By Canon Mike D Williams
Imagine your ten-year-old child is signed up by a billionaire to live on Mars. She has volunteered for this without your knowledge and all her friends are going. She begs you to let her go even though it is high risk.
A mad idea, yet it is a metaphor for what is happening to children since the smartphone and access to social media began, claims Jonathan Haidt. He writes about the rewiring of the children’s brains that is causing an epidemic of mental illness. It is a story about Gen Z born after 1995. There are two main threads to the book. First, is the unregulated social media that is causing significant harm to this generation. Second, is the over-safe parenting that has seen a steep decline in play-based childhood where social relations and learning takes place.
Young brains are susceptible to the addictive content that the tech companies develop to keep children and young adults’ eyes hooked on the screen. Peer pressure is high so joining in social media is the only acceptable behaviour.
Haidt is an American social psychologist. His book is well researched with some very clear graphs that evidence the harms. The decline in ‘risky play’ and childhood being phone-based has created four foundational harms for Gen Z. First is the social deprivation that comes from spending so much time online rather than in building real life relationships. The graph of time spent with friends shows a rapid decline for ages 15-24 since 2010. Even when they are with friends, they are on their phones.
The second foundational harm is sleep deprivation. Teenagers need more sleep than adults, but those surfing the internet in bed will suffer. Linked to this is the third harm of attention fragmentation. Social media is designed to keep you scrolling, constantly moving your attention. The executive function in the frontal cortex of a young brain that helps self-control is not fully developed. That leads to the fourth harm of addiction. Try taking a phone away from a teenager. Scrolling releases dopamine which feels good.
Haidt then examines what has happened to girls with the advent of social media apps that encourage visual images. Social comparisons become the norm and girls’ aggression is often expressed in ways to damage the reputations of other girls. Anxiety and depression increase dramatically based on the number of hours online. Boys use social media less than girls, but withdrawing from the physical world can impact their mental health. Boys have easy access to pornography and can become addicted to video games.
The final part of the book is a call to collective action by governments, tech companies, schools and parents. Haidt recommends the book ‘Free-Range Kids’ that provides sound advice on letting children play without constant adult supervision. He draws the contrast of adults being over worried about children in the physical world but not worried enough about them online.