I did some graduate research on this recently. It isn't just kids and it isn't just smartphones. Above a certain threshold of moderate usage, time spent using electronics is negatively correlated to well-being for adults as well.
This is the part that gets a ton of resistance. I think the effect is more dramatic on kids due to them being impressionable, but over time it has the same negative effects on adults.
What counts as “using electronics”? I use electronics to read and write my mail, text my relatives, read the newspaper, listen to podcasts, read and listen to books, make purchases, find recipes, watch movies, listen to music, read magazines, blogs & Substack. Does your research implicate any or all of those uses? Is it the use of the electronic medium itself, or only interactive media? Does it make a difference if all that’s involved is a digital version of a previously analog activity like reading books/newspapers or using cookbooks or listening to vinyl?
I think there are layers to this situation, particularly with kids. It’s pretty clear how electronic devices, including earlier incarnations like TV - reduce the time spent in socialization for kids, or have opportunity costs in the real world, but one thing I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere is whether the essentially frictionless aspect of the digital environment is harmful to how - and whether - kids learn. I think it might. But I don’t see that as impacting adults, whose social and learning habits are already formed.
Excellent questions! The short answer is that the data is not perfect. Because digital technology is so new, and this kind of research requires longitudinal data - that is, people answering the same question every year over a long period of time - there is no ideal data set.
The data we do have asks about computer use in general, and time on the internet, which, as you point out, includes time at work. Also, there's the issue of causation. Does spending time on the internet make people lonely and unhappy, or do lonely, unhappy people spend more time on the internet? In all likelihood, it's a vicious cycle. Nonetheless, it's quite clear that the overall trend is a negative one.
That is an excellent distinction -- "Does spending time on the internet make people lonely and unhappy, or do lonely, unhappy people spend more time on the internet?"
In counseling recluses as clients, I would say it's a vicious cycle that feeds itself. The device and its use is anesthesia, but as you point out, there needs to be longitudinal data. I think a certain level of blindness is key, as most people are or don't want to be aware of their own usage, hence why much of this has been brushed off.
I am one of many who grew up during the "microcomputer" revolution of the 70s and 80s. And during my childhood years I exhibited the exact same behavior pattern as todays kids with smartphones, except that for me it was a CRT screen in my room, and not a touch-screen in my pocket.
And I know for a fact that - although it was fun - it had a negative impact on my mental wellbeing even as an adult.
Granted, I loved every minute of it as a child. It also provided me with an income for many years as a computer programmer when I entered the workforce in the late 90s, back when we all thought the digital revolution would connect us, set us free and democratize learning.
But I know now that it didn't. It just made a small number of tech-bro's insanely rich from selling advertising. And it stunted my growth in so many other areas. It also eventually made me depressed and today I can no longer bear to work in the computer industry any more.
Because I know that I have been implicit in making the world just little a bit worse every year I spent building systems that essentially chained us to our corporate overlords.
Or interacting with actual living beings in person. Animals, people, trees.... How is this 9-year-old girl going to grow up to be a good Steward of The planet? How is she going to have any kind of healthy relationship?
My 11 yr. old grandaughter was pouting and angry at her dad because he wouldn't buy her a smart phone, so she wrote to me wanting me to intercede for her. I wrote back and said that when she could pay the phone bill (she has 3 brothers who also want one) that would be the time to buy a phone. I never heard from her again. The only thing that keeps my 2 adult stepdaughters from scrolling their lives away is that they have to work for a living. Maybe child labor would be a good way to slow down the scrolling generation; Gen S. The one week that I owned a "smart phone" was more than enough for me. The computer takes up too much time too. The curse of the retired.
i see this "well YOU pay for it" argument a lot, and it always strikes me as self-satisfied and cowardly. You know children in 2024 basically can't make money, all the jobs accessible to people with 11-year-old brains are now done by adults, don't give kids this fake economic reasoning, just be honest and say you think it's bad for them, the end.
Thank you for your unsolicited advice. I was pointing out to her that she is one of 4 children and her parents cannot afford 4 phones and the phone bills. I wasn't suggesting that she get a job. She's smart enough to deal with reality and pouting isn't going to get anywhere.
