Thrilled you launched here on Substack! So many brilliant nuggets of information! Love all the tips and how clearly you have stated them but Tip 2 and Tip 5 really resonate.
Yes! Thank you. It took me a lot of mistakes before we figured out what was happening - I am trying to help parents not make the same mistakes we did! Appreciate your kind words.
This is wildly helpful and practical information for parents who are absolutely feeling ALL the stress, guilt, and anxiety of their preteens and teenagers anxiety and stress.
You are correct - we are all stressed over our kids' phones- that is how we know there is a big problem. It is a big warning sign when there is so much stress attached to an activity we allow for our teens. Hitting the pause button is the solution to the stress!
The real elephant in the room is that the *adults* are NOT alright. Anyone who thinks that arbitrary age gating and other such band-aids are on philosophically stable ground will soon find themselves eating crow. So if we really want to solve this all-ages collective action problem, how about we officially declare a state of emergency and quarantine all social media for "just two weeks". Also have a smartphone buyback program like they do for guns. I am only half-joking about that.
(As for phone-free schools, fine. And how about phone-free workplaces as well?)
Of course, those are not permanent solutions, only enough to break the spell that Big Tech has over We the People. We actually need to FIX the internet for good. We need to throw the proverbial One Ring into the fires of Mount Doom by passing comprehensive data privacy legislation for all ages, and especially banning surveillance advertising. We need to audit the algorithms and make them public. We need to rein in the deliberately addictive features and "frictionless sharing" of these platforms. And of course, we need to go antitrust on Big Tech as well. Yesterday.
To the adults in the room: the life you save may very well be your own.
I move that the author of this piece lead by example and ditch her own smartphone, throwing the proverbial One Ring into the fire for good. Does anyone second that motion?
I try to keep an open mind, but no matter how much I entertain this idea, I keep coming back to the same conclusion, namely, that it is utterly unrealistic and does not scale. At best it merely kicks the proverbial can down the road and also creates forbidden fruit. If you make the perfect the enemy of the good, you ultimately end up with neither.
We see what a failure the 21 drinking age is, for example. Just like Prohibition was.
At the rate things are going these days, the following is a very likely conversation that will happen many times over in 2030, at the latest. At least in the USA:
18 Year Old: "I'm an adult now. Why am I still not allowed to go on social media or have a smartphone?"
Parent: "Because the law now forbids both until you are 21, and the law is the law."
18 Year Old: "But Canadian, Australian, British, and European people my age are allowed to. As are people my age in almost every other country as well."
Parent: "Well, we're not Canada, Australia, Europe, or any other country for that matter. Different cultures and such. America has too many problems as it is."
18 Year Old: "But your generation was allowed to at a much earlier age than me!"
Parent: "That was then. Life was cheap back then. We know better now. And your grandparents were allowed to drink and smoke too at your age, which we obviously no longer allow either, so your point is?"
18 Year Old: "And they were allowed to play outside with their friends unsupervised even when they were in single digits too, or so I have heard. Grandma and Grandpa actually got to enjoy the real world before they forgot how to, while you got to enjoy the virtual world at least. My generation had neither."
Parent: "Well, the real world was much safer back then compared to now, and as for me, we didn't know just how dangerous the virtual world really was."
18 Year Old: "Statistics say otherwise".
Parent: "You need to watch more news and true crime documentaries before you can argue statistics. It's really a jungle out there now. In any case, I see your statistics, and I raise you a "Because I said so!""
18 Year Old: "Statistics beat logical fallacies and anecdotes every time. Regardless, it's not fair in what is supposed to be a free country."
Parent: "Life isn't fair. Deal with it!"
18 Year Old: "But I'm literally old enough to get married, and yet I can't even post my own wedding on Facebook? That doesn't make any sense at all."
Parent: "If you're so mature and such an adult, then why don't you get married right now?" (Tries to trick the young person into saying they are "too young".)
18 Year Old: "Because as an adult, I know that just because you CAN do something, it doesn't mean that you SHOULD. Just like you raised me".
Parent: (speechless)
18 Year Old: (Mic drop)
This was meant to be satire, of course. But it also goes to show that Haidt's (and even your) proposals may not be on philosophically stable ground. Only difference now is that the Overton window didn't shift quite that far--yet.
Agree! My college kids still don't have social media....they don't want it. After growing up without it they got a taste of the 'good life.' Love your comment. Thanks!
Thrilled you launched here on Substack! So many brilliant nuggets of information! Love all the tips and how clearly you have stated them but Tip 2 and Tip 5 really resonate.
