What can we actually do about the phone-based childhood?
Issue #92
Whether you love it or hate it, technology has become a part of childhood. Tablets and smartphones are common tools in today’s parenting tool kit. And whether you embrace screens with open arms or face them with trepidation, there’s no denying that they are ubiquitous in our children’s lives.
If you ask parents, most of us will readily tell you that childhood looks different today than it did when we were young. A lot has changed and shifted. By and large, kids have less independent play and more structured activities. There’s more academic pressure and competition to achieve earlier and earlier. And, kids are getting access to the internet at younger ages.
There’s also a deepening mental health crisis among youth. Rates of depression and self-harm have been climbing at an alarming clip since 2010, especially for teen girls.
It’s a lot to make sense of. We can see how childhood has evolved, and many of us, unfortunately, have a front-row seat to the unfolding and overlapping crises pushing kids to the brink. And understandably, people are trying to put the puzzle pieces together in a way that brings some clarity. Experts, lawmakers and parents urgently want to explain why children are having a harder time today. We want answers.
And it’s natural to wish for those answers to be simple. I think that’s why some have been quick to blame technology as a whole. They map the onset of the mental health crisis on the widespread adoption of smartphones. They see a straightforward cause—and a clear solution: get kids off tech. I understand the appeal of this thinking, but it’s an oversimplified answer to a very complex issue.
It’s certainly true that the internet was not designed with kids in mind. Social platforms are not healthy ecosystems for developing brains. We need to address these issues, but it's absolutely crucial to do so with nuance.
We can’t just call the internet a wasteland and restrict access to children. We need to look at the many different factors affecting children’s wellbeing in context. And, some people are taking a more nuanced approach to the issue, like Jonathan Haidt in his recent work. He seems to drill down into the topic, weaving together a lot of research and observations to offer a more comprehensive take on what’s gone wrong with childhood. In an article adapted from his upcoming book, The Anxious Generation, he outlines some compelling arguments while resisting the tendency to oversimplify.
In particular, I like the way he talks about smartphone use in terms of opportunity cost. This is also how I think about my own kids’ technology use; are they still spending time doing other important things, like socializing face-to-face, exercising and sleeping? Or is their tech time displacing those activities? While this isn’t the only factor I consider when thinking about their screen time, it’s an important one, because balance is essential. Even if my kids are doing safe, constructive things online, they still need time for the other important parts of childhood that happen IRL.
And, I also like that he singles out social media platforms in particular. Rather than vilify screen time in general, Haidt takes aim at the online spaces that are most detrimental to kids’ mental health. He argues that our children “are coming of age in a confusing, placeless, ahistorical maelstrom of 30-second stories curated by algorithms designed to mesmerize them.”
If we want to improve things for our kids, we need to take a good, hard look at where and how they spend their time—online and off. If the majority of their days are spent scrolling platforms that exploit them, surrounded by strangers who don’t care about them, that’s a problem.
But simply rolling back their access to technology isn’t a workable solution. For one, kids are wily. Parents know that a motivated child can and will find a way around parental controls. And if you ban platforms or take away screens entirely, there’s a good chance kids will access those things at school or a friend’s house anyway.
Screens are here to stay. But don’t despair, because technology can be a force for good. We just need to pour our efforts into building online platforms and spaces better suited to a healthy childhood.
That’s what we do every day at Kinzoo because we want kids to have safe spaces to go online. Spaces where they can explore technology while surrounded by people they know and trust, not masses of strangers. Spaces where they can create things, not just consume a constant doom scroll. Spaces where they can discover inspirational, age-appropriate content, not toxic digital sludge.
Kids face immense pressure to own smartphones and be on these platforms. Parents know this already. I’m guessing many of us gave our kids phones earlier than we’d have liked simply because we didn’t want them to feel left out. This pressure is something that Big Tech companies helped create when they designed their apps. They created platforms that attracted young kids and did nothing to prevent huge numbers of them from creating accounts. Then, they bombarded their developing brains with features meant to induce FOMO. This makes it all the more urgent to give them alternative spaces.
I’m not trying to argue that it’ll be easy to fix technology, nor that fixing it on its own will reverse the troubling trends we’re seeing with youth mental health. But, I believe that this approach will be more effective in the long run than trying to roll back access.
A deeper dive
Here are a few helpful resources in case you want to really dig into today's topic:
Big Tech is often compared to Big Tobacco, but Haidt actually argues that comparison is “not really fair to the tobacco industry.” He goes on to outline the way that social media companies apply more pressure to non-users than tobacco companies ever did, using this example: “Even a girl who knows, consciously, that Instagram can foster beauty obsession, anxiety, and eating disorders might sooner take those risks than accept the seeming certainty of being out of the loop, clueless, and excluded. And indeed, if she resists while most of her classmates do not, she might, in fact, be marginalized, which puts her at risk for anxiety and depression, though via a different pathway than the one taken by those who use social media heavily.” All the more reason kids need safer spaces to connect.
As awareness of social media’s harms mounts, there’s a new advocacy group demanding change from the tech industry: Mothers Against Media Addiction is launching a grassroots campaign to hold Big Tech companies accountable and fight “social media addiction.” On the one hand, I’m glad to see a group of parents organizing around the issue. But I worry when the fight to make technology safer uses the fight against drunk driving as a template. Unlike impaired driving, technology is a necessary part of our lives—and something that kids can actually benefit from. Pushing to ban phones from schools won’t make our kids any safer in the long run, and might actually do more harm than good.
TL;DR
Too long; didn't read. It shouldn't be a full-time job to keep up on industry news, so here is a mercifully quick summary of some other notable developments:
The way Floridians access much of the internet is set to change on January 1st, 2025. That’s because Governor Ron DeSantis signed new legislation requiring parental consent for kids under 16 to hold social media accounts. While that might sound good in theory, this kind of law puts the onus on platforms to verify users’ ages—which poses risks to users’ privacy.
We all know that there’s a lot of terrible stuff online, but social media platforms have long argued that they are not responsible for any hateful, toxic content posted on their sites. They’ve fallen back on Section 230, which effectively shields them from liability. But, a judge in New York has just ruled that YouTube, Facebook and Reddit must face lawsuits claiming they helped radicalize a mass shooter. The case revolves around Payton Gendron who was 18 at the time he shot and killed 10 people in Buffalo, New York. The plaintiffs argue that social media platforms “profit from the racist, antisemitic, and violent material displayed on their platforms to maximize user engagement,” and should be held responsible.
And lastly
Here are a few more pieces of original writing from me and my team—just in case you're keen for more:
It’s not always easy to find the apps and platforms that are good for children, especially for busy parents. My team put together this list to help.
It’s not just smartphones that parents wonder about—there’s also smart watches. Here’s a guide to help you sift through the pros and cons for kids.