The smartphone freakout is harming children

oh my God enough with the Panic about kids using smartphones everywhere you look powerful figures are declaring that young people are suffering an unprecedented Mental Health crisis and smartphones and social media are to blame you see this rhetoric reflected all over social media from Twitter to comment sections on Instagram and YouTube videos in the past few months alone almost every major podcast Magazine TV news station and newspaper has argued that social media and cell phones are destroying the younger Generations mental health smartphones and social media addictions are destroying our children's lives that is a message and it's an important one is it finally time to take drastic action they need to make it adults only to save our children if you took addiction children and harm and monetization it sounds like trafficking to me social media continues to affect teens across the country often leading to depression I don't think many adults understood how powerful and dangerous these algorithms are uh movement to limit teenagers use of social media Gathering momentum all of the parents that we talk to are concerned about their kids knowing too much too soon and that's where social media can become a problem when I ask this group of Middle School moms what they believe the biggest threat to their kids is social media social media social media social media is a serious health hazard especially for young people it's messing with their minds and in an increasing number of tragic cases it's killing them in response to this media-driven outcry about kids in technology state and federal lawmakers have sought to take unprecedented steps to limit kids access to the internet Utah is trying to restrict kids from using social media Florida has been trying to ban social media for kids under the age of 16 and Congress has been trying to pass the kids online safety act a wide- ranging deeply concerning piece of legislation that would put massive restrictions on how young people can communicate and speak online and let's not forget about the Tik Tok ban tonight calls to do what to many is Unthinkable ban social media for the young this fear among older Generations about kids and smartphone use has reached a terrifying fever pitch and this video is the first in a multi-part series that I'm launching covering the moral Panic around kids and Technology use recently much of this Panic has been driven by the mainstream media and one man an author named Jonathan height and his best-selling book The anxious generation many might remember height from his previous book The coddling of the American mind where he argued against conservatives not being able to speak on college campuses without criticism so-called wokeism and he claimed that Progressive forces in society have quote taught a generation of students the mental health abits of anxious depressed polarized people well he's back now with a new explanation for why kids are so anxious and depressed it's the phones and he argues that the government must regulate social media or teens will quite literally mass and Alive themselves social media it's a trap that the company set for the kids and the harm it's causing is Instagram and Snapchat responsible for your son's death 100% Height's book is like catnip for white Suburban upper middle class parents media figures and politicians who rather than address the complex and systemic issues shaping most people's experience of the world crave a quick fix and smartphones and social media are are really easy scapegoat social media is dominated by companies that have spent the past decade putting profit above the safety and well-being of their user base they rely on fundamentally exploitative and irresponsible business models that no serious person would argue haven't led to some real world harm but although many of Height's claims about the dangers of young people using social media feel true especially to parents Boomers and media pundits those who actually study these topics professionally say that the science is not even remotely clear-cut and often shows the opposite of the narrative that height is pushing for instance just last year a massive study and review of research around kids and Technology use concluded that social media is actually one of the least influential factors in predicting kids mental health things like a history of depression violence discrimination School pressures and family Dynamics were all far more influential in affecting a Young Person's well-being just recently the nationaly of science engineering and Medicine released a report that found essentially no significant link between young people's social media use and mental health problems the report reads contrary to the cultural narrative that social media is universally harmful to adolescence the reality is far more complicated leading developmental psychologist Candace L aers who has studied smartphones and social media use in children since 2008 said that she and her colleagues have quote repeatedly failed to find compelling support for the claim that digital technology use is a major contributor to adolescent depression and other mental health symptoms hundreds of other research papers articles and reviews have reached the exact same conclusions as reason magazines Aon Brown recently noted many of the research papers that height sites in the anxious generation contain coding errors inappropriate statistics and other pretty egregious issues he relies on irrelevant or outdated data or data collected for totally different purposes analyzed in really flawed ways according to Brown height sites 4 1 76 studies