Social Psychologist Urges 'End the Phone-Based Childhood Now' (msn.com) 203
"The environment in which kids grow up today is hostile to human development," argues Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist and business school ethics professor, saying that since the early 2010s, "something went suddenly and horribly wrong for adolescents."
The Atlantic recently published an excerpt from his book The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.: By a variety of measures and in a variety of countries, the members of Generation Z (born in and after 1996) are suffering from anxiety, depression, self-harm, and related disorders at levels higher than any other generation for which we have data... I think the answer can be stated simply, although the underlying psychology is complex: Those were the years when adolescents in rich countries traded in their flip phones for smartphones and moved much more of their social lives online — particularly onto social-media platforms designed for virality and addiction. Once young people began carrying the entire internet in their pockets, available to them day and night, it altered their daily experiences and developmental pathways across the board. Friendship, dating, sexuality, exercise, sleep, academics, politics, family dynamics, identity — all were affected...
There's an important backstory, beginning as long ago as the 1980s, when we started systematically depriving children and adolescents of freedom, unsupervised play, responsibility, and opportunities for risk taking, all of which promote competence, maturity, and mental health. But the change in childhood accelerated in the early 2010s, when an already independence-deprived generation was lured into a new virtual universe that seemed safe to parents but in fact is more dangerous, in many respects, than the physical world. My claim is that the new phone-based childhood that took shape roughly 12 years ago is making young people sick and blocking their progress to flourishing in adulthood. We need a dramatic cultural correction, and we need it now...
A simple way to understand the differences between Gen Z and previous generations is that people born in and after 1996 have internal thermostats that were shifted toward defend mode. This is why life on college campuses changed so suddenly when Gen Z arrived, beginning around 2014. Students began requesting "safe spaces" and trigger warnings. They were highly sensitive to "microaggressions" and sometimes claimed that words were "violence." These trends mystified those of us in older generations at the time, but in hindsight, it all makes sense. Gen Z students found words, ideas, and ambiguous social encounters more threatening than had previous generations of students because we had fundamentally altered their psychological development.
The article argues educational scores also began dropping around 2012, while citing estimates that America's average teenager spends seven to nine hours a day on screen-based activities. "Everything else in an adolescent's day must get squeezed down or eliminated entirely to make room for the vast amount of content that is consumed... The main reason why the phone-based childhood is so harmful is because it pushes aside everything else." (For example, there's "the collapse of time spent interacting with other people face-to-face.")
The article warns of fragmented attention, disrupted learning, social withdrawal, and "the decay of wisdom and the loss of meaning." ("This rerouting of enculturating content has created a generation that is largely cut off from older generations and, to some extent, from the accumulated wisdom of humankind, including knowledge about how to live a flourishing life.") Its proposed solution?
The Atlantic recently published an excerpt from his book The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.: By a variety of measures and in a variety of countries, the members of Generation Z (born in and after 1996) are suffering from anxiety, depression, self-harm, and related disorders at levels higher than any other generation for which we have data... I think the answer can be stated simply, although the underlying psychology is complex: Those were the years when adolescents in rich countries traded in their flip phones for smartphones and moved much more of their social lives online — particularly onto social-media platforms designed for virality and addiction. Once young people began carrying the entire internet in their pockets, available to them day and night, it altered their daily experiences and developmental pathways across the board. Friendship, dating, sexuality, exercise, sleep, academics, politics, family dynamics, identity — all were affected...
There's an important backstory, beginning as long ago as the 1980s, when we started systematically depriving children and adolescents of freedom, unsupervised play, responsibility, and opportunities for risk taking, all of which promote competence, maturity, and mental health. But the change in childhood accelerated in the early 2010s, when an already independence-deprived generation was lured into a new virtual universe that seemed safe to parents but in fact is more dangerous, in many respects, than the physical world. My claim is that the new phone-based childhood that took shape roughly 12 years ago is making young people sick and blocking their progress to flourishing in adulthood. We need a dramatic cultural correction, and we need it now...
A simple way to understand the differences between Gen Z and previous generations is that people born in and after 1996 have internal thermostats that were shifted toward defend mode. This is why life on college campuses changed so suddenly when Gen Z arrived, beginning around 2014. Students began requesting "safe spaces" and trigger warnings. They were highly sensitive to "microaggressions" and sometimes claimed that words were "violence." These trends mystified those of us in older generations at the time, but in hindsight, it all makes sense. Gen Z students found words, ideas, and ambiguous social encounters more threatening than had previous generations of students because we had fundamentally altered their psychological development.
The article argues educational scores also began dropping around 2012, while citing estimates that America's average teenager spends seven to nine hours a day on screen-based activities. "Everything else in an adolescent's day must get squeezed down or eliminated entirely to make room for the vast amount of content that is consumed... The main reason why the phone-based childhood is so harmful is because it pushes aside everything else." (For example, there's "the collapse of time spent interacting with other people face-to-face.")
The article warns of fragmented attention, disrupted learning, social withdrawal, and "the decay of wisdom and the loss of meaning." ("This rerouting of enculturating content has created a generation that is largely cut off from older generations and, to some extent, from the accumulated wisdom of humankind, including knowledge about how to live a flourishing life.") Its proposed solution?
- No smartphones before high school
- No social media before 16
- Phoneâfree schools
- More independence, free play, and responsibility in the real world
"We didn't know what we were doing in the early 2010s. Now we do. It's time to end the phone-based childhood."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 and sinij for sharing the article.
The 80s? (Score:5, Insightful)
I was certainly not deprived of independence and free play. Anyone else? What's he talking about? The helicopter parent thing didn't start until later in my part of the universe.
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No shit. I'll co-sign this. And if our parents knew half the crap we did ... I think getting the nitro pills ready for the head attacks that would occur, would be a good thing.
