hook us in and screw us over, at younger and younger ages?
I can’t help but think that online childhood is less a cause than a symptom of a society-wide mental pathology that has swallowed up adults and kids alike. It may be that the multiply layered traumas of recent years have pushed us past a tipping point. In the epidemic of mental illness in kids, we may really be seeing what it looks like when vulnerable people are “triggered.”
Review here.
Summary: Haidt overstates the evidence. Access to online community is a net plus for children. Enforcing restrictions is impossible, and any efforts in that regard would likely backfire.
Jonathan Haidt’s new book “The Anxious Generation” blames youth mental health issues on social media in a way that’s easy, wrong, and dangerous.
The actual harms to getting this wrong could be tremendous. By coddling the American parent, and letting them think they can cure what ails kids by simply limiting their internet access, real harm can be caused.
Kids who actually do rely on the internet to find community and social interactions could grow further isolated. Even worse, it stops parents and teachers from dealing with actual triggers and actual problems, allowing them to brush it off as “too much TikTok,” rather than whatever real cause might be at play. It also stops them from training kids how to use social media safely, which is an important skill these days.
Treating social media as inherently harmful for all kids (when the data, at best, suggests only a very small percentage struggle with it), also would remove a useful and helpful tool from many who can be taught to use it properly, to protect a small number of users who were not taught how to use it properly. Wouldn’t a better solution be to focus on helping everyone to use the tools properly and in an age appropriate manner?
Review here.
Academic studies often make use of statistical techniques that are hard for the average person to decipher, which is a shame because "most published research findings are false," as Stanford's John Ioannidis argued in a 2005 paper. Ioannidis wasn't just referencing the many scandals of fabricated data, conscious or unconscious bias, and misrepresented findings. Even top researchers at elite institutions have been guilty of statistical malpractice. Peer review is worse than useless, better at enforcing conventional wisdom and discouraging skepticism than weeding out substandard or fraudulent work. Academics face strong pressure to publish flawed research. Few have the skill and drive to produce high-quality publications at the rate required by university hiring and tenure review committees. Even the best researchers resort to doing some easy, low-quality studies. Bad studies tend to be the most newsworthy and the most policy-relevant.
Many of the papers Haidt compiled contained coding errors, inappropriate statistics, and other issues. Most downloaded some data of little relevance—either cheap to generate, like surveying your sophomore psychology students, or data collected for a different purpose—and analyzed it with an off-the-shelf statistical approach.
Haidt cites 476 studies in his book that seem to represent an overwhelming case. But two-thirds of them were published before 2010, or before the period that Haidt focuses on in the book. Only 22 of them have data on either heavy social media use or serious mental issues among adolescents, and none have data on both.
There are a few good studies cited in the book. For example, one co-authored by psychologist Jean Twenge uses a large and carefully selected sample with a high response rate. It employs exploratory data analysis rather than cookbook statistical routines.
Unfortunately for Haidt, that study undercuts his claim. The authors did find that heavy television watchers, video game players, and computer and phone users were less happy. But the similar graphs for these four ways of spending time suggest that the specific activity didn't matter. This study actually suggests that spending an excessive amount of time in front of any one type of screen is unhealthy—not that there's anything uniquely dangerous about social media.
As any parent knows, children are complex human beings. Policies designed to control their behaviors don't often yield the results we expect. Even if we knew social media use caused depression, we wouldn't know the effect of policies that restrict social media use.
We know alcohol leads to many catastrophic problems, but that doesn't tell us how to regulate youth drinking. If we stop adolescents from using social media, we don't know what they'll do instead, and it might be more harmful.
Review is here.
On one hand, Haidt’s argument will resonate with anyone who has ever struggled with the feeling that they can’t stop looking at their phones. I feel bad when I scroll for too long, and refreshed when I put it down and go outside. The same holds true for most people I know. And as a mother, I’m concerned about the impact that these technologies will have on my kids.
On the other hand, data on this issue is mixed, and some studies contradict one another. Haidt pulls from a dizzying array of studies to make his point. But some academics question the methodologies and rigor behind some of the research — and suggest Haidt has drawn overbroad conclusions from conflicting data.
While researchers largely agree that there is a mental health crisis among young people in the United States, the cause of the crisis — and whether it's unique to Gen Z — is contested. “If anything, the mental health of older adults in the US is far worse,” Christopher Ferguson, a psychology professor at Stetson University, told Platformer in an email. “Middle aged white men are three to five times more likely to kill themselves than are teen girls. There's just no evidence for the common but largely mythical idea that somehow young people are more vulnerable to media effects than are adults.”
In the end, I buy the argument that this issue is more complicated than the more simplistic readings of Haidt’s thesis. He wrote a popular science book, after all, and it should surprise us that some researchers object to the conclusions he has drawn.
At the same time, we shouldn’t set aside the lived experiences of so many everyday smartphone users. For many of us, constant connectivity feels bad, and doomscrolling can heighten feelings of anxiety and depression. Meanwhile, getting outside and spending time with loved ones face to face can be the antidote to despair. I’m sympathetic to researchers who call attention to that dynamic, even if disputes remain about which claims are grounded in unassailable evidence.
