"... is the rider on top. We may think it’s the rider steering the elephant, but more often it’s the other way around. Our emotions land somewhere, and then we try to rationalize why. 'Almost every social thing I’ve ever tried to do, we had to speak to the elephant, change people’s minds, change their hearts,' Mr. Haidt said. 'This is the first time I haven’t had to do that. Almost everybody’s elephant is already leaning my way.'"
The "idea for fixing Gen Z" is "no smartphones before high school, no social media before age 16 and no phones in schools."
“When you have a system which everyone hates, and then you have a way to escape it, it can change within a year, and that’s what happened in 1989,” Mr. Haidt said. “It’s different from the fall of communism but I expect it to be about as fast as the fall of communism. Because it’s a regime that we all hate.”
We all hate smartphones... or, I guess, kids with smartphones? I went to look up whether Haidt's name is pronounced "hate," and I ended up running into his dissertation: "Moral Judgment, Affect, and Culture, or, Is it Wrong to Eat Your Dog?":
A family's dog was killed by a car in front of their house. They had heard that dog meat was delicious, so they cut up the dog's body and cooked it and ate it for dinner.
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". . .and I ended up running into his dissertation: 'Moral Judgment, Affect, and Culture, or, Is it Wrong to Eat Your Dog?'"
A more pertinent dissertation would have been, "Moral Judgment, Affect, and Culture, or, Is it Wrong to Kill Everyone Who Isn't Muslim?"
Dumb phones exist, capable of texting and phone calls only. Parents that care about their kids control their unstructured time, and keep tabs on them. Mostly they work hard to allow unstructured time within limits, but also to fill in all the spaces around it with interesting structured activities.
There will always be parents that couldn't care less, and there will always be people that should not be parents - but there we are. I can't say I disagree with Haidt, and can only add that it would be much better if smartphones were reserved for smart people over 18 - if only it weren't such a stain on freedom.
You just can't legislate morality, even though our vaunted office holders think they're eminently qualified to seize control of it. Parents have to step up - and the government just refuses to recognize that they should be encouraging parents to be better at it - which is clearly not the policy case at present, given the visibility of certain characters within the present Freak Show administration.
Darn. Thought we were going to get a short essay on the word "galumphing".
No one hates the phones or the kids. It is the overuse and abuse of smartphones by kids (and others) to the exclusion of normal interactions that is destructive. Only in the Progressive mind are things all good or all bad. Sensible people are concerned with trade-offs and balance. There is no reason for smartphones in the classroom.
As to the dog, I can’t get past the ick factor.
It would be decidedly weird to cut up your dead dog and serve it for dinner, but not immoral. President Obama breathes a sigh of relief at my ruling...
I don't know if there has been an official long term study on the effects of 'The Screen' on our kids overusing smartphones, tablets. But you can certainly draw a line tracing the decline of social civility, the decline in education results in our young people with the advent of smartphones and tablets. Of course, correlation does not imply causation. But it's staring at us.
That said, I suspect that there a hundreds of thousands of empirical examples of kids changed by The Screen. I've got a working lab in my own family that I'll share with you.
Two sets of grandkids living on opposite coasts. Both liberal to progressive parents.
One family is all about video games and programming. The dad does it for a living. The kids are literally going to 'coding camp'. And in their spare time, the kids ALWAYS have their faces in their tablets or facing the large living room monitor playing video games. When we fly across the country to visit them, it's hard to get them to even look you in the eye. They seem almost zombie-like when they do face living humans. These are great kids, but they are socially awkward, a bit removed. They do little activity outside that is not a planned event. These are kids, but they don't just go out to play. It has to be a planned event to remove them from their screens.
The other family does not allow their kids free screen time. The little bit of screen time they might get is rare, monitored, and cut off. These kids are bright-faced, socially engaging (very much so), active, and creative. I stress the word 'creative'. They can spend hours playing with each other, with friends, or by themselves, creating things to do. When we visit, it's non-stop action being around them. Instead of dull, fearful looks, these kids have bright, smiley faces.
So...what gives? What's the difference? Well, it could be any number of things. But the most obvious to us is the 'screen effect'. I know what it does to me. I hate what I see it doing to our grandkids.
People may not like it, but Professor Haidt is correct.
I thought it was like “height”.
He's thinking of women.
Love or "haidt" Haidt, he and Jordan Peterson were the cultural canaries in the coal mine.
I know everyone risks turning into a grumpy oldster saying "Kids these days!" and "Get off my lawn", but something really did change with smartphones. Before the 2007 iPhone, there was nothing much to do in a social setting except be social. Only hardcore nerds kept their noses in a book. Even paper newspapers were social, as people would share sections, ask to borrow, or leave behind a finished paper for others to read. They'd jointly interact with whatever was on the TV set in a bar. All movies and plotted TV shows required an attention span, and typically had three Acts and a conclusion. This interaction and focus disappeared with social-media tweets and one-liners.