I do love this outlook on life that isn’t tainted by addictive social media and everything that is bad about technology and the internet (sadly I think it’s slowly dying away), but the danger of this opposing outlook is overlooking technology and not staying up to date.
For example, I see my mom, who’s over 60 and not so tech savvy, having trouble in the future where younger generations are versed with using AI assistance where she isn’t.
In the same way that older generations should help our younger ones from scrolling away their lives, so should the youngsters help out older generations In not staying behind.
It’s a thin line at the end of the day which we can neither ignore or be too consumed by it. With everything said and done technology is very exciting.
I'm not interested in AI or most anything to do with tech. I can use a computer to do the few things that I need and I have no reason to be au currant with the latest tech. I see no danger in me not staying up to date. I'm not advocating that as a position for everyone or even anyone. IWhether it's the latest tech or alcohol have no problem ignoring what I don't need. If I were in business or doing research, I would probably think differently about it.
Appreciate Ted for pointing out all the warning signs.
But this is nothing like tobacco.
I've been saying for years- we are utterly doomed.
The current generation of youngsters ain't saving anything. Quite the opposite, they have no idea of how ignorant they are. Their thumbs are in great shape from all the texting, in fact some genius should invent a new musical instrument for them that resembles a dumbphone. Their brains? Not so much. They read nothing- slew of college professors responding to shall I say recent events on our campuses have confirmed that. Anna Karenina? You can't even expect them to read a novella like the Death of Ivan Ilych. AI does their homework for them. You don't want to know how bad the grade inflation truly is, average GPA at Harvard went from 2.4 (40 years ago when a C truly meant average) to 3.8 now (yeah they're all geniuses getting nothing but As). The standardized tests have been dumbed down, that's the answer to all these teenagers who never read getting SAT scores that would have been 99th percentile 40 years ago.
Something terrible is heading our way that will make everything in modern history look like a joke in comparison, say Ebola versus Covid. I can't say when it's happening, just that like climate change the target date seems to be accelerating towards us at warp speed.
And all the very serious people care about are their billion dollar valuations on Wall Street. Fuckerberg has built a survival bunker that costs a mere 500 million. These sociopaths think they're going to wait out the Apocalypse, like they're the good ones in a zombie movie.
A few hundred words of vitriolic, hyperbolic generalizations about an entire generation, from a guy whose wittiest criticism is to call somebody Fuckerberg? C'mon man, this can't be good for you
Hyperbolic generalizations? I read. A ton. A niece and nephew just graduated from Michigan, another is at Tulane. I see what they know compared to my generation. But mostly it's from reading books, articles, and a zillion comments. Zuckerberg (happy now) has an inordinate amount of power, and has wielded it with almost no responsibility, rather with reckless impunity. Because profits. Because a billion ain't enough, nor is ten billion. The ads that are permeating Facebook now are simply horrendous, like Amazon you have no way of knowing who you're dealing with, always magically accompanied by a plethora of nothing but positive comments .But hey Meta just had its most profitable quarter ever. Speech patrolling algorithms with zero nuance, devoid of any ability to detect sarcasm, irony, humor, or hey meta-commentary. Zuckerberg has more than earned my enmity. He's a complete piece of shit, like most of the tech billionaires who think they're doing us a favor by gracing us with their existence. You know what's not good for me? Too many croissants.
It’ll likely come in the form of WWIII and a nuclear holocaust. Unfortunately the momentum is too strong and there really isn’t much any one American can do. I personally feel that Stoicism is more relevant today than in was during the fall of the Roman Empire. The American empire is destined to fall and we all know the military industrial complex won’t go down without a fight. What can we do but seek to master ourselves so that we may better serve humanity while we live?
I agree fully with all that, I also don't think that the American MIC is responsible for all the bad stuff in the world. Russia is nefarious, we forget how backwards they've always been because they're basking in petro-wealth. China, like Putin, has never been shy about their long term goals. I don't think we're starting WW3, it'll be some country like Iran where millions are literally dying of thirst/famine. But we very well could when a true believer in Armagedón takes over.
