I continue to work my way through the much-discussed book “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness” by Jonathan Haidt.
It’s slow work, in part because I am taking lots of notes. I don’t know about you folks, but I am a slow, careful reader when dealing with subjects that I believe are unusually important.
A night or two ago, I hit a passage that — in my page annotations for the interview I hope to do with Haidt — I have nominated as a crucial chunk of summary material linked to the book’s Big Idea. Here it is:
Once we had a new generation hooked on smartphones (and other screens) BEFORE the start of puberty, there was little space left in the stream of information entering their eyes and ears for guidance from mentors in their real-world communities DURING puberty. There was just an infinite river of digital experience, customized for each child to maximize clicks and ad revenue, to be consumed alone in his or her room.
Note that one of the most important effects of a smartphone childhood is that it can unplug a child — during one of life’s most stressful transitions — from guidance by parents, mentors, pastors, teachers, etc.
In that context, consider the book’s case study about “Alexis” of greater New York City, who was given her first iPad at the age of 10.
She opened an Instagram account herself by stating that she was 13, even though she was 11. She would download the app, use it for a while, and then delete it so her parents wouldn’t see it. She learned, from other underage Instagram users, how to hide the app on her home screen under a calculator app, so she no longer had to delete it. When her parents eventually learned that she had an account and began to monitor it and set restrictions, Alexis made secondary accounts where she could post without their knowledge. …
Within six months of opening her account, the content Instagram’s algorithms chose for Alexis had morphed from her initial interest in fitness to a stream of photos of models to dieting advice and then to pro-anorexia content. In eighth grade, she was hospitalized for anorexia and depression.
“Alexis” is not alone, of course.
Here are a few painful details drawn from years of research into the many ways that social-media can shape young lives, in this case the lives of girls.
Girls who say that they spend five or more hours each weekday on social media are THREE TIMES as likely to be depressed as those who report no social media time. …
Researchers for the Center for Countering Digital Hate created a dozen fake accounts on TikTok, registered to 13-year-old girls, and found that TikTok’s algorithms served them tens of thousands of weight-loss videos within a few weeks of joining the platform.
In terms of basic research methods, the challenge is finding modern female teens who do not have smartphones containing social media apps. Many of the girls in that age group are among the smartphone users who confess that they are “constantly” online, mostly on the most powerful, personalized social-media platforms — such as Instagram and TikTok.
At this point, Rational Sheep readers know that — as a parent and grandparent who is also a mass-communication professor — I think this screen-culture issue is a “signal” that pastors, parents and educators are not going to be able to avoid (at least, I hope that they cannot find a way to avoid being concerned about these trends).
Thus, here is another reaction essay posted on Substack, by Katherine Johnson Martinko — writing as a concerned parent. The headline is “The Anxious Generation: Things Are Worse Than We Realized.” Here are some crucial passages:
I suspect that many parents have had a little voice in the back of their heads for years, saying, “This doesn’t seem right.” But because everyone else is propping up iPads on infant car seats, giving kids smartphones in grade 5, and letting teens post selfies and play video games for 8+ hours a day, then it must be OK. After all, parenting is hard and confusing, and humans have always looked to others to determine what is normal behaviour.
Haidt’s hefty new book, which just came out in late March 2024, is the smoke alarm going off at full volume. … An identical pattern has been found across major Anglo and Nordic countries during the same period and cannot be explained by other factors, such as financial crises, school shootings, politics, or climate change.
The Martinko essay also includes some basic Haidt information that I do not think I have shared yet at Rational Sheep.
Haidt lays out four foundational harms of the phone-based childhood that explain why mental health deteriorated with the uptake of smartphones. These are:
Social deprivation: U.S. teens spend far less time in person with friends.
Sleep deprivation: Sleep quantity and quality have plummeted.
Attention fragmentation: Teens get hundreds of notifications daily, which destroys their ability to stay on task.
Addiction: Teens are compelled to use phones in ways that resemble slot machine gamblers, with profound consequences to their well-being and relationships.
Here is one image from the Martinko post, illustrating the tsunami of images that flow out of the editing software that young people can use to warp the realities of their lives.
As you would expect, there is a powerful summary quote in that essay about the unique role that social-media apps play in the lives of millions of girls who need zero encouragement to worry about how their own bodies and faces compare with those of friends and media stars.
Girls are being shattered by social media, particularly if they start using it before and during puberty (11-13 is the most vulnerable period, but it never stops being dangerous). Girls are uniquely vulnerable to the design of platforms like Instagram because they are (1) more affected by visual comparison and their social standing has always been more tied to looks than it has been for boys; (2) their aggression is more relational, and these platforms give them an easy way to be mean; (3) they share emotions more readily, and emotions are contagious among girl groups; (4) girls are more subject to predation and often spend their online time in “defend” mode.
I will end with Martinko’s concern that — just like Marie Winn, in her classic “The Plug-In Drug: Television, Children, and the Family” — she believes that there is no way to avoid the fact that many parents are themselves addicted to digital screens, in part because they use them as babysitters, bribes and peacemakers.
Where I felt the book lacked was in his discussion of parental behaviour — and that’s where it gets tricky. Perhaps [Haidt] tiptoed around it because he wanted to avoid the landmine label of “parent shaming,” but it’s important to emphasize that, in light of this crisis, parents need to act differently. They are responsible for shaping children’s lives. Children can’t do it themselves. Just like a food diet, a child’s “digital diet” is at the mercy of the parent’s choices and example. I touched on this topic in my post, “It’s the Adults, Not the Kids,” and I maintain that the issue needs to be confronted, as uncomfortable as it is.
Yes, parents are part of the equation. Now, what about pastors-priests and educators?
That’s a topic that I hope to discuss with Haidt if and when I get to interview him for one of my “On Religion” columns. Haidt is an atheist, but his book does include a chapter with this title: “Spiritual Elevation and Degradation.”
FIRST IMAGE: Screen shot from YouTube feature “Instagram on iPad.”
