On 'The Anxious Generation'
/I read Haidt's latest a few weeks ago but as many know, I've had some of these thoughts for years so it's taken me a while to process. With kids ages 10, 13 and 15, I've had over a decade now of parenting whilst being mindful of technology. And over time, I've grown stronger in my parenting convictions: prioritizing lots of outdoor time, books, sports, investing in arts/music, experiential learning, etc. It's not been easy but it can be done and my oldest, who is now almost 15, has expressed gratitude in essentially being able to have a childhood freed up to read, explore, play sports, etc.
Background: growing up as a child in the 1980s and then as a teen in the 1990s means that I'm a solid Xenial; my birth year was highlighted in the NYTimes recently as being the 'last/first' generation: the last that experienced a tech-free childhood YET was also the early adopter of technology. So sometimes I feel the way I now as I did growing up as a first generation Latina: I have to translate some norms/expectations from one world to another. With my kids I tell them that I had a PowerMac in college, emailed essays to profs, etc but I also backpacked around Europe as a college student relying on Lonely Planet books to find hostels, and later as a professional, was constantly traveling to places such as Russia, India and China without a phone-only some printed out Mapquest directions to find my business meetings. In short, life is certainly easier with technology, but neurological pathways (and grit-type skills) were clearly honed! I say this to share that I'm not a Luddite but I also know how rich and full an offline life was, and can be.
But tech is here to stay and in many ways, I'm fine with that. However as Haidt points out, tech itself changed after 2010. Smartphones ubiquitously altered the ways we not only USE tech but HOW tech is intimately intertwined with our lives. And I highly believe that is something to not be fearful of, but to be extremely conscious of, and yes, a bit guarded. Social media, for all it's promises of connections, too often leaves adults (let alone kids and teens) feeling more alone and we sadly now have the hard data on its negative impact on mental health (anxiety, depression, suicide).
So what is one to do? Haidt (an NYU professor of ethical leadership) outlines 4 reforms:
1. No smart phones before high school
2. No social media before 16 (preferably 18)
3. Phone-free schools
4. Far more unsupervised play and childhood independence
I won't go into detail into all this (read the book!) but some takeaways: if you're a parent that has already read a lot on this topic, most is not novel but it will help you as you parent older kids/teens with tech: I read swarths of this book aloud to my teen boys so they'd understand things like the dopamine loop, etc. Knowledge is power and teens are not amused knowing they are being taken advantage of! Haidt refers to smartphones as 'experience blockers' and I've started to keep that in mind when I'm tempted to mindlessly scroll. I also shared with the kids that I'm a middle aged adult: if I choose to 'waste' an hour of my life on social media, this is my own time management decision. But their minds are growing, the frontal cortex we now know is not developed until 25 and childhood is fleeting and worth protecting! Just like we as a society put guardrails on certain products until an older age, so should smartech or at least social media be considered as such given how powerfully addictive it is (and again, the negative consequence on mental health).
The good news is that more adults are sounding the alarm on this and we now have social-media/browser free phones/watches: this solves the need for kids to be in touch when not at home and to text/call family/friends. My 14 year old has appreciated the Gabb watch for the reasons above and other friends who wanted the camera/music have the Gabb phone. But honestly he hasn't asked for that yet nor truly needed it and this is a kid who is in two hybrid school settings, plays on travel team sports, and is highly involved in extracurriculars. Why choose a Smartphone when these options are available?
Now tech in the schools is a different beast and one that upsets me to no end. I recall when our district gave each kindergartner an iPad and the sweet teacher looked as baffled as the parents. The next few years I had to be way more involved than I wanted to be at the elementary level to ensure my kids were using manipulatives for math versus being forced to learn on some math app. The same with reading. All these wonderful books in the school library/classroom and my 9 year old was pushed to weekly read some cheesy kids newsite online and would come home asking about vaping and such. Sigh. I know there can be some wonderful educational tech tools, but for 13 and under, unless there is a special need, the research shows that learning offline is best for neurological and physical health and growth. As Haidt notes, here is a reason why all the tech titans are sending their kids to screen-free Waldorf schools! Part of what made me want to weep in the book was the admittance by tech executives that they 100% knew that they were exploiting the neurological dopamine loop with every app they created. And phone free school time can be, and frankly should be, done. My boys are in a hybrid program at a school where the policy is clear (and enforced) that phones need to stay in lockers during the day. I've been in the school and it's heartening to see kids interact at lunch, play games and yes, the ones who need to introvert have a book with them! (I spent most of my lunches in 5th/6th grade with Clearly and Blume!) And no one is assigned a Chromebook: they can be checked out when needed for class presentations, etc but no one is expected to personally have one, even up through 12th grade. I've let the school leadership know many times how much I appreciate that! I contrast that to my friends in our local districts who constantly share with me stories ranging from elementary school pornography use to 8 year olds being parked in front of YouTube videos during lunch so they'll be quiet. At what point do our kids' mental health and personhood take precedence over educational tech platforms? Further, is anyone listening or consulting with the teachers? Many of my friends are in that profession and not a single one has appreciated having to manage laptop usage all day long versus true teaching and having smart-whiteboards and educational platforms forced upon them. Not to mention that they themselves note the short attention span of this generation and several have mentioned how alarmed they are by it. I believe that educational tech reform is in our view and I'm here for it.
We are in the midst of watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy with our boys and what has struck me was how analogous the power of the ring is to the power of smartphones! I myself struggle with it and when you stop to look around anywhere, it's quite depressing to see people just hunched over and staring as they walk, eat, etc. I know that up until my early 30s, society did not function this way. I am hopeful that this can be changed and as I said, my husband and I personally are not thrilled with our use of tech these past 15 years and want to work more on addressing that. I've included other books in the Stories that have encouraged me on our low-tech journey. I also have to give credit to Sherry Turkle, MIT professor, who sounded the alarm a decade ago on all of this and gave me language to explain what was in my gut as she implored prioritizing personhood and relationships over technology.
I'm not able to get into the 'safetyism' that Haidt mentions (this is getting long!) but the overmanaging of childhood feeds into the tech beast. I also want to address the lack of 'third spaces' this generation has. It's something that my husband and I started to notice as my oldest became a teen and there have been several great articles recently about that (perhaps the amount of time I spent at the malls and movie theatres wasn't ideal, but it did help cultivate independence) and have appreciated that youth group in particular has helped with this. Online spaces truly cannot take the place of a 'third' physical space and we adults can get creative in creating those.
The encouragement in all this as much is bleak: WE are the adults in the room, old enough to remember that life was not always like this and young enough to be able to advocate for our children and fight for tech/educational reform. But start with those right in front of you: kids, grandkids, etc. So much of societal change starts at home and don't underestimate the influence that you have in your family/communities. Sometimes all it takes is a few little Hobbits in the wilderness to move mountains.