There are no "timelines" outside of superhero movies. One can just as easily imagine worse realities as better ones. That's not to say that everything is wonderful, but this whole "our timeline is screwed up" meme is a manifestation of technocratic thinking, and not a productive lens through which to view society and our roles in it.
We sent our kids to the local Catholic school. Things were fine until third grade. That is when kids started standing on desks in the middle of class screaming out Tiktok and YouTube short stuff.
Our kids don't have tablets - at all - and they weren't just left out of social life, but out of academic stuff as well.
Because schools now literally *assume* every kid has their own tablet and has screen time at home.
Homework? Play this "educational" game!
Summer work? No more paper packet! Do 45 minutes a day on a learning app.
Snow day? Every child in the house get on your personal screen for Zoom School at the same time (because every household has a device for every person, of course.)
This was CATHOLIC school.
We are just pulling our kids out and doing a classical hybrid going forward. It's impossible to raise kids in a conventional school or social setting anymore if you aren't doing screens. Just impossible. Even the schools undermine you.
This has been our experience in our (allegedly highly rated) local.public school system. The damn Chromebooks. All his classmates are iPad kids. Grades and assignments and.updates all done on apps. It's impossible to be a normal family, because the schools push this stuff incessantly.
Many years ago, we moved to a very small town in the foothills of the Cascades (before everyone did & you couldn't get out on the hwy.). There was no cable TV. We just had Movies on tape. When cable finally came ,we still didn't get it for a long time. Other parents said we were abusing & depriving our kids. One time I caught a Cable guy outside our gate trying to coerce our kids to talk us in to Cable. Yikes
This terrifies me. I have a 9- and a 6-year old. They are allowed 2 hours or less of screen time outside of school a day. We have frequent "screen-detox" days with no electronics at all. I am definitely making every effort to keep it this way moving forward. Thank you!!
It’s not just correlation studies, as Jonathan Haidt points out in his new book The Anxious Generation, there are loads of interventional trials at this point, which *are* designed to show causation, and unsurprisingly they pretty much all agree: loads of screen time and social media is bad for your mental health. Data was murkier 5-10 years ago, but that anyone can claim otherwise in 2024 is mind boggling
Good article, but I'm surprised not to find any mention of Jonathan Haidt's extensive writing on this topic from his substacks (afterbabel.com), Atlantic articles (theatlantic.com/author/jonathan-haidt), and new bestselling book The Anxious Generation). These are well worth digging in to. One example is Haidt's views on the roles of parental overprotection, and of community ties, in mediating the effects of smartphone and social media use.
This is the problem. Parents can complain all they want about kids & phones, but the parents are the ones paying the bill. My 13 y/o daughter learned that the hard way last week. Started mouthing off about “all my friends have Snapchat, why can’t I get it?!” When the info I shared abt it’s detrimental effects on girls her age didn’t change her mind, I simply said “well, when you pay your own phone bill, you can put whatever you want on it.” No argument since.
Social media addiction has gotten a lot of attention lately, and rightfully so, but what most forget is all these devices emit carcinogenic wireless radiation, along with blue light that destroys dopamine:
The iPad was introduced in 2010 which accelerated the tablet culture and made it easy entertainment for everyone to put in front of them or their children’s faces.
Jonathan Haidt's The Anxious Generation explains it all. It has already inspired a grass-root movement of parents in both US and UK. It is a calamity on a mass scale, really difficult to stop, and it will only be stopped if parents wake up. Also, we honestly need to stop making stupid people famous - dumb vacuous celebrities feeding on youngster's attention in exchange for unrealistic, lofty expectations sold as a marketing product.
Another angle is that American parents spend less time with their kids because of work demands, so the new babysitter in town is Tiktok, which will now battle it out with gaming et al.
The average here is 37 hours a week. 5-6 weeks paid vacation + 10 public holidays. In the end, parents have a lot more time to spend with their kids, mental health problems are low, the family is still the center of society.
Yes, we have the dopamine loop problem here, especially among the 18-34 demographic, but so far most children have managed to avoid it. Maybe it's only a matter of time, but at least the subject now is a major talking point.