in his book that seem to represent this overwhelming case against young people's social media use but 2third of those studies were published before 2010 as in before the period that height even focuses on in his book so many of the studies that height cites either have major methodological errors or don't actually say what he claims they do height also displays graphs throughout his book showing that digital technology use and young people's mental health problems are rising together but this doesn't really show anything you could also put graphs showing an increase in in young people wearing baggy pants over the past few years that doesn't mean that the two things are causely related even taking these charts and graphs showing associations that face value doesn't prove that social media use causes depression it could just as easily be and by the way there are studies to this effect that young people experiencing mental health problems are more likely to use social media platforms or use them in a radically different way than their peers and many mental health conditions have always Arisen during puberty even before smartphones existed but this false notion that phones are causing an precedented Mental Health crisis is an irresistible narrative to parents who are primed to believe that their children are in constant Danger from nefarious outside forces this is exactly what has led to Tech focused freakouts like the Momo hoax of 2019 in which a fictional character named Momo was allegedly contacting children in the night via Facebook and telling them to un alive themselves Momo allegedly uses messaging platforms like Facebook's WhatsApp to compel young people to take part in dangerous activ acties from stabbing people and taking pills to Suicide it sounds like it's popping up and then it's giving you this directive so it could be take pills it could be kill yourself of course none of this was true Momo doesn't even exist it's an inanimate sculpture by a Japanese artist with zero capacity to message your children and not a single death has ever been linked to this sculpture the problem isn't just that the moral Panic around smartphones and children is total BS it's also incredibly dangerous because it mainstreams this really regressive worldview that is resulting in legislation that strips young people of civil liberties and ultimately causes immense harm to the most vulnerable kids especially young women and lgbtq youth researchers who actually study these issues have said time and time and time again that things like access to guns sexual abuse discrimination racism sexism the opioid epidemic economic hardship and just the general state of the world are all far more influential factors in affecting young people's mental health as the journalist Liz Nolan Brown notes for each data point cited by height a wide variety of non-te explanations could work and in most cases are far more likely but it doesn't matter because what height is pushing feels true it feels like the easiest explanation especially to older people like those in the media in Congress height and this cadra of media pundits pushing this Smartphone freak out say that there is this urgent need for government action to restrict young people's access to smartphones and social media and that's leading to really scary laws that will restrict young people's access to information and take away their voices online no more Tik Tok it's back to CNN and mainstream media for the news and don't you dare question it I wish Banning kids from social media and taking away their smartphones would solve all of their problems and give them a happy and carefree childhood unfortunately I'm a millennial in my late 30s and I'm old enough to actually remember what a cell phone and social media free childhood was actually like and let me tell you it was not the perfect world that height and the media would have you believe your entire world was restricted to your physical reality and you had absolutely no voice in the political system or ability to connect with anyone outside your immediate geographic area it was an especially brutal time for young women and kids from marginalized groups the mainstream media dominated everyone's information diet and there was no way for young people to organize descent or be heard this is why you see nearly every major civil liberties group lgbtq organization and human rights groups vehemently fighting against these proposed federal and state mandated social media restrictions on young people for the most marginalized kids social media is a lifeline and even for non-marginalized kids it provides a window and access to a broader World outside of a young person's physical reality this is why far-right conservatives are so focused on cutting it off they don't want kids to learn about the world around them through social media they don't want them questioning mainstream media narratives and for instance becoming aware of things like the atrocities happening in Gaza or questioning the power of the 80-year-old who run this country height and those pushing this social media phone Panic ironically want to coddle children they want to keep them off the internet and restrict their social connections which ultimately leaves them less informed and naive to the possibility of a better world people in power recognize this as the end result this is why lawmakers have expressed support for the Tik Tok ban falsely claiming the app is harming young people's mental health and quote poisoning their mind this idea that the phone is a nefarious object that might brainwash your children into becoming mentally ill or gay is echoed by people like height and