It is no secret that teenagers throughout the developed world are in the throes of the worst mental health crisis ever documented. And it’s no secret that the proliferation of smartphones and social media has played a massive role in this crisis. Consider some of these book titles alone: Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, Erin Loechner’s The Opt-Out Family: How to Give Your Kids What Technology Can’t, Clare Morell’s forthcoming The Tech Exit: A Practical Guide to Freeing Kids and Teens from Smartphones, Sarah Wynn-Williams Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism, Robin Phillips and Josh Pauling’s Are We All Cyborgs Now?: Reclaiming Our Humanity from the Machine, Richard Freed’s latest, Better Than Real Life: How Silicon Valley’s Secret Science of Persuasive Design is Stealing Childhood, and the newly released Scrolling Ourselves to Death: Reclaiming Life in a Digital Age edited by Brett McCracken and Ivan Mesa. All of these books have at least one thing in common: they are sounding the alarm on the dangers that the firehose of digital media poses to society.
And this awareness doesn’t stop with book-length jeremiads. Look at the community and advocacy groups which currently exist (some of which I’m affiliated with): Smartphone Free Childhood xUS, Phone Free Schools Movement, Screen Strong, Appstinence.org, Becca Schmill Foundation, Center for Humane Technology, DelaySmartphones.org.uk, SocialRejects.org, Lookupp, LetGrow, Mothers Against Media Addiction, Australia’s Heads Up Alliance, and on and on and on I could go.
Our problem isn’t that we are unaware of the problem. Our problem is that on the individual level, many still struggle to clearly identify and speak the truth.
What truth am I referring to? Simply this: smartphones, tablets, and social media are not safe for minors. Kids and teens should not have independent access to these devices and platforms.
Intuitively, we all know that we are in desperate need of cultural change. We look around and see kids at bus stops not engaging in banter with those a few feet away, all eyes instead fixed on glowing rectangles. We see families out to dinner, not discussing how their days went, but ignoring one another while they scroll. We watch as groups of teenagers gather at school basketball games, not cheering or laughing, instead hunched over the screens in their hands. In fact, I have started to hear from elementary school speech therapists about 5-year-olds showing up to kindergarten who can’t string words together and form sentences in a coherent way. When 58% of kids ages 4 and under have their own tablet, I’m incredibly disheartened but not surprised.
Proactive parents have relied on conversations, parental controls, and time limits to regulate tablet and smartphone use, and still our problems persist. If our goal is to raise healthy kids to adulthood (as it should be), then we have to make a societal U-turn. And fast.
Those who promote the narrative that parents must “teach kids how to use these devices safely” ignore three realities of internet culture: (1) parental controls and app store ratings are ineffective at best, (2) “digital natives” are really bad at using technology well, and (3) claiming each family should make their own choice is short-sighted and downplays the social nature of these technologies.
Parental Controls and Filters
First of all, does anyone know what parental controls actually control or what filters filter? Each time I ask an adult this question, they are dumbstruck. Nobody really knows what the supposed safety mechanisms do, but relying on them is still the most common advice out there. In a recent hearing before the Supreme Court, I was encouraged to hear Justice Alito say, “There’s a huge volume of evidence that filtering doesn’t work. We’ve had many years of experience with it.” Okay, so the good news is that some people do know that filters are a joke, but rare is the parent who is getting this advice. There are entire organizations out there aimed at telling parents how to set and manage filters and parental controls, therefore giving parents a false sense of security.
Utah is one of the first states to try to address the failures of parental controls and filters by enforcing app store accountability. This is a great first step, but the message doesn’t seem to be getting to parents. Parental controls that rely on app store age ratings are still meaningless across the majority of the country. By way of example, an investigation reported on in the Wall Street Journal found more than 200 apps with age ratings inconsistent with their content. Parents believe their child’s phone or tablet is “locked down,” but instead minors have access to child sexual abuse material (CSAM), extreme violence, eating disorder information, and more. It’s not uncommon for apps rated age 4+ to contain pornography or to promote anorexia. Instagram is rated 12+, yet it is one of the biggest platforms distributing and allowing CSAM that the world has ever seen.