We were in Oslo last November and it was wonderful ! When my husband complains about the really rubbish bus service where we live (al jour US city) I always say “You know, if we lived in Oslo you’d be home by now.” 😂😂
since Johnathan Haidt’s new book came out, I’ve been seeing many criticisms from other academics, especially ones from Haidt’s former school, UVA. their criticism is the standard causation/correlation that keeps getting trotted out. they then offer several counter arguments about the causes of teen anxiety/depression as being caused by climate change, school shootings, racism, disinformation and economic fallout from 2008. yet they fall into the same exact trap of confusing causation with correlation but with much less evidence than Haidt!
of course this only betrays their real concerns about smart phones and social media: mainly that they have both eroded the monopoly on information that used to belong to academic elites and mainstream media. if you scratch just beneath the surface of their arguments, it’s really the content of what kids and adults see on social media, not the technology that they really want to control. they all support more draconian measurements to censor speech or ‘disinformation’. in their minds they have the ultimate tool for progressive propaganda and they won’t go down without a fight, hence the Tik-Tok ban. it’s about brining that app under control of the Censorship Industrial Complex in the West…
I did some graduate research on this recently. It isn't just kids and it isn't just smartphones. Above a certain threshold of moderate usage, time spent using electronics is negatively correlated to well-being for adults as well.
This is the part that gets a ton of resistance. I think the effect is more dramatic on kids due to them being impressionable, but over time it has the same negative effects on adults.
What counts as “using electronics”? I use electronics to read and write my mail, text my relatives, read the newspaper, listen to podcasts, read and listen to books, make purchases, find recipes, watch movies, listen to music, read magazines, blogs & Substack. Does your research implicate any or all of those uses? Is it the use of the electronic medium itself, or only interactive media? Does it make a difference if all that’s involved is a digital version of a previously analog activity like reading books/newspapers or using cookbooks or listening to vinyl?
I think there are layers to this situation, particularly with kids. It’s pretty clear how electronic devices, including earlier incarnations like TV - reduce the time spent in socialization for kids, or have opportunity costs in the real world, but one thing I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere is whether the essentially frictionless aspect of the digital environment is harmful to how - and whether - kids learn. I think it might. But I don’t see that as impacting adults, whose social and learning habits are already formed.
Excellent questions! The short answer is that the data is not perfect. Because digital technology is so new, and this kind of research requires longitudinal data - that is, people answering the same question every year over a long period of time - there is no ideal data set.
The data we do have asks about computer use in general, and time on the internet, which, as you point out, includes time at work. Also, there's the issue of causation. Does spending time on the internet make people lonely and unhappy, or do lonely, unhappy people spend more time on the internet? In all likelihood, it's a vicious cycle. Nonetheless, it's quite clear that the overall trend is a negative one.
That is an excellent distinction -- "Does spending time on the internet make people lonely and unhappy, or do lonely, unhappy people spend more time on the internet?"
In counseling recluses as clients, I would say it's a vicious cycle that feeds itself. The device and its use is anesthesia, but as you point out, there needs to be longitudinal data. I think a certain level of blindness is key, as most people are or don't want to be aware of their own usage, hence why much of this has been brushed off.
It means turning the mirror on themselves.
Oh, boy.
I concur.
I am one of many who grew up during the "microcomputer" revolution of the 70s and 80s. And during my childhood years I exhibited the exact same behavior pattern as todays kids with smartphones, except that for me it was a CRT screen in my room, and not a touch-screen in my pocket.
And I know for a fact that - although it was fun - it had a negative impact on my mental wellbeing even as an adult.
Granted, I loved every minute of it as a child. It also provided me with an income for many years as a computer programmer when I entered the workforce in the late 90s, back when we all thought the digital revolution would connect us, set us free and democratize learning.
But I know now that it didn't. It just made a small number of tech-bro's insanely rich from selling advertising. And it stunted my growth in so many other areas. It also eventually made me depressed and today I can no longer bear to work in the computer industry any more.
Because I know that I have been implicit in making the world just little a bit worse every year I spent building systems that essentially chained us to our corporate overlords.
Thank you for recognizing it and hightailing it outta there!
Yep. I can attest.
Pretty sad. In that graph for that girl nowhere did I see reading as an activity.