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Heart attacks not head attacks. God damn autocorrect.
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AI strikes again!
Re:The 80s? (Score:5, Interesting)
I was certainly not deprived of independence and free play. Anyone else? What's he talking about? The helicopter parent thing didn't start until later in my part of the universe.
If you felt independent and free in the 80s as a child and others are questioning that, then perhaps we need to understand what Freedom looked like for them in the 60s and 70s.
Im an 80s kid too so I get it, but even our Freedom might have been laughable by comparison. Just as GenX laughs at GenOwellian.
Re:The 80s? (Score:5, Interesting)
I was a kid in the 60s. We lived like barbarian *kings*, going wherever we wanted with no respect for private property or accountability to anyone for how we spent our time or where.
Especially in the summer. We'd get up, have our bowl of cereal and hop on our bike to meet our friends. Then we'd right to the other side of the city and maybe scare up some kids for a baseball game or maybe a fight. Maybe we'd right out the suburbs and go fishing or build forts in the woods. Sometimes we went down to the trash transfer station to throw rocks at rats and root through abandoned machinery and discarded lumber for building materials to make a go cart. Occasionally we'd hop a slow freight train, or climb out on the girders underneath bridges to watch the commuter trains speed below us.
We'd come back home maybe 6:30 for supper, after being gone for eight or nine hours. During that time our families had no idea whatsoever where we'd been or what we'd been up to. Sometime your mom would ask and you'd say, "I hung out with Steve and Joe," and I guess she pictured us sitting around shooting the shit, which we sometimes did, although often it was probably someplace we weren't suppose to be like the roof of the autobody shop. Even during the school year, we didn't have homeowork like kids in the 80s did. There was none at all in elementary school and even in high school it was less than an hour.
A childhood nearly completely free of adult supervision and management was glorious in ways you can't begin to imagine.
What changed was the "stranger danger" moral panic of the late 70s early 80s, and it only got worse when cell phones became ubiquitous. Now it's positively deviant not to know where your kids are 24x7. Even if you don't buy into that, in a way you have no choice. My kids wouldn't have had anyone to hang out with all day; and if they did half of the things we used to get up to, there'd be a report to the police and a visit from social services.
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Also cars.
Roads and cars have got phenomenally more dangerous for anyone outside of a car. Car ownership is still growing, traffic is still rising, cars are getting ever larger and more powerful, giving drivers a feeling of more safety at higher speeds, and they are getting ever more isolated from the outside. SUVs and trucks are kid-on-bike murder machines now, where you literally cannot see a kid in front of your car if they are too close.
Modern cars have absolutely phenomenal acceleration and power compa
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Lazy parenting, where the parents didn't take the children anywhere: I've seen that. It doesn't work with girls: She becomes a teenager, has a lot more friends, then has leverage to stop being the basement-dwelling virgin her parents demand.
I think that's separate, and changes in town-planning were responsible for much of it (IE. Cities became more dense, fewer undeveloped areas, less public transport, fewer intersections and corner shops, and thus less 'safe'): Tablets and phones kept the child quiet e
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Cities became more dense
TFA is about America, where cities have become less dense.
thus less 'safe'
Cities today are much safer than they were a generation ago.
Some of that is due to cell phones. Sexual assault on teenage girls has fallen by half since cell phones became ubiquitous.
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It's true that life is safer, but it is clearly *perceived* as more dangerous.
The murder rate in the US peaked in 1980 at 10.4 murders per 100,000 population, then dropped to less than half that (5.1) in 2019. There was a spike during the pandemic up to 6.8 -- still way less than 1980 -- but was down below 6% again in 2023.
But even though violent crime and murder in particular *decreased* in 2023, a recent Gallup survey found that 77% of Americans believe it actually went up.
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It depends. We had Nintendo and VCRs during the late 80s, so if you were someone who preferred "screen time" (though it wasn't called that back then) to socializing, it did begin back then. Personally, I'm thankful for the technology of the late 80s because as a queer kid who wasn't into girls but didn't quite realize why at the time, socializing with my peers sucked.
Re:The 80s? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is almost what I have been saying.
If there is any problem nowadays regarding the screens, it is not the screen time itself. It is the software that forces you to use it. Games that I played in the 80s were addictive because of the positive feedback you got from them, they were fun to play and when they stopped being fun, you just stopped playing them.
Games today are addictive because they punish you if you don't play them. There is for example daily reward you must get during that day or you won't get it. Sure, the games are fun at the start like the old ones, but after a while, it is like a second job with very minimal benefits. You usually just repeat the same thing every day, just because you don't want to lose everything you have gained by investing your time into the game.
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I'm not sure about the deprivation of independence, but when I was growing up in the 60's, the thing to do after school was to go play pickup games in the neighborhood. That meant football, baseball, hockey, etc. I can also recall usually going to a friend's house on Sat. mornings when he and his sisters were glued to the TV. I was rather disinterested in the box, my parents always discouraged it except during the nightly news and some comedy shows at night.
Many years later at Enormous State University I re
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The first notions of the newer more coddling style child interaction started in the 80's with common tough love parenting starting to be called abuse but really gained steam in the 90's. 1996 was not when people traded flipphones for smart phones as suggested. It is actually around the point the 'school councilor' and mass deploy of anti-depressants which radically alter brain chemistry hit critical mass. In the early 90's we still got swats in school, by the mid 90's all schools had stopped this and replac
Re:The 80s? (Score:4, Informative)
When I was growing up in the 60s we didn't have video games and I was forbidden from watching more than an hour of TV a day. Weather permitting, I was outside playing more or less unsupervised, depending on my age at the time, with the only requirement that I let my mom know if I went far and that I come back home when the street lights went on.