those in Congress for example when Marsha Blackburn was recently asked about her support for the kids Online safety act she said that she was backing it to restrict young people from being radicalized into the transgender ideology on the internet height echoed this type of reasoning in a recent interview with PBS setting aside the fact that being gay or trans isn't some sort of contagious diagnosis and young girls do not struggle with mental health issues for clout Height's commentary is consistently used by the farri and liberals alike to push these backwards laws built off faulty logic as Candace aers recently wrote in the Atlantic two things can be true first the online spaces where young people spend so much time require massive reform and second social media is not reiring children's brains or causing an epidemic of mental illness and focusing solely on social media as the problem means that the real causes of these mental disorders and distress among young people go unaddressed we should not send the message to families or teenagers that social media use is inherently damaging shameful or harmful it's simply not true aer's writes that what she and her fellow researchers have seen from studying young people on social media is that they mostly use these tools to do regular adolescent stuff they connect with offline friends from school listen to music watch shows play video games with friends and they watch YouTube videos like this one young people use social media and smartphones to seek out information about health gender identity to get support for many marginalized kids and those who don't have support in their family or School lives the internet is a safe space it's a refuge it's a place to explore connect be creative and learn it's quite literally a Lifeline in a recent report put out by the center for information technology policy at Princeton University some of the top academic studying kids and Technology youth said this quote we believe the current slate of concerns around Youth and social media use meet the criteria for a moral Panic which is not solid basis for legislation being able to recognize the moral Panic about smartphones and social media use that height and much of the mainstream media is pushing is perhaps best accomplished by examining the moral panics of decades past the truth is that this entire freak out about cell phones and Tik Tok isn't new in fact every single time we've been faced with a new form of media or technology there is a corresponding movement pushed by the media academics and concerned parents declaring that it is destroying young people's mental health and specifically young women's Minds making them anxious antisocial depressed and fundamentally unable to function in the world we've seen this cycle play out for centuries but just to look at recent history consider the reaction to the landline telephone not long after they became mainstream and ubiquitous the media declared that young people were becoming telephone addicts talking for hours with friends over these new fangled devices landline telephones were blamed for destroying the nuclear family because wives were spending too much time talking to friends rather than in the kitchen and baking the media blamed young women chatting on telephones for men's extramarital Affairs and even tried to tie the telephone to high food prices because women would Place orders at their local markets by phone rather than seeing the goods in person news outlets and pundits of the day linked landline telephone used to Crime because people could get heated during phone calls in one case after a Man became so insense that a telephone line was busy and he needed to make a call he assaulted someone the media called on Telephone companies to solve the problem each time technology and media evolve pundits will argue that this new technology or media is fundamentally different back in the 1800s when printing became cheap there was a nationwide Panic that young people were reading too many novels academics and media of the time claimed that reading too many novels could turn children into violent Psychopaths or lead them into lives of lust many of the arguments against allowing young people to read novels are nearly word for word the arguments used today against social media and Tik Tok leaders of the time argued that quote obsessive novel reading occupied too much of children's time and made young people developmentally unbalanced these kids weren't going outside or Hanging With Friends novels were turning children's Minds into pudding in one 1835 essay titled devouring books the author argues that young people were being turned into thoughtless Zombies by becoming addicted to novel reading one article from 1909 recommends setting time limits on reading psychiatrists and doctors claimed that too much reading was especially destroying young women's Minds in one 1910 article the author declares that quote the effect of excessive novel reading on the married women is responsible for 9/10 of divorce when newspapers became widely distributed in the US people argued that children should be shielded from them some people sought to Institute age limits on reading the news less young people learn too much about the world around them for their young age in 1927 the media claimed that jazz books were leading to an uptick in youth suicides one Senator claimed that too much reading of jazz books was leading to quote boys and girls with developed lopsided Minds by the 1950s young people had moved on from reading novels to comic books and the cycle began again one 1948 article claimed that comic books were leading to psychiatric conditions among