Me want. Me want. Me angry now. Wahhhhhhh!
Today, the majority of people I see have their noses in the phone on the street, in the car, in restaurants, while working clerical/service jobs, etc., etc. I skimmed the top 100 podcasts from one provider, and was shocked to find one where the host mimicked a school child throwing a tantrum. "Gimme my toys!" I couldn't stand his fake voice or attitude for even a few minutes.
Do you want a primal world filled with and managed by feral dogs? We are half way to Idiocracy (2006).
"You eat one lousy dog and you're labeled for life." - The dog eater's lament
Haidt loves his just-so stories, truth be dawned.
Locally, when the local HS tried to implement a no phones in class policy, it was the parents who raised hell insisting little Johnny needs to have unobstructed access to their phone even in the middle of class.
But yeah, it's the kids fault and the schools fault ... no blame for the parents who buy their kids expensive phones and text them all day long expecting mid-class replies.
Is it wrong to eat your upstairs neighbor's dog?
Oh dang. I hope the car was okay.
Flip phones only before age...
A family's dog was killed by a car in front of their house. They had heard that dog meat was delicious, so they cut up the dog's body and cooked it and ate it for dinner.
Sounds like that homeless guy who started eating the human leg severed in that train accident.
It's the phones yes. But for 2 distinct reasons. It has stopped kids from playing imaginatively. But more importantly — it has allowed adults to intrude on the innocence of childhood. Through the phones, children are now exposed to all sorts of adult content — pornography, anger, violence, etc. at ages far too young to handle the onslaught.
Your child's childhood (play, books, mud, animals, imagination, boredom, creativity) ends the second you give them a smart phone. The way phones and apps and games and SM interact with the dopamine system of the brain is very different from a comic book or even the mindless TV. You can look it up on PubMed or NCBI. The science of smartphone/brain dysregulation is real.
Everyone needs more real life in their life.
"Of course, correlation does not imply causation."
Correlation does imply causation. If it didn't, there'd be no reason to collect statistics. Proving it can be difficult.
I am so glad these phones didn't exist when I was a kid.
We don't allow smartphones until high school, and even then, the phones are almost totally locked down and have no web-browsing capability. No social media, even in high school. Tightly limited videogame time. It's been good. I'd change nothing.
I can't help but think, guiltily, of how addicted to TV young boomers were. And how concerned grownups were, how passive kids had become. At least in the big TV markets like socal.
And how social life changed with people staying home inside at night. It really did change the world.
Come to find out our WWII era parents loved TV even more than we did.
What can you do with a phenom like that?
..at least boomer kids couldn't take tb to school with them.
"Darn. Thought we were going to get a short essay on the word "galumphing"."
No, but if you were here at Meadhouse, you'd have been entertained by my recitation -- from memory -- of "Jabberwocky":
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
"I can't help but think, guiltily, of how addicted to TV young boomers were."
Based on how many times I was warned about sitting too close to the TV, I should have been blind for a decade now.
"I thought it was like “height”"
You're right. I found that out in my search, just neglected to put it in the post.
"We don't allow smartphones until high school, and even then, the phones are almost totally locked down and have no web-browsing capability. No social media, even in high school. Tightly limited videogame time. It's been good. I'd change nothing."
The change Haidt invites you to make is to move on to other people's children.
Correlation does imply causation. If it didn't, there'd be no reason to collect statistics. Proving it can be difficult.
The direction of causation is the issue. A and B are correlated. Is A causing B or vice versa? Or both? Or maybe C is causing both A and B to move together.
In this case "C" could be the broader decline in values and home life that causes kids to spend more time on their phones and be socially dysfunctional.
Haidt was on Rogan recently arguing his case. He recites a lot of evidence for his stance. It's a very reasonable conclusion.
Definitely agree with Haidt on screen time. We were pretty rigid on that point with our kids. Caused some tension, but I do think it helps a child be more well-adjusted. Some funny moments as well. Our son came home from school one day and said some of the other kids asked him whether he was Amish!
No TV till they were 11 or 12. We did have DVDs of some shows, like I Love Lucy. Once, when we were traveling and staying in a motel, I allowed him to watch reruns of I Love Lucy that were playing on some channel. When a commercial came on, he turned to me and said "Make it go back to the show."
"I can't help but think, guiltily, of how addicted to TV young boomers were. And how concerned grownups were, how passive kids had become. At least in the big TV markets like socal."
I grew up in SoCal in the 50s/60s. We (my brother, sister and myself) were not allowed to watch tv in the afternoon when we got home from school- it was either "Do your homework" (if any) or "Go outside and play". Seems like that was pretty typical in our neighborhood, all the other kids were outside, too.