Nowadays I see a lot parents using ipads and the like as babysitters and pacifiers for toddlers, which I doubt is very good for their social development.
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Totally, which is why I asked about others' experiences.
Typical weekend or summer day: eat breakfast, meet the other kids outside and wander into the woods to expand our "fort" (random scrap plywood, fallen tree branches and other debris we nailed together, definitely not OSHA quality), poke at random animals we encountered, sometimes bring firecrackers and blow shit up or fuck around in the nearby construction areas when workers weren't there playing with whatever tools and material they left behind, somet
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I'd say the change was really in the 90s, 00s. In the 80s I'd run around the neighborhood all day and play whatever (street hockey/baseball, hide n seek, exploring woods/creeks/etc) or hang out at the mall or arcade without adults.
As a Gen X'er (and now a MS/HS teacher after a programming career), I'd say kids are insanely over scheduled down the the minute practically, no free time and no independence. Many of my HS students are really smart but have no basic life/common sense skills -- I think because ev
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How about, "no phones during school hours"?
My kid's high school allows phones during pass time between classes. That's it.
Great idea (Score:4, Interesting)
Keep your kids from interacting with the rest of their generation because you're the one parent that does that while the rest of the kids interact with each other on phone only.
That's not gonna have any negative impact on your kids, not at all.
The Alternative, has spoken. (Score:3, Interesting)
Keep your kids from interacting with the rest of their generation because you're the one parent that does that while the rest of the kids interact with each other on phone only.
That's not gonna have any negative impact on your kids, not at all.
As opposed to addicts “raising” addicts? If a child is considerably different in a positive way from average today, I’d be far more inclined to actually call the person raising them a parent.
Statistics speak for themselves. As opposed to GenZ on permanent Do Not Disturb mode because talking on a phone creates too much anxiety (I wish I was making that up, but I’ve seen it many times.) School psychologist got it right, except for one thing. Kids are also fucked up today because o
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My phones are all constantly on do not disturb and set silent.
To many people have no manners about is a decent time to call.
Most certainly:
* just got up time
* breakfast time
* I'm in the car to work time
* I just started work time
* lunch time
* I'm in a meeting, oki, excused - they do not know that
* I'm driving home
* dinner time
* late dinner time
* about to go to bed time
* ready to sleep time
This are all not appropriated times to call me, as a private person. Nothing more annoying than a skype call or telegram
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"* I'm in the car to work time
* I just started work time
* lunch time
* I'm in a meeting, oki, excused - they do not know that"
I'd contend that 'at work' isn't appropriate time to call an adult or for an adult to be looking at their phone. With the possible exception of a spouse who understands they shouldn't call and therefore when to make an exception or emergency call from whoever has your kids.
Re:The Alternative, has spoken. (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately it's not quite that simple anymore.
I don't use my phone. No, really, for some reason the phone craze never caught me. But I still have it because it's required for so many things.
2FA? You need a phone. My bank does 2FA through a dedicated app, so can't settle for a dumb phone and SMS. Authenticators for stuff like Battle.net and Steam as well - phone required. Want an account on Telegram to use on your computer? You need a phone number! (Or did when I set it up years ago, anyway; no idea if that changed since.)
And so on and so forth. Society generally assumes you HAVE a phone and a lot of things become increasingly difficult to do if you don't have one.
Re:The Alternative, has spoken. (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't redundant. It is true. I also have a phone and until 2FA became common place simply left it sitting on a counter somewhere. The thing was never charged. Most people were too impatient for email so they'd ping my wife if hoping to get in touch with me.
With 2FA I have to keep a phone next to me all day long when I work. Aside from 2FA it still sits in a charging cradle 99% of the time.
Is it because I don't understand the tech and I'm a luddite. Nope. I can fix pretty much anything that goes wrong in your phone from hardware to software. I've developed mobile apps and rooted phones and tablets galore. I can set up security measures you wouldn't believe with fake apps that bring you into alternate phone profiles. I can scan and hack wifi and most definitely have rdp'd into remote systems and fixed work emergencies with cell phones. I have several dozen apps to aid development and replace various kinds of tools and instruments on my phone as well. And I'm also familiar with more mundane things people do on them and can point you to tools for photo and video manipulation and filters for all your silly social games.
No, I understand the technology well enough. I simply have very little use for it. Virtually everything I do requires or is better with uninterrupted focus and concentration. And most of what you do with the phone is handled far better with full size screens and a keyboard and mouse at a point where I've chosen to plug in.
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Another thing I remembered; QR codes. Anything from menus at restaurants to arranging delivery of two computer chairs requires you to have a phone to scan a QR code.
Yes, that was oddly specific. The furniture store where I bought them ONLY provided a QR code to ... access their standardized delivery page. They didn't print the URL anywhere despite it literally just being companyname.tld/delivery. I guess it's too scary for today's youth to read instead of just letting their phone do it for them.
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>"Tell the three persons you give a shit about to email you that you can check once a day"
It can be done. I do this. Of course I have a smartphone. And it is a very valuable tool. But I don't use social media (other than something soft like Slashdot) and have no such apps on my phone. I tell my family/friends to please not text or call me unless it is something important or time-sensitive and send anything else via Email, which I check a few times a day on my schedule, at home, on my desktop compute
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"I have an relatively expensive plan in Thailand, G5 with more GB than I can use, THB200 per month. that is roughly $5. My fibre landline is more expensive ... THB 635."
