Jonathan Haidt, the author of this article, was on Real Time w Bill Maher recently, and has some simple recommendations with respect to phones and social media:
1. No smartphones for kids before high school — give them only flip phones in middle school.
2. No social media before age 16.
3. Make schools phone-free, by putting devices in phone lockers or Yondr pouches.
4. Give kids far more free play and independence, including more and better recess.
As co-parents with different homes in nearby towns, being able to coordinate with each other and our multiple children at multiple schools in real time became indispensable.
The kids also used their phones constructively, for assignments, tracking school progress, Youtube how-to videos, contact with cousins, etc. They had social media accounts but they never became a focus.
At school they kept their phones on silent and in their bags.
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Fortunately three insights helped us:
1. Casual addiction is the intersection of two problems: an unhealthy addictive thing, and a lack of engaging or planned healthier alternatives.
Solve either one! But the latter problem is far tractable than the former.
2. There are only so many hours in a day, so solutions to the latter problem usually have a low complexity bound.
3. Social media isn't that rewarding for kids, once they have voluntarily invested their interest in longer term activities and challenges. Doom scrolling notably lacks any verifiable feeling of progress.
So solutions are pretty robust to ups and downs.
We kept our kids lives full of physical and real world social activities, family outings, social events at home, regularly eating times for talking and bonding, regular homework times, etc.
We used to have computers in schools, on which we did all the things you present as requiring a cell phone to do, only without the persistent Internet access. Somehow we survived.
Last time I checked, a kid in a car can't download an assignment they forgot to bring, check their grades, or submit an assignment electronically, to a school computer when away from school at a friends house, a second parents house, or on a trip a family trip, without a mobile device.
Many people are more mobile now.
And schools are increasingly supporting remote access and activities. It is especially fantastic for multi-home families where whatever a kids needs is often somewhere else.
> Somehow we survived.
This phrase is used a lot, but I seldom find it persuasive.
We survived without tools that didn't exist in large part because they didn't exist for other people too.
But when they arrive, and become popular, they change the balance of other things, whether any individual wants them to or not. Sometimes they are so popular and useful, they raise the baseline of what people need.
Literally all of the examples you gave to support the idea that children need uninterrupted Internet access would be solved with a little bit of advance planning instead. Obviously your mind is made up, but that's not convincing at all.
You seem to be trivializing experiences I shared without providing a basis. Please correct me if I am wrong.
> would be solved with a little bit of advance planning instead
We needed more planning, because ...? I am lost as to your criteria here.
We solved many complex family issues with smart phones, which the kids used responsibly, largely due to lots of planning of healthy activities and quality use of time.
The kids also competently leveraged their phones for other valuable benefits, and it was especially nice for me to be able to contact them at any random point (outside of classes), without having to know where they were. They are my kids - being electronically present, via voice, text, pics, gaming apps, etc., when I was not able to be physically present, meant a great deal.
> Obviously your mind is made up
My "mind is made up" because ...? What is your basis here?
Throwing around an empty (potentially projecting) accusation, does not make it true.
For 25 years and going, we have adjusted our parenting roles by trying new things, seeing what works, seeing what stops working, and adjusting. "Making up our minds" would not be a useful means or goal.
Stranger danger and school shootings never really happened outside the U.S., and this is not an America-specific problem.
I think phones got through the "back door". When the first cell phones came around, not many kids took them to school, but the only thing they could actually use them for was contacting their friends/parents during breaks, so there was no reason to ban them. A Gameboy was specifically an entertainment device, an old cell phone was more like a flashlight or a watch, something which could presumably be used as a toy, but usually was not.
Then, cell phones got cheaper, more kids got them, but they also got more advanced. In the feature phone era, a lot of kids had phones already, but the balance of genuine communication versus amusement was still leaning towards communication. This changed very rapidly, and at a time where phones in schools were already ubiquitous, though their use in class might not have been.
Plenty of kids in high school were BBM/texting during class on their flip phones, Sidekicks, etc. They were told not to do it, but they did it anyway under the desk. Only a handful of strong-willed teachers actually took the phones away. However none of the younger kids did that kind of thing.
I don't understand how people aren't differentiating between bringing a phone with you into class and actually using it on class.
I find it absolutely ridiculous that anybody would even suggest that kids shouldn't be allowed to have a phone at school.
Equally, I don't understand how having a phone at school is a problem during class. Of course you aren't allowed to use your phone during class unless given explicit permission. If you do it your phone gets confiscated. You get it back after class. If it happens too often your behavior grade gets marked down.
And if a kid uses a phone during a test then that's just cheating and they get an F.
As usual, Haidt is spot on. There's no reason a child should have a smartphone, or be on social media having the algorithms warp their brains. Honestly I would say kids shouldn't have phones at all, except that these days they can't easily find public phones to call their parents (unlike when we were kids). But solving that problem certainly doesn't require a smartphone.
He explains the details in his book, https://jonathanhaidt.com/anxious-generation/, but I think the gist of it is that his recommendations are reasonable and actionable. Below age 16 it seems quite possible, policy-wise and parent-wise, to keep kids off social media. But the older they get the more they would push back (being teenagers after all).
Saying something like "no social media until 25" would immediately have people discount Haidt's rational policy solutions as something not practically achievable, never mind probably not legal either.
Until recently, most people had kids by the time they were 25 and it's hard to tell people who are in charge of raising other people, that they can't do something. You have to pick a cut off date somewhere. The chasm between 21 and 25 is vast, though.
> There is no actual evidence suggesting that impulse control only finishes developing in humans in the twenties. It is a common misconception in popular psychology that the brain only fully develops by 25.[13] This may stem from a misinterpretation or oversimplification of studies which determined that development of the prefrontal cortex continues into the mid-twenties
I dunno, I don't think it implies that at all. It seems to imply that scientists have confirmed that growth is still occurring at that point, and not the other way around, especially given the rest of the article.
i read today in Peter Sterling's - What is Health?... that the brain doesnt stop maturing until 45...i dont think social media is good for anyone - at any time.
1. No smartphones for kids before high school — give them only flip phones in middle school.
2. No social media before age 16.
3. Make schools phone-free, by putting devices in phone lockers or Yondr pouches.
4. Give kids far more free play and independence, including more and better recess.
I can't argue with any of the above.