This week I read up on what's currently happening to kids and their relationship to social media and smartphones.
Especially the following thw pieces of media: The Ezra Klein Show: ‘Our Kids Are the Least Flourishing Generation We Know Of’ interview with Jonathan Haidt and his book on the topic:
And the podcast Search Engine 'What’s actually on teenagers’ phones? ' and a documentary tv show on the topic where teenagers show their phone screens to their parents as a social experiment
Yes yes, both are outlets that are clearly progressive partisan. But this topic really is a non partisan topic. Don't click away yet.
Here are my key takeaways on the topic:
How kids spend their time
- For most of human history kids and teenagers spend their time with other kids. And especially not only their exact same age: also with kids a few years older and younger. This is obviously a lot less now that kids are almost exclusively online. When kids play outside and have other kids that are 2y older as rolemodels and look out for other kids that are 2y younger that obviously changes something in their upbringing and how they learn to behave in social connections. What changes about personality of humans when whole generations did not have this experience?
- Kids spend more and more time with their parents. This might be surprising in a story that is primarily about less and less socializing. But parents are more and more of the opinion that the most important goal in parenting is spending "quality time" with their kids. But is this true? Shouldn't they spend time with peers instead?
- The offline world is online now. In the tv show referenced in the podcast the filmcrew also got insight what teenagers do on gettogethers and partys. It was a surprising sight. Everyone is used to being filmed all the time. A boy jumped off a building, another kid took drugs and ended up in the hospital. But haven't teenagers always done stupid shit? The key difference is the boy did not jump off a building because he was a stupid teenager having fun. He did it to go viral online. What a bleak bleak new world.
- Younger than you expect. Did you know that 40% of 2yo own a tablet/ipad? I still remember the outrage of 10yo owning non-smart phones. The topic is still on but now it's babys. Also elementary school aged kids are almost surely all confronted with softcore porn and violence regularly. You can almost expect a child of this age have also seen hardcore porn and extreme violence. This really begs the question why we as a society still count if a Marvel movie has 1 or 2 f-words - what a ludicrous contrast.
- What happens on the phone is a secret. Kids have almost all the behavior to not talk about what happens on their phones. To some extent this is normal, to some extent this is also a big mystery how this developed. Your teenage daughter will not tell you when she looks at bulimia, eating disorders, and superhuman women influencers all the time. Your 7yo will not tell you that they looked at disturbing violence gore content. Most mysteriously: even 3yo often already know this behaviour to hide their phone screens when playing phone games. How do they learn this? It is indeed a mystery.
Gender divide
Young girls and young boys have very different experiences here. Boys do still spend time with gaming and voicechats together. Young girls time online is very different. It is mostly alone. It is instagram pictures of unattainable lifestyle and looks.
The loss of common values
Jonathan Haidt had an interesting insight on the interplay of smartphones and the decline of religiosity here. The decline of religiosity in the west is obviously nothing new, it predates smartphones. But social media confronts kids with a whole world of different people and different values. So, a secularized world might not derive its values from religion anymore but a secularized world with local communities might still create consensus on values. But a secularized world where culture happens globally does not anymore. kids increasingly say they have no meaning or goals in life. In the interview Jonathan Haidt lists many statistics on this topic that you can look at from many angles but overall this is the trend.
An overaching concept in probably all value sets from liberal cities to arch conservative societies was some concept of social status. Maybe in an Amish village social status came from having a dozen children. Maybe in turbo leftist circles social status came from having an art exhibition.... you get the idea, the specifics do not matter. For teenagers this social status is synonymous with likes and followers. You, as a kid, will probably never have a million followers and therefore in this new world social status is unattainable.
This is of course very oversimplified. But you see how the world changed overnight when smartphones happened.
The concept of "Pacts"
If phones are so bad, just give it to them at an older age! Not so fast cowboy.
Kids with smartphones are less depressed, less anxious, more social, get more exercise, & experience less cyberbullying than kids w/out smartphones
The problem here is of course that kids without phones are social outcasts. This is even worse than the phones themselves.
The solution that has become really popular post covid is the concept of pacts. A few parents from one neighborhood and/or one school year come together and make a pact to not give their kids phones until a certain age.
Depressingly, Jonathan Haidt analysis found that these pacts don't work that well: It's only a trend in what is upper middle class anyway. Statistically many parents "break" under the pressure before the year has arrived. And lastly, they only seem to work when the size of the pact is like 10 kids or bigger.
Conclusion
I encourage you all the watch the interview and or listen to the podcast. The world changed a lot and we are barely talking about it.