I guess that is why some people expat in Thailand. I think the base rate for my fiber line is $50/mo but the real bill is closer to $75/mo. That has no caps. My annoying bill for the phone I virtually never use is more like $150/mo and includes more GB than I typically use but which burns up in a day or two if I actually go mobile such as on
Re:The Alternative, has spoken. (Score:5, Interesting)
The point is that during childhood, and even more adolescence, the need for "fitting in" is the greatest. You can easily become a social pariah for wearing the wrong kind of clothing, listening to the wrong kind of music or generally not being a "normal" person. Peer pressure is the strongest during those times and yes, not being part of a peer group during this times also has the worst kind of impact on someone's later social life.
We have arrived at the point where not having a cellphone and not participating in social media pretty much means for a teenager to be a social pariah. They straight don't exist for their peers. They could as well not exist.
You want to do that to your child because you think that this is the way to be "different in a positive way"? Go ahead. But don't expect your child to thank you for it.
And I mean ever. If you're lucky, they'll at least talk with you again after they're done with therapy.
Re:The Alternative, has spoken. (Score:5, Insightful)
We have arrived at the point where not having a cellphone and not participating in social media pretty much means for a teenager to be a social pariah.
I also feel the need to point out that for LGBTQ+ youth, the internet can sometimes be a lifeline for them to the only people they truly consider their peers. It's pretty easy for the people who think "Oh, kids just need to go out and socialize!" to forget that not every kid is straight and real life socializing in places where homophobia still runs rampant is a miserable experience.
I started my own dial-up BBS back in 1992 for this very reason. Some kids have a very good reason for burying their face in their phones, and others, well, yeah, they're probably addicted to Candy Crush. Best of luck sorting them out. That all being said, I still think it's wise for parents to set up parental control filters to limit their kids to only age-appropriate content.
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This is a very valid point... back in 1992. ;)
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It still is a very valid point today.
Re: The Alternative, has spoken. (Score:2)
to forget that not every kid is straight and real life socializing in places where homophobia still runs rampant is a miserable experience.
My priority would be on fixing that problem and not relying on the Internet to fill holes in people's social lives. I don't think the mental health benefits outweigh the costs, that's my opinion.
Everyone that's different can find a social group online that fits them, and that sounds great at first, but the homophobes find their groups too, and every little difference gets magnified, because there's a group for that, a feed for that, some alternative media just for that.
Advice I'd give any young person is ju
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"the need for "fitting in" is the greatest. You can easily become a social pariah for wearing the wrong kind of clothing, listening to the wrong kind of music or generally not being a "normal" person."
Correction, the DESIRE for fitting in is the greatest. There is no great need to be a social butterfly as an adolescent OR as an adult. Social connections are generally superficial things that require a great deal of time and effort to maintain while interfering in your goals as often as aiding them as an adul
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True, true. There is no need to fit in.
It's highly advisable though if you don't want your child to spend the better part of their adult years trying to figure out why they're getting mobbed at their job because they never learned how to function in a society.
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You don't need to 'fit in' to function in society. It actually takes a fairly minimal amount of socialization to learn to play the game. And beyond playing the game it really depends on what their job is.
If you've got a job like sales, management, marketing, HR, etc then those BBQs with dozens of superficial connections are important... otherwise a whole bunch of time wasted that you could have been spending with people who matter like family or doing something productive like flipping a house, learning som
Re: The Alternative, has spoken. (Score:2)
My school is looking at the Wait Till 8th campaign.
https://www.waituntil8th.org/ [waituntil8th.org]
The idea is that enough of the parents agree to wait until 8th grade to get their kids a phone, the kids will face less peer pressure.
I think that phones are one of those things, like sex, cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, where a child perception of their prevalence is systematically higher than their actual prevalence. The mind focuses the fewer kids who did get their phones early, rather than the larger group who didn't get one yet
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It's less being an addict it's about being a teenager. What the article is promoting here is the "virtual" equivalent of locking your child up at home and not letting them go out to play with other kids because they're afraid that some of these kids are going to be a bad influence.
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Statistics speak for themselves.
What statistics?
TFA didn't cite any statistics.
Re: The Alternative, has spoken. (Score:2)
As opposed to addicts âoeraisingâ addicts? If a child is considerably different in a positive way from average today, Iâ(TM)d be far more inclined to actually call the person raising them a parent.
This sounds like the hurt voice of someone that didn't turn out the way their parents wanted.
Re:Great idea (Score:4, Informative)
>"Keep your kids from interacting with the rest of their generation because you're the one parent that does that while the rest of the kids interact with each other on phone only."
Seriously, that is your defense of children having unrestricted access to the Internet- the "well, everyone else is doing it" one?
How DID we survive before the Internet and smartphones? I don't think anyone is saying children shouldn't have technology access, but not unrestricted access. A smartphone that is locked-down to a whitelist for sites, texting, and calling is not only appropriate but not that challenging. As for "all the kids communicate on Platform XXXXX", type of thing, well, yeah, that will probably need to change back into restricted, mostly one-to-one communication.
Perhaps an open-source, community-driven, child-friendly event-posting platform, moderated by parents, that doesn't have any perverse "steering" algorithms or posting of comments?
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We survived by nobody having it.
The point isn't to give your kids unrestricted internet access. The point is that the article demands that kids have no access to it before a certain age, because that's what the article is calling for. Which essentially cuts them off from their friends who are pretty much exclusively there.
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>"The point isn't to give your kids unrestricted internet access. The point is that the article demands that kids have no access to it before a certain age, because that's what the article is calling for"
Right.
I am saying that "no access at all" to a "phone" is overkill, specially for older children. If the choice is all or nothing, it should absolutely be nothing. But I just don't think it has to be such an insanely radical binary choice.
I know if I were faced with such a situation, I would create a t
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>" thereby destroying privacy for adults, is totally reasonable."
Correction: I meant to type "is totally UNREASONABLE".
Hopefully readers will have already realized the mistake in context.
