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The graphs show it in stark relief: Rates of anxiety and depression are soaring while test scores plummet among young children and teens. The numbers are no surprise to educators who see this every day in their classrooms. At the latest AFT Book Club session, author and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt unpacked the reasons behind the decline, examining his belief that the overuse of smartphones and absence of childhood play have led to the “destruction of human potential on a scale we have never before seen.”
Haidt’s book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, is a bestseller: Parents, caregivers and educators are desperate to help children who are struggling with mental health. Many have suspected that electronic devices are a part of the problem; Haidt’s review of the research confirms this in spades, and his suggestions offer hopeful antidotes to the problem.
Examining the problem
Smartphones cause a host of harms, Haidt says, from poor posture and damaged eyesight to sleep disruption. During the book club session Aug. 24, his conversation with AFT President Randi Weingarten focused primarily on mental illness and attention fragmentation, two issues that are especially evident in our schools.
“It’s a tragedy in two acts,” said Haidt. “In Act One, the play-based childhood which we’ve had for hundreds of thousands if not millions of years” began disappearing in the 1990s, when “we started cracking down on play” as “too dangerous.” Parents were afraid to send their children outdoors, unsupervised. Then came smartphones; by 2015, they were ubiquitous. “We have overprotected our children in the real world,” said Haidt, “and we have underprotected them online.”
Haidt values the days when children were told to just “go out and play,” when they would create their own games, their own rules, resolve their own conflicts and explore their own environmental and social worlds. “Play is the way we wire up our brains,” he said. “[Children] need to physically engage … in an environment where mistakes are very low cost.” That may mean scraping a knee and getting back up again. It may mean enduring a friend’s rejection. “You need millions of cases of that. That’s what play is all about,” he said.
Notifications and the pull of the phone disrupt all that, along with the development of executive function—the fundamental ability to make plans, resist temptation, stay on track and follow a course of action to its end. Children are glued to their phones, experiencing increasing levels of loneliness. The addictive nature of touching a screen for immediate gratification and the algorithmic nature of services that cater to a person’s craving for validation and positive feedback—even from an electronic device—steal the ability to interact in real life with real people.
One result is a dramatic rise in self-harm—including cutting—an indication of anxiety and depression. Among girls ages 10-14, who are more likely to engage in this behavior, incidents of nonfatal self-harm that ended in hospitalization rose from just over 100 per 100,000 in 2009 to nearly 650 per 100,000 in 2014.
Decreasing test scores are another concern. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, both math and reading scores declined sharply after 2020. But while many expected scores to rise again after schools physically reopened, they continued to fall. Haidt connects that failure with the accelerating reliance on smartphones. “This is a complete catastrophe for anyone who cares about education,” said Haidt.
There are also real dangers posed by social media, he added. “You’re talking to strangers, some of whom want sex or money from you,” said Haidt. “It’s completely insane that children can be on social media.”
What can we do?
Caregivers and educators have felt stuck, trying to extract children from the trap of too much screen time. Collective action—the idea that everyone is practicing a particular habit, and if your child is not allowed to participate they will be left out—is powerful. But there are ways to turn collective action to the kids’ advantage.
“As important as understanding the ‘why’ is the call to action,” said Weingarten, who was eager to share some “simple rules that may really help kids.” Haidt proposes four “simple norms” to break the spell smartphones have cast on our children.
First, ban smart phones for all children under 14. Next, prohibit social media for all children under 16. Prohibiting cellphone use in schools—not just in class, but from bell to bell—is another powerful tool, and is within the range of things educators can influence.
And finally, because it is nearly impossible to take something away—especially something as addictive as smartphones—without replacing it with something else, Haidt is a big proponent of giving children more independence, free play and responsibility in the real world. “We have to give them back each other,” he said, and give them a chance to replace silent, solitary scrolling with more laughter, talking, recess and play.
Haidt has helped launch Let Grow to help caregivers and communities allow children to regain a healthier balance, with more autonomy and real-world experiences in their childhood. The Let Grow website offers resources that help foster independence among children, whether it is through suggested programming or policy changes that allow communities more flexibility in the ways children move through the world.
For example, Haidt highlighted the Let Grow experience, which assigns children “homework” to do something on their own, and report back. It could be walking to the store by themselves to buy bread, making a meal or climbing a tree. But it should be unsupervised.
Haidt also champions the Let Grow Play Club, a way to create public space for children to have free playtime with peers—and minimal adult supervision.
Weingarten believes in these sorts of solutions, and pointed to New York and California, which have passed no-phone policies for their schools—along with dozens of other states. She also described the project-based learning the AFT has long championed as another way to engage children in the real world, rather than their phones. Some unions, including the Chicago Teachers Union, have negotiated more time for recess in their contracts so children are sure to have free play.
People are asking, “How can we push it?” said Weingarten. Now, she said, “you have some data in this book about why play is important. Bring it to the bargaining table. Bring it to a union management consultation, bring it to a PTA meeting.
“If we can really separate kids from their phones for the day,” she said, “it is going to be so helpful” in the long term.
To watch the book club session, click here.
[Virginia Myers]