Big Tech and its ‘Big Shock’ to Childhood
Ironically, while driving to and from the Year 6 Camp on the Shoalhaven River this week (where boys would be canoeing, abseiling, camping, exploring etc - see photos below), I listened to the audiobook, ‘The Anxious Generation’, by Jonathan Haidt (social psychologist and Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University).
I say ironically, as Haidt draws attention to the fact that the move from basic phones to smartphones, in the early 2010s, in many ways hijacked (amongst other important things) play-based education and its many critical benefits.
In a Messenger early last year, I wrote an article on the damage smartphones are doing to our kids. It was a summary of a piece from the Australian (March 2024), based on the work of Haidt. I include it again in this edition of the Messenger in light of the recent ‘Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024’. This Act introduces a mandatory minimum age of 16 for accounts on certain social media platforms, forming one part of a broader strategy to create safer digital spaces for everyone. The age restriction requirements will take effect by December 2025 and have the potential to empower parents as they enforce important technology boundaries.
Over the coming weeks, I will draw on Haidt’s insights to hopefully further assist you as you navigate the potential pitfalls of smartphones for our children.
“It wasn’t until teens got smartphones that they could be online all the time, even when away from home. This is concerning as there is no equivalent of movie ratings in the online world. Social media platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok don’t enforce their minimum age of 13.”
Once teens moved from basic phones to smartphones, in the early 2010s, they had virtually unlimited access to everything on the web anytime, anywhere.
At this point, Gen Z began socially distancing.
In his new book ‘The Anxious Generation’, Jonathan Haidt (social psychologist and Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University) documents what he terms a ‘social blunder’ in all its dimensions:
- how childhood has been transformed by smartphones.
- the evidence showing the harm being done.
- how to reverse the damage — “what we can and must do now”.
- and how parents, schools and governments can implement that agenda.
As adolescents had access to smartphones, they began spending more time in the virtual world. A 2015 report by Pew Research confirmed that 25% of teens said that they were online ‘almost constantly’. By 2022, that number had nearly doubled to 46%.
“These extraordinary high rates suggest that even when members of Gen Z are not on their devices and appear to be doing something in the real world, such as sitting in class, eating a meal, or talking with you, a substantial portion of their attention is monitoring or worrying (being anxious) about events in the social metaverse.
The years from 2010 to 2015 marked “the definitive end of the play-based childhood”, Haidt says.
In assessing research studies, Haidt further adds US teens have displayed a ‘very large upturn in major depressive episodes’, beginning around 2012. He includes some Australian data, and it is alarming, showing a big rise in mental health hospitalisation from 2010 to 2015, with an 81 percent increase for girls and a 51 per cent increase for boys.
The turning point was the invention of the smartphone. By 2015 teens were mostly just going home, sitting on their beds, and communicating through a screen. During these years “social patterns, role models, emotions, physical activity and even sleep patterns were fundamentally recast”. The data shows the first generation of Americans who went through puberty with smartphones in their hands “became more anxious, depressed, self-harming and suicidal”.
In the span of just a few years, the traditional play-based childhood with plenty of time outdoors was replaced by a phone-based childhood — and the social consequences are immense. On a social media platform, a child can scroll through a thousand data points in an hour, each accompanied by posts (likes) showing whether the post was a success or a failure.
“Social media platforms are therefore the most efficient conformity engines ever invented”, Haidt suggests. “They can shape an adolescent’s mental models of acceptable behaviour in a matter of hours, whereas parents can struggle unsuccessfully for years to get their children to sit up straight or stop whining”.
The upshot is that young people often learn ways of “talking, behaving and emoting that may backfire in an office, family or other real-world setting”. Haidt warns that “identity, self-hood, emotions and relationships may all be different when they develop online life rather than in real life”.
Haidt has identified four foundational harms of the new phone-based childhood:
- social deprivation
- sleep deprivation
- attention fragmentation
- addiction
He also highlights two key parenting pitfalls: being over-protective by inhibiting play-based real-world activities; and being helpless at managing social media.
However, he also suggests four “foundational” reforms that he believes, if implemented, “will turn around the rising rates of mental illness and (enable us to) raise much healthier kids”. They include:
- more unsupervised play and childhood independence.
- no smartphones before high school (but allowing basic phones up to age 14).
- no social media before age 16.
- and phone-free schools.
Haidt’s mission is not just to rescue kids, but to rescue parenthood — to see a good parent as “one who gives their kids a play-based childhood”. His ambition for his book The Anxious Generation is “to reclaim human life for human beings in all generations”.
Peter Grimes | Headmaster
References:
‘The Anxious Generation’ (2024) Jonathan Haidt (social psychologist and Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University).