young people causing them to commit crimes it's notable that these moral panics are always pushed forward by academics pundits and concerned Suburban white parents for instance in the late 1940s a psychiatrist and author named Frederick Wortham was treating juvenile delinquents when he noticed that many of those that he treated often read comic books he quickly declared that comic book readers were aggressive and crimer prone and that these Comics were poisoning the minds of American Youth people ate these theories up lawmakers discussed comic book bands parents were freaking out and there was this widespread belief that comic books had destroyed the minds of American Youth this backlash became so heated that there was even a public comic book burning in Missouri a troop of Girl Scouts collected comics and held a mock trial for comic books declaring the books guilty of leading young people people astray and building up false conceptions in their minds leading to mental health issues in Vancouver Canada nearly 8,000 comic books were set on fire by an organization focused on what child safety Wortham was the Jonathan height of his time he published a massively popular book in 1954 called the seduction of the innocent which was full of bad research studies misrepresented claims such as that botman and Robin Were Gay and claimed that comic books were destroying and disrupting a natural childhood but comic books were ultimately no match for television which was increasingly present in every child's home by the 1960s and' 70s once again we saw a moral Panic ensue people worried about kids Tes snoozing or needing more naps because they spent too much time watching TV in the 1970s the concept of Television addiction became mainstream with television shows compared to illicit drugs one 1972 article a sociologist said that women were quote tripping out on soap operas entering a state similar to that of being on heavy drugs the media claimed that television commercials were getting young women hooked on buying things in 1977 a well-known psychiatrist suggested that parents should keep television sets locked away in closets while not in use so as not to Spur a TV watching binge that same year a man tried to argue that television addiction drove him to murder his neighbor when home computers arrived in the 1980s and '90s they too were blamed for socially isolating people and destroying the minds of the youth wman which also became popular at this time were called mind altering devices that could effectively re rewire young people's brains again the same talking points used today about social media in the late ' 80s and '90s beepers became a thing you know those little devices that alert you when someone's trying to reach you well parents and academics and the media stage such an extreme moral Panic about beepers that several States made it illegal to carry any sort of paging device onto school grounds even in your backpack because they falsely believed that beepers were leading young people into a life of depression drug use and crime not you know teenagers just trying to keep in touch with each other in 1997 70 students at Foreman High School outside Chicago were arrested for possession of a beeper and children across the country in multiple States had brushes with law enforcement simply for carrying them every actual young person that the media spoke to about beepers made it clear how absurd these freakouts were for instance Chris Corso a then 17-year-old senior in high school in New Jersey told the New York Times quote I'm not really at home too much and my friends and parents like to keep in touch now they can page me but the media and lawmakers didn't care the idea that this dangerous unprecedented new technology was destroying young people's minds was too compelling one of the most famous moral panics that some of us lived through as Millennials was the video game freak out of the early as the 1999 Coline high school shooting was blamed on video games not you know access to guns which of course spurred another decade long moral Panic about gaming gaming was also compared to drugs it was thought that kids who played games would fall into a life of violent crime and depression 20 years later academic evidence overwhelmingly finds zero link between playing video games and committing violence and crimes not to mention video games are widely popular in Japan and South Korea which have the lowest rates of violent crime in the world I could go on and on there have been too many moral panics about media and Technology to even count every single time the same group of academic pundits parents groups and the media work together to whip up a frenzy making the same exact arguments about TI talk as they did about novels comic books television walkman's beepers and more and here's one thing that me and all the Boomers freaking out about kids and smartphones actually agree on many young people today are too isolated they should be able to spend more time outside of their homes with their friends engaging in leisure activities but the reason they aren't doing those things is not because of social media and smartphones as the technology and media scholar Dana Boyd who has studied young people and their social media use for decades recently explained on my podcast power user kids today are not growing up in the same world that their parents or people like Jonathan height did cities and suburbs today are far less walkable and bikable than in decades past it's not easy to bop around to friends houses when your suburb is crisscrossed with busy roads with no sidewalks and highways all over kids today also don't have nearly the amount