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This sounds like a parent whose already given their kid the evil phone trying to rationalize. My child is homeschooled and she has no phone. I probably do let her have too much screen time but being able to take it away gives me leverage and as an xenial I had Nintendo and portables as a kid too.
I don't let my six year old wander the neighborhood but the neighbors have six kids and there are a couple kids within a few houses on the street. She has to let me know if they are shifting to back yards or inside
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I know society at large is hostile to homeschooling and raising kids out of step with mainstream society, whereas I have a lot of sympathy to it as I think we are collectively on the wrong path. But yet, there are negative consequences of having to try to live out of step with most other people. A lot of kids end up 'flipping' to mainstream culture in the end and it's a traumatic transition for them and
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A little while ago cell phones were banned from primary schools here in the Netherlands. Since the start of this year, they are banned from high school classrooms as well; schools can choose h
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We need to get away from knee-jerk reactions to take a level-headed view at problems. Yes, dropping your child into the internet and pretending it's a convenient babysitter isn't going to cut it any more than TV was one. Actually, less so.
But cutting your child off from something their peers are using almost exclusively to socialize is doing your child a disservice as well. It's pretty much the equivalent of locking your child up at home because you think all of their friends are a "bad influence". Yes, som
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Impractical solution (Score:4, Insightful)
The author describes a real problem, but then propose a solution that is impractical to ever implement and enforce. We all know it's not going to happen, the cat is already out of the bag. This is one of those examples where people loved to propose solutions to social problems but never think about practicality and execution.
And it's also ironic that the author states that the problem is we deprived children and adolescents of freedom and unsupervised play, and then proceeds to propose a solution where they want to deprive them of more freedoms.
What we should focus on are the other aspects, how to cultivate responsibility, competence, and maturity.
Re:Impractical solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Bans don't work because they're not 100% enforceable. Schools should have bars & cafeterias where they serve alcohol & kiosks to buy tobacco, vapes, lottery tickets, scratch cards, & porn mags so that they can learn to self-regulate & consume these items responsibly because they're going to be exposed to them in later on in life anyway, right?
Yeah, we should totally treat the most distracting & socially disruptive technology ever invented as if it were a life-lesson that kids have to either overcome with little or no guidance (or maybe put resisting social media addiction on the curriculum instead of maths & science?) or succumb to an eternity of cycles of addiction, dependency, degraded interpersonal relationships, poor academic achievement, & generally shitty lives.
Meanwhile, China will implement effective bans & controls so that their kids grow up smarter, more well-balanced, & more capable than us, because that's what we want, right? We don't want no nanny-totalitarian state controlling our kids' childhoods. FREEDOM!!!
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Yes, it's so impractical. Imagine passing laws & having institutions like schools follow them. It totally wouldn't work, you know, like banning things like tobacco, vaping, pornography, gambling, & alcohol.
I'm 100% with you on this, though I do have to point out the irony that schools literally assign pornography, lol. And yes, by "literally" I do mean literally, we battled it out with the school who assigned our daughter a novel with explicit sex scenes.
I'll never forget asking the principal if she would have been disciplined for reading the novel out loud in the hallway ... yet it's a book that her teacher literally assigned her to read?
So as usual, it sounds like we socially threw out the old wisdom, so
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Sadly if you suggest such material not only shouldn't be in school but shouldn't be in the elementary school library political radicals will claim you are 'burning books.' It is ridiculous but it is the case. This is part of why I homeschool.
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Sadly if you suggest such material not only shouldn't be in school but shouldn't be in the elementary school library political radicals will claim you are 'burning books.' It is ridiculous but it is the case. This is part of why I homeschool.
Yes, exactly!
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You can keep phones out of schools with varying success, but you can't keep it out of their every day life, which is part of what the proposed solution is.
Hell all of the other "bad things" you brought up we aren't able to enforce on teenagers very well either.
We can't succeed 100% in protecting them, so we should just give up? That means that all those times OUR parents and OUR schools stopped us from doing harmful things don't count, and we're just as mentally, emotionally, and socially crippled as today's kids? Oh, wait...
Let alone they aren't the same degree of "badness"; what did you think happened to the claimed corrupting influences of video games, rock music, and the long list of activities that past older generations have claimed to have corrupted the children? Smart phones and social media belong to the same category, they aren't inherently bad, but excessive use to the level of addiction causes the problem.
Similar-looking claims from the past turned out to be false, therefore today's are automatically false as well? That's a serious flaw in logic.
Also, comparing today's phones with video games and rock music is rather like comparing alcohol con
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The author describes a real problem, but then propose a solution that is impractical to ever implement and enforce. We all know it's not going to happen, the cat is already out of the bag. This is one of those examples where people loved to propose solutions to social problems but never think about practicality and execution.
And it's also ironic that the author states that the problem is we deprived children and adolescents of freedom and unsupervised play, and then proceeds to propose a solution where they want to deprive them of more freedoms.
What we should focus on are the other aspects, how to cultivate responsibility, competence, and maturity.
Depriving children of an addiction, is not abuse. But don’t ask the addicted parent that. They clearly see differently.
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>And it's also ironic that the author states that the problem is we deprived children and adolescents of freedom and unsupervised play, and then proceeds to propose a solution where they want to deprive them of more freedoms.
This is only ironic if you fundamentally do not understand the differences and interlinking between freedoms and responsibilities.
Our natural freedoms come from natural responsibilities. One exists to allow for meeting the other. Freedom of speech is there to allow for normal thinkin
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I'm not agreeing nor disagreeing with the authors solution.
What we should focus on are the other aspects, how to cultivate responsibility, competence, and maturity.
Your statement is not a solution. You proposed nothing in response but pointed to the issues the author is trying to fix with the solution they propose.