Etchells says he fears that the current moral panic around technology will lead to bad policy outcomes. “I think everyone in this debate wants to do right by kids,” he told me. “My worry is that if we rush to develop policy based on poor research results, we end up with bans or regulations that, on day one, look like they’ve done a good job and we can all pat ourselves on the back for. But in the long run, they create more problems than they solve.”
Haidt argues that waiting for stronger evidence could be even more dangerous. He writes: “If you listen to the alarm ringers and we turn out to be wrong, the costs are minimal and reversible. But if you listen to the skeptics and they turn out to be wrong, the costs are much larger and harder to reverse.”
I understand that argument might not be compelling to researchers who are focused on the data. But as a mother, as someone who writes about the harms of tech and tech companies, I see his point.
Review here.
The truth is, it may be a very long time before we have definitive proof one way or the other.
So, then, what do we do? Do we dismiss this theory? Or do we dip our toes into the treacherous waters of common sense? Relying on common sense in the sciences is, generally, a very bad idea. Especially when it comes to evaluating the effects of new technologies (see: moral panics about bicycles, the printing press, cars, telephones…). But I do think a common sense argument is warranted here. I have to believe that the drastic shift in the early 2010s to a world of smartphones and social media played some role in the youth mental health trends that started at that time.
In general, I agree with some of the solutions Haidt proposes. But, again, I do not think we have strong evidence that they will work. In fact, we will likely never have enough evidence to say that, for example, age 14 is safer than age 13.75 for introducing smartphones, or 16 is better than 15 for social media.
So, the question becomes: how much evidence do we need to act? As a parent, I’ll likely try to delay giving my child a smartphone. I do not need a randomized controlled trial to tell me to do this. But what about schools? What about governments? How much evidence do we need to make legislative decisions? When the science can only take us so far, how do we make policy that does the most good, and the least harm, for our children? We do it by trying our best. Using the evidence where possible. And trying to avoid making things worse.2
Research can only get us so far here. Science can take us to the edge of the riverbank, but eventually, we need to forge across. The sooner we recognize the limitations of the evidence, the sooner we can find a path to the other side.
Review here.
In his article, Haidt raises legitimate concerns about the direction of young people that are not new fodder (e.g., teens are lonelier, less independent, and diagnosed with higher rates of mental health disorders). His solutions may make sense in a vacuum, but they are the kind of fear-based responses that make parents more stressed about how they are managing screen time and social media in their own homes because his proposed solution will likely will not work. (To be fair, he’s calling for these steps as a cultural norms correction but yikes that sounds even more impossible.)
This over-generalized conclusion that smartphones and social media are destroying our youth also leaves out the upsides of increased connectivity that smartphones and social media facilitate. What about the LGBTQ+ child whose life would be at risk in their own community if they were open about who they are, but can find a supportive community online? That could literally save a child’s life. Or the autistic child who decompresses with their favorite online characters after an exhausting day of in-person social demands. There’s also the potential for youth to build creativity and innovation skills that serve them well in adulthood. What if we looked at the opportunities and not only the threats?
Instead of a draconian approach to remove smartphones and social media from our children’s lives (good luck), I suggest the following measures:
- Start conversations early about the risks and downsides of smartphones and social media. In our family, we regularly talk about the addictive features designed by companies for profit, including how adults struggle with these features too. We discuss the research on how even having a phone nearby turned off can predict a letter grade lower on that task. I’ve expressed my concerns that the pull of the smartphone has made reading less interesting, and the implications of less reading for their futures. We talk about all of this so my Gen Z children can learn how to critically think about the responsibilities inherent to managing having a phone and social media.
- Watch your children. Don’t get caught up in the statistics from large studies that often tell us very little about our real lives. Pay attention to your child’s daily life, especially how much physical activity, in-person social time, and sleep they get. Haidt is correct that these three features of daily living predict better mental health and that smartphones and social media can compromise all three — but they don’t have to.
- See the opportunity for healthy growth and development. Instead of only focusing on the risks, fears, and extreme scenarios, widen your lens to include the positive possibilities. In my family, I am parenting in alignment with the long game of what I want for my children: for them to develop an internal sense of “too much” digital time. We delayed Fortnite for over a year of my son’s begging due to concerns about him fixating on it. That hasn’t happened for the last year since we allowed Fortnite - until the current Myths and Mortals season that has captivated him. But in his early gamer life, we’ve been practicing behavioral strategies to help him tune into when his body feels like it needs to move and when his eyes and brain need a break from the Fortnite action. It’s not perfect but he’s becoming more and more skilled at interspersing a range of activities: playing soccer around the house or outside, reading Percy Jackson for another version of Greek gods, playing a few rounds of Solitaire or his favorite songs on the piano. He’s only nine. I see this as the investment in his adolescence of knowing when he needs to stop doing whatever sedentary screen-related addictive activity lies in his future so we don’t have to constantly fight about it.