A recent Pew Research Center survey reports that ninety five percent of teenagers have a smart phone or have access to one. It also reports that forty five percent of teenagers say they are online nearly all the time.
Many have suggested this has resulted in a measurable and serious negative impact on the learning environment in middle and high school classrooms. Others have suggested this has resulted in a serious negative impact on standardized student achievement test scores.
As a result, two thirds of the school districts in Maryland have put or will be putting new or more restrictions on student smart phones during the school day. Talbot County may be next.
I understand and respect these decisions. At the same time, I suggest they are not addressing more deeply seated roots of the problem.
In his most recent book, “The Anxious Generation How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness” social psychologist Jonathan Stephen Haidt does a deep dive on a measurable surge in anxiety, depression, and suicidality among American youth.
In his book Haidt references research showing a measure of anxiety for individuals between ages of 8 to 25 has increased 139% between 2010 and 2020.The measure for depression during the same period, often the result of an inability to resolve interpersonal conflicts or relationship difficulties, has increased 106%.
Haidt suggests three reasons why.
The first is the decline of the what Haidt calls play-based childhood. He maintains children need lots of free play time to prepare them for success as an adult. Out of fears for their safety, many American parents and guardians have reduced children’s access to unsupervised free play. The loss of free play and the rise of continual (some may say “smothering”) adult supervision has deprived children of what they needed most to overcome the normal fears and anxieties of childhood: the chance to explore, test and expand their limits, build close friendships through shared adventure, and learn how to judge risks for themselves.
The second is what Haidt calls rise of the phone-based childhood, which began in the late 2000s and accelerated in the early 2010s. Haidt notes this was precisely the period during which adolescents traded in their flip phones for smartphones. These smartphones were loaded with social media platforms supported by the new high-speed internet and unlimited data plans that has drastically reshaped the social media landscape for adolescents.
The third is what Heidt calls an overreliance on technology that has all but eliminated unstructured face to face interactions from the lives of children and adolescents.
Heidt concludes the negative impact of all three reasons was made worse by many well-intentioned parents, including himself. He writes: “We did not fully understand what was happening in children’s virtual worlds and did not grasp that tech companies had designed their online products to be addictive.”
As a result, Haidt asserts that all these trends combined, have robbed entire generations of opportunities to develop the resilience, coping skills, and independence needed to navigate everyday stressors, and in turn, created unprecedented levels of anxiety at a societal level.
He says these generations have not learned from valuable opportunities to engage in and learn from manageable risks, typical setbacks, failures, and healthy social challenges.
What can be done going forward?
Haidt offers the following proactive suggestions for parents and guardians of children in elementary, middle, and high schools.
Instead of a giving younger students smartphone as their first phone, give them a basic phone.
Do not give them a smartphone until high school. Delay the opening of accounts on nearly all social media platforms until the beginning of high school, at least.
Will his suggestions be popular with students? Not likely, especially given the immense power of peer pressure that characterizes life for students in schools at all levels.
One school in Maryland recently surveyed seniors on a new more restrictive smart phone policy to limit the overuse of smart phones during the school day. The questions and answers were: “Do you know overuse of cell phones is harmful? Yes. Do you want to give it up? No.”
Are Haidt’s suggestions still necessary since efforts are underway when an increasing number of schools are adopting on new or more restrictive rules on smart phone access? Yes.
Despite best intentions and best efforts, schools alone cannot address this problem. One Maryland school district superintendent has observed with thinly disguised frustration — “Students are in school for just 20% of their week. We can’t control the other 80% of the time that we don’t have them.”
Those with some control over most of the other 80% of student’s time outside of school are parents and guardians.
Going forward, parents and guardians need to fully embrace two concepts. Success for them is not based on winning a popularity contest with those whom they are entrusted with their care and upbringing. Success for them is measured in part by a willingness to make sometimes unpopular, but necessary decisions on reasonable limits for a young person’s own good.
In preparing all our young people for success, they, and our society deserve nothing less.
David Reel is a public affairs and public relations consultant in Easton.