Phones provide a freedom that we didn't have before at the cost of taking away more freedom than it provides. First, even when you buy the phone it doesn't belong to you. Second, you don't control the phone and can't effectively make changes to take control since you don't have the keys. Third, there
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Computerizing early education takes away most of the crucial early development of social interactions and self discovery, which is great unless you want to just treat chi
Taking away cigarettes from a smoker (Score:2)
seems easy compared to taking away phones from kids.
When Addiction, isn’t. (Score:2)
seems easy compared to taking away phones from kids.
The problem is quite worse than that for society. When everyone is an addict, no one is.
This is why we will see most everyone labeling this solution as impossible, evil, cruel, stupid, insane, and every other excuse we’ve heard from addicts when fighting against that truth.
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seems easy compared to taking away phones from kids.
Hmm... I have an idea. How about a phone with a built-in vape pen?
Yes (Score:2)
I agree, take away the smart phones, video games, and anything else that isn't developing them to become better humans. This won't be easy on the parents that expect technology to babysit their children but this is what has to happen. Kids are going to be angry and parents are going to be frustrated, but it is what must happen.
I grew up in the 80's, and was 15 when I got my first internet connection in 1995. By then I had done a good bit of development, spent time playing sports, learned to hunt, was an ama
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>"I agree, take away the smart phones, video games, and anything else that isn't developing them to become better humans. "
We don't have to take away such things as smartphones, we just have to make them child-friendly. And it isn't difficult at all. A kid can safely have a phone, but Internet access should be white-listed, apps and communication should be parent-approved per installation. Kids should be able to call or text their friends and family through parent-approved contact lists. And kids sho
Childhood? (Score:2)
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I mean thats half the problem.
Hell. I spent a good chunk of the late 90s and early 2000s addicted to this absolute shitshow of a website. I know full well how much of a brainfuck social media is.
But that doesn't mean we shouldnt go "Ok... maybe this is bad for my kids? I need to put it down too If I stand any hope of disconnecting my kids brain from the black mirror"
We're beta testing a generation (Score:3)
Gen-Z is the wide release beta, open to all. Except we didn't hire any quality folks, so we're flying blind. When we started, we had no idea how it was going to turn out. We mostly still don't know.
I wish them good health, but I suspect we're not producing enough therapists to meet the coming demand.
You think this is bad? (Score:2)
Wait until your kids discovers VR, and escapes even deeper into a world they prefer, and when they are forced to come out for work in real life, they're not gonna be able to recognize anything, because their entire world is a made up one.
We've always done like that (Score:2)
A good chunk of those domains (friendship, dating, academics, politics, family dynamics, identity, for instance for sure) can exist over the internet as well. To quote a wise man, "we say AFK, not IRL, because the internet is real life, too". And it's going to be even more so in their adulthood.
We have no idea what the world is going to look like in 30 years. What if the skills and mindset they learn by looking at their smartphone all day end
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I would argue that you're crippling their lives and careers by thinking that they will turn into highly paid software engineers if you shoved a phone down their throats at an early age. The ones you speak of, you and I and probably /.'s entire userbase, followed these careers by choice. We used computers when it was laughed at to be a nerd because we loved that shit. Not everyone does.
I was one of those shy kids who preferred reading to rowdy playing, but that was my natural affinity, and not my inability t
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I know there are arguments for the benefits of information access and wide availability of social contact but the costs are exor
Won't solve the real problem (Score:2, Flamebait)
Taking away cellphones won't solve the real problem, that kids are a bunch of little shits because their parents are a bunch of gigantic turds.
Adults create the world children live in, and children learn consciously and unconsciously to mimic their parents.
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Yep. And what a fucked-up world it is at this time. No surprise kids have no respect for adults, because the supposed adults have screwed up on a massive scale.
Full circle (Score:2)
When my kids were little the (naughties) it was pretty common wisdom to have the internet connected family computer be out in the open, to limit screen time, to keep kids largely off the internet, and certainly off of it unsupervised, etc.
By the time they were teenagers, everything had changed, and we were looked at (socially and even by their schools) as weirdos for not letting them have (or even for not giving them) internet-connected pocket computers (aka "phones"). Very uncomfortable for us, but our re
This only works if everyone does it (Score:2)
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>"The problem is, I can't tell my 14yo stepdaughter "OK, we're not doing iPhones any more, we're going out to ride our BMX"
And it might be too late for her, already at 14 and expecting such things.
>"If we took away her smartphone, she'd be cut off from basically all her friends because that's how her friends communicate."
And are they really friends if they completely reject her because reaching her would be only by voice call, text message, or Email? The main problem is social media and unrestricted
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>"If we took away her smartphone, she'd be cut off from basically all her friends because that's how her friends communicate." And are they really friends if they completely reject her because reaching her would be only by voice call, text message, or Email? The main problem is social media and unrestricted access to the Internet and apps.
You are missing the point. In the 1980s we communicated with our school friends via notes tossed in class, and landline calls after hours. Today, the expectation from all kids is that the way they connect to someone else is getting their digits/social media add. I can't change that on my own. It would need a bunch of people to change it at the same time, for it to make a difference
A kid can safely have a phone, but Internet access should be white-listed,
Unsustainable. Fun fact, in the 1990s I worked for a company that made various forms of security software, ranging from DSD-list
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Indeed. That is the aspect that all these warners completely ignore: Something can only be a solution if it can actually be done with reasonable effort and side-effects. By that measure, this is not a solution, because it cannot be done.
As a second observation, the recommendations stink of "in the past everything was better" and "just forbid the stuff". Those are not the characteristics of actual solutions either. New possibilities require new ways to deal with them, not just a basically primitive "let's go
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I try to enforce a one hour time limit of my daughter's tablet and smartphone, so spends at least some time during the day not staring at screens and being constantly brainwashed by whatever YouTube and Disney are trying to sell her that given month.
