Smart phones have poisoned our children's brains!

acts The generation of anxiety Jonathan Haidt's chilling assessment of digital carnage and invitation to parents everywhere.

By: Lucy Denyer / The Daily Telegraph
Translation: Telegrafi.com

Last month, the [UK] government issued new guidance to headteachers, giving them the power to ban mobile phones in schools. Phones are already mostly banned, however unclear the enforcement; however, the announcement grabbed many opinion polls as it followed a call for ministers from Esther Ghey - the mother of murdered transgender teenager Brianna - to sort out the "mess" of children's relationships with social media and the internet. Meanwhile, a parent-led movement called Free childhood without smart phones [Smartphone Free Childhood], now has thousands of members across the country, while a petition to ban smart phones [smartphones] and camera phones for under-16s has over 15 signatures at the time of writing.

There are many possible damages caused to our children by the ubiquitous presence of smart phones, says Jonathan Haidt in The anxious generation [The Anxious Generation]. Put simply, smartphones – or, more specifically, the social media activity they enable – are harming our children, and we need to do something about it. Encouragingly, banning phones in schools and banning children from accessing social media before the age of 16 are among the solutions American Haidt suggests. So, well done to Britain.

Haidt is the author of the 2018 hit, The spoiling of the American mind [The Coddling of the American Mind], in which he argued that overprotection had a negative effect on university students and that warnings and safe spaces do more harm than good. This time, Haidt planned to detail the negative effects social media had on democracy. But when she finished writing the first chapter of that draft, she realized that the story of teen mental health was much bigger than she thought, and that it was happening all over the world. The generation of anxiety, with the subtitle How heavy childhood internet connectivity is causing the mental illness epidemic, methodically identifies the problem, the damage it is causing, and what we can do about it. It's compelling, readable – and incredibly intriguing.

Take, for example, the fact that by 2016, 73 percent of American teenagers owned a smartphone, as did 28 percent of children ages 8-12. Today, 95 percent of teenagers. About half of American children get their first smartphone by age 11. In Britain, according to Ofcom, 97 percent of 12-year-olds have one. Haidt cites a 2015 Pew report that found one in four teenagers were online "almost constantly." By 2022, that number had almost doubled.

Now, consider that, as Haidt says, "anxiety and related disorders appear to be the defining mental illnesses of young people today." The rate of self-harm for young teenage girls in America nearly tripled from 2010 to 2020, and similar numbers were on the rise in other countries, including Canada and Great Britain. During this time, hospitalizations for mental health issues among young people increased exponentially. There has been an increase in the prevalence of sociogenic diseases ranging from Tourette's syndrome to gender dysphoria; younger and younger boys are addicted to Internet pornography; young people are increasingly at risk of "being unable to leave the house"; the process of concentration of attention is crumbling; the teenager is suffering from sleeplessness.

Haidt is clear about the cause of the mess: smartphones. He talks about some key developments: the arrival of the smart phone in 2007; the arrival of the "like" and "share" buttons on social media in 2009; and the launch of iPhone 4 in June 2010, the first with a front-facing camera that made taking selfies easier. All of these factors combined have led to what Haidt calls “the great childhood network,” during which “in just five years, teenagers' social patterns, role models, emotions, physical activity, and even and sleep patterns".

It must be admitted that parents also deserve criticism. The great networking, Haidt writes, comes with "a second plot line ... the well-intentioned and disastrous shift toward overprotecting children and curtailing their autonomy 'in the real world.' We don't let our children walk to school alone, or go to the shops or the park by themselves.

More broadly, as a society, we've moved away from a "play-based childhood," in which children advance in the world and learn about their limitations through age-appropriate real-life play, to phone play in which, online , everyone is effectively the same age, there are few barriers or boundaries, and children are fed a constant diet of highly problematic and often highly unhealthy content that is extremely difficult to disengage from – and they tire of creating and consuming content in social media. Girls and boys are affected differently: for girls, it's social media that does the real damage; for boys, it's games and pornography. But we have all, collectively, been inflicted with a degree of spiritual damage by the ubiquity of smart phones, which drag us down instead of up, encourage us to be angry and quick to judge and wink. from the beauty around.

Haidt is extremely convincing. I was, at first, interested in his premise, but skeptical. Few parents would deny that their childhood was freer than that of their offspring, but Haidt's view of the past— Mens sana in corpore sano [fit mind fit fit body], dangerous playgrounds and healthy wrestling – seemed a little rosy to me.

But as he methodically worked his way through the evidence of damages and I was mindful of my children (obsessed with PlayStation, looking for phones) and those of my friends (often anxious, heads down at screens, unable to focus on conversations), it was hard to disagree. In fact, I only had to consider my reaction when someone "likes" a post I've made on social media, or when my phone's battery dies. It's almost physical. What has this done to me?

However, the equally pressing question is: what can we do? We live in a world that is completely saturated with smart phones: it is almost impossible, now, to carry out daily life without one, whether it is to look up the bus schedule or pay the ticket. We cannot keep our children away from them forever.

Nor does Haidti recommend that it should. Instead, he advocates four fundamental reforms: more unsupervised play and childhood independence; no smart phones before high school (about age 14); no social media before the age of 16; and schools without telephones. They would not be difficult to implement; they cost next to nothing; they will work even without legislation. It's time, Haidt says, to end the ongoing experiment that sent our children, defenseless, into a completely foreign and often hostile land.

I disagree – but, also, I'm probably more optimistic than he is. Haidt believes there is no such thing as Generation Alpha – the next group of young people, the oldest of whom are around 13 – and there won't be until we can change the childhood conditions that are making young people so vulnerable. worried But, my children are all alphas and I think they are different from their ancestors. Those of Generation Z have seen the advent of the fast internet generation, iPhoneand social media. Alphas have always had these things, which means their parents, myself included, are not navigating this space completely blind. Arrival of groups Free childhood without smart phones is just a proof of that. It won't be easy to continue to deny my children smart phones or access to TikTok. But I know I won't be the only one to do so – and, thanks to Haidt, I have plenty of evidence on my side. /Telegraph/