Or interacting with actual living beings in person. Animals, people, trees.... How is this 9-year-old girl going to grow up to be a good Steward of The planet? How is she going to have any kind of healthy relationship?
Exactly.
right? that's horrible!
My 11 yr. old grandaughter was pouting and angry at her dad because he wouldn't buy her a smart phone, so she wrote to me wanting me to intercede for her. I wrote back and said that when she could pay the phone bill (she has 3 brothers who also want one) that would be the time to buy a phone. I never heard from her again. The only thing that keeps my 2 adult stepdaughters from scrolling their lives away is that they have to work for a living. Maybe child labor would be a good way to slow down the scrolling generation; Gen S. The one week that I owned a "smart phone" was more than enough for me. The computer takes up too much time too. The curse of the retired.
i see this "well YOU pay for it" argument a lot, and it always strikes me as self-satisfied and cowardly. You know children in 2024 basically can't make money, all the jobs accessible to people with 11-year-old brains are now done by adults, don't give kids this fake economic reasoning, just be honest and say you think it's bad for them, the end.
Thank you for your unsolicited advice. I was pointing out to her that she is one of 4 children and her parents cannot afford 4 phones and the phone bills. I wasn't suggesting that she get a job. She's smart enough to deal with reality and pouting isn't going to get anywhere.
I hope you wrote that on paper and sent it in a stamped envelope. ✉️
It was in an email, easy to delete, no evidence.
I do love this outlook on life that isn’t tainted by addictive social media and everything that is bad about technology and the internet (sadly I think it’s slowly dying away), but the danger of this opposing outlook is overlooking technology and not staying up to date.
For example, I see my mom, who’s over 60 and not so tech savvy, having trouble in the future where younger generations are versed with using AI assistance where she isn’t.
In the same way that older generations should help our younger ones from scrolling away their lives, so should the youngsters help out older generations In not staying behind.
It’s a thin line at the end of the day which we can neither ignore or be too consumed by it. With everything said and done technology is very exciting.
I'm not interested in AI or most anything to do with tech. I can use a computer to do the few things that I need and I have no reason to be au currant with the latest tech. I see no danger in me not staying up to date. I'm not advocating that as a position for everyone or even anyone. IWhether it's the latest tech or alcohol have no problem ignoring what I don't need. If I were in business or doing research, I would probably think differently about it.
My elderly mom is the techie in the house. I would dump the technology if it weren’t for her.
Appreciate Ted for pointing out all the warning signs.
But this is nothing like tobacco.
I've been saying for years- we are utterly doomed.
The current generation of youngsters ain't saving anything. Quite the opposite, they have no idea of how ignorant they are. Their thumbs are in great shape from all the texting, in fact some genius should invent a new musical instrument for them that resembles a dumbphone. Their brains? Not so much. They read nothing- slew of college professors responding to shall I say recent events on our campuses have confirmed that. Anna Karenina? You can't even expect them to read a novella like the Death of Ivan Ilych. AI does their homework for them. You don't want to know how bad the grade inflation truly is, average GPA at Harvard went from 2.4 (40 years ago when a C truly meant average) to 3.8 now (yeah they're all geniuses getting nothing but As). The standardized tests have been dumbed down, that's the answer to all these teenagers who never read getting SAT scores that would have been 99th percentile 40 years ago.
Something terrible is heading our way that will make everything in modern history look like a joke in comparison, say Ebola versus Covid. I can't say when it's happening, just that like climate change the target date seems to be accelerating towards us at warp speed.
And all the very serious people care about are their billion dollar valuations on Wall Street. Fuckerberg has built a survival bunker that costs a mere 500 million. These sociopaths think they're going to wait out the Apocalypse, like they're the good ones in a zombie movie.