I don't know if it's working, but I could see early on that she's learning bad behaviors from these devices and I'm trying to cut back where I can.
Terry Pratchett had it right (Score:3)
Though I have never read a Terry Pratchett book (I know, heresy), the following scene fits nicely to this post.
“You can't give her that!' she screamed. 'It's not safe!'
IT'S A SWORD, said the Hogfather. THEY'RE NOT MEANT TO BE SAFE.
'She's a child!' shouted Crumley.
IT'S EDUCATIONAL.
'What if she cuts herself?'
THAT WILL BE AN IMPORTANT LESSON.”
There is also a meme out there which talks about what life was like pre-internet. It essentially said you'd leave in the morning with your friends and wouldn't return home until either the sun went down or the street lights came on. No one knew where you were, what you did, couldn't get in touch with you, and you definitely scraped yourself. We were like gods.
Another comment I saw was someone, possibly a millennial or Gen Z, asking what people did before the internet. Did they just sit around the house all day? Someone replied simply, we went outside and had fun.
And finally, what happens when kids don't walk to school [psychologytoday.com]. Granted, with the way things are set up it's essentially impossible for the vast majority of kids to walk to school, but the four points of the article are:
Kids learn through independent activities, like walking to school.
Parents are often unnecessarily worried for their children's safety.
Over-supervision can hinder child development.
Children can be prepared for safe, independent experiences
And for those parents and kids who think this is all ado about nothing, this [amusingplanet.com] and this [clickamericana.com] is what kids did for fun back in the day (some pictures are duplicated). Imagine how many bumps, bruises, broken bones, lost teeth, and shredded clothes occurred, then imagine how outgoing and independent the kids were.
In other words, get off your damn phone and go outside. And when you are outside, stay off your damn phone.
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"Imagine how many bumps, bruises, broken bones, lost teeth, and shredded clothes occurred, then imagine how outgoing and independent the kids were."
No broken bones, but one dislocated shoulder among my group. Shredded clothing was quite common. We ranged miles from home on our bikes.
There were also many overnight camping trips with the directions of "We'll be in [so and so's] 40." Which translates to "somewhere in this 40 acre woods".
Smartphone is just one piece of the puzzle. (Score:3)
When we were bored, we looked up kids in the neigborhood. Played games, tried new tricks with a football, challenged eachother to sneek into the grumpy neigbor's garden when the ball got trapped there. School was fun. The only place were you could learn stuff except from the library. Want to know something about computers? Good luck finding a good book there. You had to learn from others. A guy in orchestra fixed a computer by shaking it. We went to ask why. He told us the processor was loose. Show us! I got my hands on a book about basic (you know, the programming language from Bill?) Got it from my sister who attended university. Read it several times. If I did not understand something? No google. You had to try and find it out yourself.
Looked in the technical drawings of the VCR manual to find clues on how the signal between the VCR and TV worked. Rewired the color channels,
These days? Just hit youtube to find someone that explains it in a 30minute video. He thought of way more things than you did. Packaged it in a fun format,
So I teach maths. Switched carreers four years ago. Kids these days completely block when they do not know the answer instantly. Some even think they have a blackout at that moment. Got panicing mails from parents when their kid got home and said he had a blackout on the test. They wanted a retest. Talked to the kid. They just no longer have the patience to start to explore the solution space. A lot of them do not even consider exploring it. Think back at their theory, use some filosophy? Wut? Sir, I did not understand the theory, but I found a youtube guy who explained everything, very nice video. You follow up with a question where they have to combine two things... clueless.
Yes, there are still plenty of eager students, but there is a big difference between the 90s and the 20s. Got into a conflict with one of the older students this week. She had a computer excercise. No laptop on her desk. Was making funny faces and lipped conversations with student 5m from her. Sir, you have to understand that I cannot focus on the excercise. Our generation sir? We are scatterbrains. We just cannot do it. The schoolsystem needs to adjust. Gave a little lecture on a seminar I followed that explained that focus is the new IQ.
Standard nostalgia (Score:5, Interesting)
Almost exactly the same sort of stuff was said about reading/writing, the printing press, the newspaper, the calculator, the television, the radio, and the internet. I’m probably missing a dozen other things that created a “kids are getting ruined” panic.
Also, the article is all over the map. What’s bad? The internet? Or the lack of unsupervised play? These things are (mostly) unrelated.
We can discuss the pros and cons of the internet for kids (there are a LOT of both ). But the crap about unsupervised play for kids being good? Screw that idea and the horse it rode in on. I clearly remember unsupervised play in the 70s. Very little “I love my freedom” and a whole lot of “lord of the flies”. Let’s see, I remember the natural tendency of kids to physically fight, both individually and in groups, bully the weaker and emotionally vulnerable kids regularly, abuse and kill small creatures for fun, engage in petty vandalism. I remember the fairly prolific risky sexual behavior, as well as fair bit that would be charitably classified as borderline nom-consensual. Oh, and the rate at which kids dissappeared and were never seen again? WAY higher than today. All that crap about how it’s so much more dangerous nowadays? That’s completely backwards. The 1900s were far more dangerous for kids. Look up the numbers yourself if you don’t believe me.
Anyone who thinks that environment was better is either a) ignorant of facts, b) a nostalgic who never actually experienced it, or c) one of those sociopathic bullies who rose to the top of the neighborhood kid anarchy battleground.
There is a huge difference between unsupervised play and freeplay that’s supervised.
He just discovered introverts (Score:3)
I grew up and graduated high school before smart phones were a thing and all the behaviours and tendencies he's talking about were common back then. Hating talking on the phone? Yeah, a lot of us did and still do. I know more people over my age who refuse to answer their phones than younger people with the same behaviour. Dislike confrontation? Yeah, lots of people avoided face to face arguments 30 years ago too. If anything, I'd say young women are more outspoken now than the women of my generation and I think that's progress.