The worst, and often overlooked, piece of the puzzle is that good parents are telling good kids that filters and controls have been placed on their devices, and as a consequence minors are led to believe that all of the filth they are seeing online is part of the normal childhood experience. The parental fail-safe to all of this is, “if you see anything inappropriate, you need to tell me.” I wholeheartedly agree that parents need to have open dialogue with their children, but asking children to self-report every bad choice or tattle on their friends isn’t realistic. “Snitches get stitches” is the playground saying these days. As minors move into the middle school years, the desire to handle things on their own only increases. All the while, online content keeps getting worse. Furthermore, as Loechner points out in her book, if a child sees something bad on their phone, what is a parent going to do? Take the smartphone away. Do we really think teenagers are going to take that risk? We wouldn’t expect a 16-year-old to walk in the front door and say, “Mom, Dad, I admit I was speeding on the way home. Here are my car keys.” So why do we think a teenager will speak up when he or she has seen “inappropriate” content and risk losing their coveted device?
Digital Natives? Not so much
If your child can earn a high school diploma, he or she can figure out in a few days how to swipe and tap on a touchscreen. Extended exposure to dangerous content isn’t preparing them for the “real world.” Personal devices aren’t necessary for the teen years. Given that many adults struggle to use devices well, why do we think an undeveloped brain will fare any better?
Sapien Labs data from over 1 million people shows that the earlier a child gets a smartphone or tablet, the worse their mental health is into young adulthood. It should be no surprise then that, according to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, “While the overall volume of incoming CyberTipline reports has increased by more than 20% over the past three years, the number of urgent, time-sensitive reports where a child is at risk of harm has grown by more than 140%.” In short, the online world is becoming more dangerous for minors. With the rise of artificial intelligence powered chatbots in apps aimed at children, what’s to come next keeps me awake at night.
We’ve believed the lie that because devices are commonplace in the lives of “digital natives” this means minors know how to use technology well. Instead, according to a survey from Resume Builder, many Gen Z employees lack technological skills. Thanks to all of the swiping and tapping today’s youth have busied themselves with, we have neglected to instruct them in basic technological skills: explicit typing instruction, word processing, and learning their way around a spreadsheet. Worse than that, we have neglected to teach minors to look each other in the eyes, interpret non-verbal communication, and disagree well. These are the building blocks for almost all industry, and our “digital natives” aren’t measuring up en masse. Taking it one step further, studies show that students who use artificial intelligence to complete assignments are getting dumber, not smarter.
Kids today may be growing up immersed in a technological world, but they are sorely lacking in the abilities needed to cope in the physical world.
Not Only My Family, but Yours Too
Finally, as a society, we can’t fall victim to believing that the decision to withhold smartphones and social media is up to each individual family. The old adage, “if everyone else jumps off a bridge, will you?” may still apply, but only to a point. My family isn’t jumping. We’ve committed to not giving our children smartphones, tablets, or social media, but if most of the families around us jump, the collective trauma will still be felt by those under my roof. Individuals live in community, not silos. Data tells us that child sexual abusers often trace their roots to early pornography exposure. If, as a society, we continue to allow minors to be exposed to porn, intentionally or not, we risk reaping the harms for decades to come. Consider a recent warning from the FBI that online “networks methodically target and exploit minors ….. these networks use threats, blackmail, and manipulation to coerce or extort victims into producing, sharing, or live-streaming acts of self-harm, animal cruelty, sexually explicit acts, and/or suicide.” This can’t be the case any longer. We can’t in good conscience continue to think that as long as our children are okay, we are free to stay silent.
Be Kind, Tell the Truth
I believe the reason many of us aren’t saying the hard truth about these devices and platforms is that we don’t want to cause offense or criticize another parent’s choices. This is a normal human response, but what if by not wanting to offend adults, we are allowing the most vulnerable among us to continue being victimized?
The internet isn’t getting any safer for kids anytime soon. For over a decade we have tried giving minors smartphones and tablets, and look at what it’s done to us? How much longer will we prioritize a Wild West notion of freedom over protecting children and teens? The truth is, like cigarettes and alcohol, these devices are incompatible with healthy childhood development.
Smartphones, tablets, and social media aren’t for minors. If you are a parent who has given these devices, you can take them away. I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out the very real dangers of removing a device from a child who has developed an addiction. If you suspect your child may respond in violence (to themself or others), please read Dr. Victoria Dunckley’s Reset Your Child’s Brain for the purpose of developing a safety plan prior to device removal. If you are a parent that hasn’t yet purchased a smartphone or tablet for your children, commit now to never doing so. Instead, consider a landline or non-internet flip phone. For trustworthy research and encouragement, I recommend Screen Strong, SocialRejects.org, Appstinence.org, and my own Substack. When it comes to making changes, don’t stop at your own front door. Be kind, but tell your friends and family the truth too.
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