A few hundred words of vitriolic, hyperbolic generalizations about an entire generation, from a guy whose wittiest criticism is to call somebody Fuckerberg? C'mon man, this can't be good for you
Hyperbolic generalizations? I read. A ton. A niece and nephew just graduated from Michigan, another is at Tulane. I see what they know compared to my generation. But mostly it's from reading books, articles, and a zillion comments. Zuckerberg (happy now) has an inordinate amount of power, and has wielded it with almost no responsibility, rather with reckless impunity. Because profits. Because a billion ain't enough, nor is ten billion. The ads that are permeating Facebook now are simply horrendous, like Amazon you have no way of knowing who you're dealing with, always magically accompanied by a plethora of nothing but positive comments .But hey Meta just had its most profitable quarter ever. Speech patrolling algorithms with zero nuance, devoid of any ability to detect sarcasm, irony, humor, or hey meta-commentary. Zuckerberg has more than earned my enmity. He's a complete piece of shit, like most of the tech billionaires who think they're doing us a favor by gracing us with their existence. You know what's not good for me? Too many croissants.
C'mon man, don't trash your nieces and nephews, that's not being a cool uncle
Go away?
It’ll likely come in the form of WWIII and a nuclear holocaust. Unfortunately the momentum is too strong and there really isn’t much any one American can do. I personally feel that Stoicism is more relevant today than in was during the fall of the Roman Empire. The American empire is destined to fall and we all know the military industrial complex won’t go down without a fight. What can we do but seek to master ourselves so that we may better serve humanity while we live?
I agree fully with all that, I also don't think that the American MIC is responsible for all the bad stuff in the world. Russia is nefarious, we forget how backwards they've always been because they're basking in petro-wealth. China, like Putin, has never been shy about their long term goals. I don't think we're starting WW3, it'll be some country like Iran where millions are literally dying of thirst/famine. But we very well could when a true believer in Armagedón takes over.
You can stop buying into doom, for one.
But do keep the stoicism—good at any stage in the cycle.
We're in the darkest timeline.
There are no "timelines" outside of superhero movies. One can just as easily imagine worse realities as better ones. That's not to say that everything is wonderful, but this whole "our timeline is screwed up" meme is a manifestation of technocratic thinking, and not a productive lens through which to view society and our roles in it.
That's interesting! So you're envisioning/hoping for everyone to take on a note active role in society?
indeed, it's so dark that a little bit of light seems like a nebula. or a pulsar. one of those astronomy things with lots of zeros for the luminosity.
We sent our kids to the local Catholic school. Things were fine until third grade. That is when kids started standing on desks in the middle of class screaming out Tiktok and YouTube short stuff.
Our kids don't have tablets - at all - and they weren't just left out of social life, but out of academic stuff as well.
Because schools now literally *assume* every kid has their own tablet and has screen time at home.
Homework? Play this "educational" game!
Summer work? No more paper packet! Do 45 minutes a day on a learning app.
Snow day? Every child in the house get on your personal screen for Zoom School at the same time (because every household has a device for every person, of course.)
This was CATHOLIC school.
We are just pulling our kids out and doing a classical hybrid going forward. It's impossible to raise kids in a conventional school or social setting anymore if you aren't doing screens. Just impossible. Even the schools undermine you.
This has been our experience in our (allegedly highly rated) local.public school system. The damn Chromebooks. All his classmates are iPad kids. Grades and assignments and.updates all done on apps. It's impossible to be a normal family, because the schools push this stuff incessantly.
Many years ago, we moved to a very small town in the foothills of the Cascades (before everyone did & you couldn't get out on the hwy.). There was no cable TV. We just had Movies on tape. When cable finally came ,we still didn't get it for a long time. Other parents said we were abusing & depriving our kids. One time I caught a Cable guy outside our gate trying to coerce our kids to talk us in to Cable. Yikes
This terrifies me. I have a 9- and a 6-year old. They are allowed 2 hours or less of screen time outside of school a day. We have frequent "screen-detox" days with no electronics at all. I am definitely making every effort to keep it this way moving forward. Thank you!!
That's a great idea, one that I'm going to use for my own kids.
It’s not just correlation studies, as Jonathan Haidt points out in his new book The Anxious Generation, there are loads of interventional trials at this point, which *are* designed to show causation, and unsurprisingly they pretty much all agree: loads of screen time and social media is bad for your mental health. Data was murkier 5-10 years ago, but that anyone can claim otherwise in 2024 is mind boggling
Good article, but I'm surprised not to find any mention of Jonathan Haidt's extensive writing on this topic from his substacks (afterbabel.com), Atlantic articles (theatlantic.com/author/jonathan-haidt), and new bestselling book The Anxious Generation). These are well worth digging in to. One example is Haidt's views on the roles of parental overprotection, and of community ties, in mediating the effects of smartphone and social media use.