The silliest claim he makes might be "safe spaces". We had those in the 80s too, they just weren't clearly labelled. Every shy person or introvert knew where that quiet place was in the library, or behind the far stairwell, or on the far side of the tool shed.
I recently went to an event with some Gen X folks and, during the tour, someone was pointing out the sales floor and the demo spaces. And then they pointed out their "quiet room" and we all went, "Perfect, we'll be coming back here when we need a break."
None of the stuff JH is talking about is new or specific to Gen Z. We (I mean introverts like me) have all been trying to avoid extroverted culture and pressure for ever. He just didn't notice until now.
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Sounds like a socially engineered advert (Score:2)
Yep, nice. Possibly true. (Score:2)
Can it be done? No. End of discussion.
Social media - and... (Score:3, Interesting)
I've droned on about "safety culture" where the most important and unarguable Raison d'être is being safe. Safety culture's evil twin is fear culture.
Add that to social media, and what you get is fearful people who are horribly damaged if someone disagrees with them, or insults them. I always wondered about this. As someone who grew up before safety culture grabbed us by the short hairs, I've been fold to go die in a fire, or other dopey online bullying, and I laugh. Today, fear culture has people committing suicide.
So where does this come from. A lot of it is from the weak males so in style today. That leads to women impressing their outlook on much of the western world, and in general, women are a lot more fearful https://www.psychologytoday.co... [psychologytoday.com] than men. So in the competitive atmosphere, the more fearful the "better".
Once upon a time, we were taught as individuals to figure out a way to deal with bullies, today, not so much - we're supposed to make laws and arrest them. Problem of course, in this tyranny of the weak, eventually mere disagreement becomes bullying. Do a web search "Disagreement is bullying" and look at the results. There's a reason that previous generations are making a failing attempt to differentiate between bullying and conflict. Because the tyranny of the weak demands only agreement. Mom has ascended to be the only boss, Dad has become a joke. Whereas at one time, the male and female formed more of a partnership, today, there is no question who rules the roost. And it isn't to post some right wing rant about dogs and cats living in the streets because reasons. It's about how social trends can have bad consequences. Here we are, might as well enjoy it.
Or perhaps, as Anthony Hopkins notes, "Beware the tyranny of the weak, they just suck you dry."
And those little phones are devices that can be wonderful, but are merely reflecting what has happened to Western society.
I grew up in the 50s and 60s (Score:2)
We had no smartphones or internet
I have Aspergers and no social skills
All of the other kids hated and insulted me. I had no friends
I learned that if I wanted to succeed, I would need to do it on my own
This lead to a long and very successful career in engineering
If I had the internet back then, particularly the University of Youtube, I would have been able to learn faster
We're all suffering from those symptoms (Score:2)
So are we gonna do away with Suburbs? (Score:3)
Birth rates are down. Way down. This means fewer kids. Meanwhile we move 'em out the the suburbs where there's low population density. The days of "neighborhood kids" in a low density suburb is over.
Meanwhile we've *drastically* increased kid's workload. My kid had 4 hours of homework a night in high school. I would wake up at midnight to go pee and find them still studying. And this is what the teachers said the amount of homework was. Weekends had similar workloads. 8-10 hours.
There's not a lot of time to spend on long bus rides, and the price of cars is crazy now. And no, dad ain't got time to help you fix a beater (which would still cost $3k). He's working 50-60 hours a week. So is mom.
We put an _insane_ amount of pressure on kids and then isolated them with our little car based island cities and then we wonder why the only social outlet they have is phones.
And rather than ask "should we do that" we blame the phones and want to take them away. That is some boomer as fuck shit. Right up there with "Nobody wants to work anymore" [reddit.com]
I pity them (Score:2)
Nowadays, if you carry this otherwise very useful, very entertaining, rectangle around, there is no respite. You don't have to be "bullied" anymore, you
Proper parenting? Existential threats? (Score:2)
This article is mostly panic driven nonsense.
Sure, being glued to a phone and social media 18 hours a day probably isn't going to do you much good, so its down the parents to sort that one out.
I'm sorry, but if you are letting your young children have continuous access to mobile devices and the internet, you need some parenting lessons.
Bottom line, we can't blame the form factor nor the content providers for the fact that its possible to get addicted to mobile phone use.
There's MANY things you can get addic
We had other electronic gadgets in the 70s and 80s (Score:2)
And those who made fun of us nerds went on to become succsesful supermarket clerks or heroin addicts instead of silicon valley millionaires or other successful professionals.
There isn't much to gain from idle chit-chat and subjective conversation with drooling idiots who have an opinion on things they never personally experienced or read about.
The time I spent with my family was... sitting quietly staring at the TV screen. That's what my mom did too. And she had a console in the 70s. Played computer games u
Its not as draconian as it sounds (Score:2)
We don't have suburban human children (under 12) wandering NYC as they please without some form of adult supervision. The smartphone is basically bringing the world to the child's doorstep. Most animal species with offspring that takes time to develop are somehow sequestered from the rest of their local environment. The only question is whether to cripple all internet access from a smart phone, or to allow access to specific apps. For example, I wouldn't think a wikipedia only app to be such a terrible
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Steve Jobs knew that the iPad was addictive, and wouldn't let his kids use one. People should think about that before you idolize this asshole who liked to park in handicapped spaces.
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Unfortunately if it wasn't that pompous arrogant bastard, it would have been somebody else.
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Sounds like you've misinterpreted that sentence, which is saying that he has proposed that human moral reasoning comes from the evolution of innate, gut feelings rather than from logic and reason, not t