Somewhere around the 2010, childhood changed.

In the words of Jonathan Haidt,

“Soon after teens got iPhones, they started getting more depressed. The heaviest users were also the most depressed, while those who spent more time in face-to-face activities, such as on sports teams and in religious communities, were the healthiest.”

“The Great Rewiring” is Haidt’s phrase to describe the disastrous effects of smartphones and social media on young people. Haidt is an NYU professor and social psychologist, and his latest book is entitled, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.

His thesis runs as follows:

“overprotection in the real world and underprotection in the virtual world are the two main reasons why children born after 1995 became the anxious generation.“

I snapped up Haidt’s book on preorder and have been sorting through it ever since. It’s full of charts, graphs, and data—but in many ways, the studies merely confirm what my students know already: those little rectangles rule our lives, rob our sleep, amplify anxiety, and scatter attention. Frankly, I feel it too. As a reader and an academic, I relate to the words of Nicholas Carr: “Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.”

We are, in the words of Jean Twenge, “forever elsewhere”—as many of us stare into screens even when surrounded by real people.

HOW IT HAPPENED

With the rise of high-speed broadband in the 2000s, iPhones (2007), the “like” and “retweet” buttons (2009), front-facing cameras (2010), and Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram (2010), our society effectively swapped a “play-based childhood” for a “phone-based childhood”—and in so-doing, we thrust children into a world for which they are simply not designed.

We got overprotective when it came to playgrounds, letting kids walk to school, or trying to socially manage each physical encounter. And we simultaneously became massively underprotective with regard to the new world into which the younger members of our species were suddenly thrust.

Girls were hit hardest. Haidt argues that teen and preteen girls are more sensitive to visual comparisons (affecting body image), their conflicts are more prone to relational aggression than physical violence, and they are more likely to be approached by predatory men online.

For boys, the digital dangers are more linked to porn and excessive gaming—both of which contribute to a failure to launch as well as other issues. All these findings require the “on average” caveat to avoid overgeneralizing. But Haidt’s data suggest that the worst years for girls to be on social media were 11 to 13, while for boys it was 14 to 15.

As for some good news, teens are involved in less of the “bad” stuff that used to be more common—binge drinking, unwanted pregnancies, car accidents, fist fights, even speeding tickets. But the reason is largely because they have withdrawn from the embodied world of human interaction, not because they are actually healthier in terms of their psyche.

The phones function ironically as “experience blockers” (separating us from the real world for which we were designed), and over-stimulators that drown us in a tidal wave of vanity, comparison, pornography, breaking news, conspiracy theories, and online disinhibition. And yeah, a lot of good stuff too.

WHAT TO DO

Haidt’s practical suggestions are as follows:

1. No smartphones before high school. In their place, parents should opt for so-called “basic phones” with limited apps and no internet browser.
2. No social media before 16. Let kids progress through this vulnerable period of brain development before being connected to the full deluge of social comparison, pornography, algorithm-based influencers online.
3. Phone-free schools. From elementary through high school, smartphones and other devices should be kept out of the classroom and stored in either phone lockers or locked pouches (not just slipped into pockets).
4. Far more unsupervised play and childhood independence. Kids should develop social skills, resilience, and independence the way they have for thousands of years—through embodied, personal, (relatively) unsupervised play.

CONCLUSION

As a theologian—not a social psychologist—I lack the expertise to respond fully to these claims. But as a parent and a teacher of Gen Z students, I care about them.

Hence, part 2 of this brief series (forthcoming) will move from a mere summary of Haidt’s claims to a brief response. Stay tuned.

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