Recent interview with Jonathan Haidt:
https://unherd.com/watch-listen/porn-and-social-media-are-killing-childhood/
Who is paying for these smart phones and the data plans that go with them? There can’t be many 5-7 year olds with their own source of income.
This is the problem. Parents can complain all they want about kids & phones, but the parents are the ones paying the bill. My 13 y/o daughter learned that the hard way last week. Started mouthing off about “all my friends have Snapchat, why can’t I get it?!” When the info I shared abt it’s detrimental effects on girls her age didn’t change her mind, I simply said “well, when you pay your own phone bill, you can put whatever you want on it.” No argument since.
There are apps now that hide social media apps as photo albums or music...
Social media addiction has gotten a lot of attention lately, and rightfully so, but what most forget is all these devices emit carcinogenic wireless radiation, along with blue light that destroys dopamine:
https://romanshapoval.substack.com/p/techmyth
Two stupid myths at once!
The sun emits carcinogenic radiation.
Blue light, like the sky?
Really!
The iPad was introduced in 2010 which accelerated the tablet culture and made it easy entertainment for everyone to put in front of them or their children’s faces.
Jonathan Haidt's The Anxious Generation explains it all. It has already inspired a grass-root movement of parents in both US and UK. It is a calamity on a mass scale, really difficult to stop, and it will only be stopped if parents wake up. Also, we honestly need to stop making stupid people famous - dumb vacuous celebrities feeding on youngster's attention in exchange for unrealistic, lofty expectations sold as a marketing product.
One hundred percent- especially the empty personalities of so called celebrities.
Another angle is that American parents spend less time with their kids because of work demands, so the new babysitter in town is Tiktok, which will now battle it out with gaming et al.
Over here in Norway, we work far less than Americans and are far more productive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_labour_productivity
The average here is 37 hours a week. 5-6 weeks paid vacation + 10 public holidays. In the end, parents have a lot more time to spend with their kids, mental health problems are low, the family is still the center of society.
Yes, we have the dopamine loop problem here, especially among the 18-34 demographic, but so far most children have managed to avoid it. Maybe it's only a matter of time, but at least the subject now is a major talking point.
www.jim-frazee.com
We were in Oslo last November and it was wonderful ! When my husband complains about the really rubbish bus service where we live (al jour US city) I always say “You know, if we lived in Oslo you’d be home by now.” 😂😂
You see it in every restaurant- young kids on iPads or phones, trained to not engage with their parents or the world around them.
Fast forward ten more years and we’ll see you adults that look like what “Children of Men” predicted in 2006: https://youtu.be/sJO0n6kvPRU
*young adults
I recently wrote about this myself, including a great article by Derek Thompson:
Screens, Kids, and Pablo Picasso
https://alecmcnayr.substack.com/p/screens-kids-and-pablo-picasso
So what happens if parents don't allow their children to participate....?
since Johnathan Haidt’s new book came out, I’ve been seeing many criticisms from other academics, especially ones from Haidt’s former school, UVA. their criticism is the standard causation/correlation that keeps getting trotted out. they then offer several counter arguments about the causes of teen anxiety/depression as being caused by climate change, school shootings, racism, disinformation and economic fallout from 2008. yet they fall into the same exact trap of confusing causation with correlation but with much less evidence than Haidt!
of course this only betrays their real concerns about smart phones and social media: mainly that they have both eroded the monopoly on information that used to belong to academic elites and mainstream media. if you scratch just beneath the surface of their arguments, it’s really the content of what kids and adults see on social media, not the technology that they really want to control. they all support more draconian measurements to censor speech or ‘disinformation’. in their minds they have the ultimate tool for progressive propaganda and they won’t go down without a fight, hence the Tik-Tok ban. it’s about brining that app under control of the Censorship Industrial Complex in the West…