of leisure time that they used to they're inundated with hours and hours of homework and a growing list of extracurricular responsibilities giving them less play time than children had in just recent decades parents are also more likely to encourage their kids to stay home and stay indoors parents of color especially say that events like Trayvon Martin's death and the murder of countless other black and brown youths in recent years have made them nervous to send their children out to play unsupervised they'd much rather that their kids stay home in their bedrooms on their phones where at least they know that they'll be safe and kids today are facing increasing economic anxiety due to the precarious nature of our economy wealth disparity unstable housing ing stagnant wages and the ongoing pandemic which is still killing over a thousand Americans a week and leaving millions and millions of young people and their caregivers disabled and forced out of the workforce permanently in fact just 2 years into the pandemic back in 2022 nearly 8 million children had already lost a parent or primary caregiver to covid related causes and that was before CO's most infectious and deadly variants had begun to spread and all safety measures had been lifted losing a primary caregiver is devastating it's deeply traumatic for a child and significantly more harmful to a kid's mental health than too much screen time yet none of these other factors are ever discussed by the media or lawmakers this current generation of kids was also raised in the aftermath of the 2008 recession and while height and other pundits love to claim that the resulting economic chaos isn't a factor since the unemployment rate has technically gone down they ignore the broader economic instability that young people face under our current version of capitalism families in the bottom 20% of income distribution continue to experience major Financial harm and nearly one in six children in America lives below the poverty line these are major structural issues with our society that taking away Tik Tok and banning kids from using cell phones won't fix in fact it only Cuts kids off further and I think it's worth noting that the same politicians on both sides of the aisle along with those in the mainstream media who are backing this campaign to cut kids off from smartphones also consistently vote and rail against things like gun control measures youth Mental Health Services money for parks and public Recreation subsidized meals and child care all things that are actually proven to help kids mental and physical health and no one is claiming that these social media companies can't do better using social media the wrong way especially if you're already struggling mentally can have negative consequences literally anyone who uses the internet these days is acutely aware of its downsides platforms should undeniably roll out more robust user controls data privacy protections and responsible algorithmic recommendation systems parents also need to learn how to communicate with their children and build resilience and responsible technology and media consumption habits as one robust Recent research paper on the topic explains social media is not like a toxin or nutrient for which each exposure dose has a defined link to a health rated outcome rather than comparing smartphones and social media to drugs think of them as tools that can be used in a variety of ways human connection is good for us we need it especially vulnerable kids but there are healthy ways to connect and engage with others and then there are ways that are more indulgent we need young people to have exposure to these Technologies from a young age so that they can learn these lessons early and develop a healthy and productive relationship with the media and Technology of their time despite the desires of many the world is not becoming less interconnected or less digital as lawmakers the media and pundits like height ruminate over smartphone usage kids are growing up with wearable SmartWatches refrigerators that allow you to tweet and AI toys that speak and interact with you soon we won't just be consuming information through these little screens we'll be receiving it through smart glasses augmented reality voice enabled AI earbuds and who knows what else it's tempting to blame smartphones and the internet for all of society's ills it's a captivating narrative not just for parents but for kids themselves young people today aren't old enough to remember a time before phones and Boomers consistently romanticize it the truth is adolescence is never easy no matter what time period you were born into as civa VI hython a media scholar and professor at the University of Virginia recently said if you really care about the mental health of young people and young girls in particular then listen to Young people and young girls understand that life is complicated respect young people enough to avoid the simple glib unfounded Mass diagnosis and prescriptions that people like Jonathan height and the media are shoveling out rather than feeding into the these superficial narratives about young people in technology that are fundamentally unsupported by research let's all work together to build a more Progressive inclusive optimistic and Tech enabled future for all of us and let's recognize that when it comes to kids and Technology the real anxious generation are the Boomers and media pundits stoking these moral panics thanks for watching And subscribe to my podcast power user wherever you get your podcast for more Tech and online culture news every week

2024-08-11 07:55

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