After it got dark and we came home, we could watch what our parents were watching (after we finished our homework, if we hadn't done it earlier) until bedtime. It was unusual for any of us kids to choose what to watch. The telephone (we had a party line for a while) worked pretty much the same way- we were not allowed to use it without permission and when we did, it had to be the one in the kitchen. By the time I moved out at 20, I had probably never been involved in a phone call that lasted over two or three minutes.
Somehow, everybody survived.
no phones in schools
I don't think this is viable. Many parents do not trust teachers or school administrators to take care of or protect their children, so they want their children to have a means of contacting them outside the control of the school and its staff, and without their knowledge.
“Based on how many times I was warned about sitting too close to the TV, I should have been blind for a decade now”
So, when I was in maybe 1st grade, my best friend had glasses (he too ended up as an attorney). Knowing that sitting too close to the TV could ruin my eyesight, I did so for half a year. The eye doctor tested my eyes then, and I didn’t need glasses. Then six months later, after having given up sitting so close to the TV, I was retested. I needed glasses. Still do, some 65 years later. If I had known what I know now, I might not have tried so hard. Both my parents were near sighted and wore glasses. And almost all of us read a lot. 4 of 5 of us boys needed glasses before we got out of grade school. The 5th wasn’t a voracious reader, and just needs them for driving.
I have few regrets how my daughter was raised. She didn’t get a cell phone until maybe 9th grade, and even then its usage was closely monitored by her mother. Didn’t get a smart phone (iPhone) until college. In maybe 9th grade, she opened a Facebook account. Her mother confronted her when she got home. Turns out her mother was monitoring her for an online presence. Being a kid, she had no thoughts that her mother might know (a lot) more than she did in this area. Shouldn’t have been a surprise - I met her mother on a software project, and after our daughter was born, I turned towards patent law, while her mother towards network administration, then later moved up to running data processing for an entire organization. Daughter tried again, as a senior in HS, using an alias. Her mother knew, of course, but let her do it. Joined a sorority in college, and is now happily married. She and her husband are very social, either traveling or entertaining every weekend. And now they have all moved to having kids.
I'm glad our son was out of HS before smartphones showed up.
He and my wife have had them for years, but I have just upgraded to a better flip phone. I don't need the world at my fingertips, virtually. My wife lives on hers, and I suppose my son spends a lot of time on his, but he works, and has gotten back into art with pens and brushes --at which he was always very good.
"No one hates the phones or the kids. It is the overuse and abuse of smartphones by kids (and others) to the exclusion of normal interactions that is destructive."
Yes, that "overuse and abuse" indicates the danger of smartphones: they can become addictive for many users (in all age groups). Any addictive substance or object can lead to injurious effects on users' mental, emotional, and social health and functioning, rendering many dysfunctional to lesser or greater degree in various areas of their lives without (or even with) access to the addictive substance or object. Moreover, smartphones destroy privacy: with them, one can project one's own life into the hands of others, and others can invade one's life, such that children are now being bullied not merely physically at school, but more pervasively, in the privacy of their homes, via badgering and bullying directed right to their smartphones by their peers.
Smartphones are among the many creations of humankind that are simultaneously creative and destructive. They are tools by which we create new ways to live and learn and work and socialize, but they also destroy older ways of living, learning, working and socializing.
It's multifactorial but the smartphones are the hub of the problem. Break off a number of the spokes and the phone becomes a useful tool instead of a toxic mind fuck.
The key to parenting is to make kids anti-fragile. That means being a hardass prick over safety and honesty. Set hard boundaries and give total freedom within. Always have their back. Teach by the Socratic method. Force them to make things and play sports. Teach the difference between a toy and a tool. Give them the green light to throttle bullies and risk suspension. Go camping and make enormous bonfires. Engage in conspiracies. Set high standards. Have fun.
Read this post just before reading this long read on guardian (link at bottom) about the correlations between smartphones and social media and poor gen x mental health. I thought I’d read all this before, but this combo of articles was a good one: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/mar/24/the-anxious-generation-jonathan-haidt-book-extract-instagram-tiktok-smartphones-social-media-screens
In 1998, my HS son said the guys in his class could text each other from flip-phones in their pockets. Go herd cats.
I agree with this wholeheartedly. My oldest (now 20) was forbidden from getting any social media apps and knew that I was closely monitoring her daily use. That continued on until she graduated and moved out. The two younger teens, now 16 and 14, have grown up in a house that didn't allow social media even while they understood their parents used it. Akin to alcohol I suppose :)
Eliminate all absolutists!
No two children are the same. That's what makes parenting so interesting, difficult and sometimes rewarding.
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