Yes! Thank you. It took me a lot of mistakes before we figured out what was happening - I am trying to help parents not make the same mistakes we did! Appreciate your kind words.
This is wildly helpful and practical information for parents who are absolutely feeling ALL the stress, guilt, and anxiety of their preteens and teenagers anxiety and stress.
You are correct - we are all stressed over our kids' phones- that is how we know there is a big problem. It is a big warning sign when there is so much stress attached to an activity we allow for our teens. Hitting the pause button is the solution to the stress!
The real elephant in the room is that the *adults* are NOT alright. Anyone who thinks that arbitrary age gating and other such band-aids are on philosophically stable ground will soon find themselves eating crow. So if we really want to solve this all-ages collective action problem, how about we officially declare a state of emergency and quarantine all social media for "just two weeks". Also have a smartphone buyback program like they do for guns. I am only half-joking about that.
(As for phone-free schools, fine. And how about phone-free workplaces as well?)
Of course, those are not permanent solutions, only enough to break the spell that Big Tech has over We the People. We actually need to FIX the internet for good. We need to throw the proverbial One Ring into the fires of Mount Doom by passing comprehensive data privacy legislation for all ages, and especially banning surveillance advertising. We need to audit the algorithms and make them public. We need to rein in the deliberately addictive features and "frictionless sharing" of these platforms. And of course, we need to go antitrust on Big Tech as well. Yesterday.
To the adults in the room: the life you save may very well be your own.
(Mic drop)
I move that the author of this piece lead by example and ditch her own smartphone, throwing the proverbial One Ring into the fire for good. Does anyone second that motion?
What about this study? To put it in the lingua franca of the 2020s, perhaps flattening the curve doesn't actually change the area under the curve?
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2022/11/children-mobile-phone-age.html
I try to keep an open mind, but no matter how much I entertain this idea, I keep coming back to the same conclusion, namely, that it is utterly unrealistic and does not scale. At best it merely kicks the proverbial can down the road and also creates forbidden fruit. If you make the perfect the enemy of the good, you ultimately end up with neither.
We see what a failure the 21 drinking age is, for example. Just like Prohibition was.
Rhymes With "Brass Seagull"
just now
At the rate things are going these days, the following is a very likely conversation that will happen many times over in 2030, at the latest. At least in the USA:
18 Year Old: "I'm an adult now. Why am I still not allowed to go on social media or have a smartphone?"
Parent: "Because the law now forbids both until you are 21, and the law is the law."
18 Year Old: "But Canadian, Australian, British, and European people my age are allowed to. As are people my age in almost every other country as well."
Parent: "Well, we're not Canada, Australia, Europe, or any other country for that matter. Different cultures and such. America has too many problems as it is."
18 Year Old: "But your generation was allowed to at a much earlier age than me!"
Parent: "That was then. Life was cheap back then. We know better now. And your grandparents were allowed to drink and smoke too at your age, which we obviously no longer allow either, so your point is?"
18 Year Old: "And they were allowed to play outside with their friends unsupervised even when they were in single digits too, or so I have heard. Grandma and Grandpa actually got to enjoy the real world before they forgot how to, while you got to enjoy the virtual world at least. My generation had neither."
Parent: "Well, the real world was much safer back then compared to now, and as for me, we didn't know just how dangerous the virtual world really was."
18 Year Old: "Statistics say otherwise".
Parent: "You need to watch more news and true crime documentaries before you can argue statistics. It's really a jungle out there now. In any case, I see your statistics, and I raise you a "Because I said so!""
18 Year Old: "Statistics beat logical fallacies and anecdotes every time. Regardless, it's not fair in what is supposed to be a free country."
Parent: "Life isn't fair. Deal with it!"
18 Year Old: "But I'm literally old enough to get married, and yet I can't even post my own wedding on Facebook? That doesn't make any sense at all."
Parent: "If you're so mature and such an adult, then why don't you get married right now?" (Tries to trick the young person into saying they are "too young".)
18 Year Old: "Because as an adult, I know that just because you CAN do something, it doesn't mean that you SHOULD. Just like you raised me".
Parent: (speechless)
18 Year Old: (Mic drop)
This was meant to be satire, of course. But it also goes to show that Haidt's (and even your) proposals may not be on philosophically stable ground. Only difference now is that the Overton window didn't shift quite that far--yet.
Agree! My college kids still don't have social media....they don't want it. After growing up without it they got a taste of the 'good life.' Love your comment. Thanks!
You're very welcome. It was meant to be satire, and of course I don't agree with anything even remotely near that extreme at all.