By a variety of measures and in a variety of countries, the members of Generation Z (born in and after 1996) are suffering from anxiety, depression, self-harm, and related disorders at levels higher than any other generation for which we have data.
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Well I could only read the first 2 paragraphs due to paywall, but it’s definitely the phones causing all this and certainly not late stage capitalism sucking the energy and empathy out of everything around us right?
I think the two (phones and late stage capitalism) are working hand and glove to fuck up the kids. Us older folks had a much easier time pretending things were okay because our pockets weren’t constantly buzzing with instant feedback and we weren’t continually forced to consume traumatic and stressful content. Sure, we had plenty of other problems, and each generation is going to deal with their own fair share of shit, but I do think this cohort has a much harder job avoiding the ugliest sides of humanity.
But it was still bad then, you just didn’t know it. It’s good now we know how bad the world is, maybe bad for mental health, but good if you don’t want to remain in your own bubble, unable to have any effect on the world. And individually, you still won’t have an effect on the world, but the more people that know and care about issues, the more likely they are to get fixed. Something the internet can help with.
i remember the fall of Berlin wall, i was very young but i do remember. I remember the end of that either/or era
i remember internet going global and accessible. I remember the early internet that was about information wanting to be shared. Not the internet of globalSupermarket + gov.net + selfie
i remember discovering new and exciting sounds that weren’t possible before sampler/sequencers
i remember scandals that actually ended political careers. I remember people disagreeing because their ideas of a better world was different and not because they hated people who think differently
it wasn’t “still bad then”, there was a sense of things getting “better”. Can we say the same thing today? Who thinks the world will be a better place in 5 years or 10?
Thanks for the paywall warning. I’ve opened the page in Firefox, clicked on Toggle Reader View immediately and could read all text. Here the end of the article :
spoiler
We didn’t know what we were doing in the early 2010s. Now we do. It’s time to end the phone-based childhood.
This article is adapted from Jonathan Haidt’s forthcoming book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.
When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.
Nah, it’s probably the death of rock music.
Sure, it’s the phones and not the fact the Earth is burning while all the people with power are too focused on growing their money piles by exploiting people.
People can’t afford houses, kids and the planet might not have a future.
But sure, yeah, it’s the phones.
“If we take away their phones, they can’t know it’s all on fire!”
Yeet
It might be beneficial for younger kids to not be aware of every global catastrophe, don’t you think?
“Let us not prepare you for the world you’re born into”
I said young kids, not all kids. Learn to read.
You actually said “Younger kids” . Younger is defined as “having lived or existed for only a short time.”
Maybe you should learn about Reddings Postulates
Maybe you should learn about contextual communication. Most of us aren’t pedantic English majors
You mean in the sense where overexposure to news makes someone generally paranoid, combined with the fact that a massive fire in colombia is not likely to enrich their perceptions or help them understand the world around them any better?
Think about it, without the kids having a way to fact check everything they would have to believe whatever they say, and that leads to my favourite problem solving method, propaganda!
the size of the relationship is often statistically small, which has led some researchers to conclude that these new technologies are not responsible for the gigantic increases in mental illness that began in the early 2010s.
Anyway, here’s 8500 words about why we are blaming cell phones anyway.
(Surely it’s not also the terrible economic landscape, hyper-competitive education system, or the collapse of community institutions…)
It’s all of those. As a father of teenagers, I can definitely add a subjective opinion that phones are TERRIBLE for teenagers. It reinforces all their fears and multiplies all their false certainties.
false certainties
As a fellow father of teenagers, I agree and want to thank you for introducing me to this phrase. I didn’t have a simple phrase for “doesn’t care about school, thinks he will be a millionaire by age 20.”
One unfortunate aspect I’ve found is that (n=1) a grounding involving taking away phone time besides one hour in the evening until grades improve doesn’t provide all that much motivation to improve grades. An allowed hour because complete social isolation is not a helpful punishment.
It does, however, greatly improve mood and ability to focus and think through problems. I had the same false certainties as a teenager - that’s a failure on us (the parents), and goes beyond smartphones, but grades are important.
‘Grades are important’ is not something I ever thought I would say, but as an old person I understand now… It’s not the grade itself, it’s what the grade represents - foresight, seeing the bigger picture, and effort and commitment to something.
%90 of the teenagers who said they are depressed also have phones. Much significance, many r, wow p value
Sure the phones are to blame and not the shitty world with never ending economic crises and wars everywhere and probably unhappy, stressed out parents fighting all the time.
Also, the fact that technology makes it easier to actually collect data on stuff like depression etc and people are more encouraged to speak about it, as opposed to previous “it’s life, man up and take it” generations’ attitude…
Unethical twin studies are illegal for very good reasons, but I’d be curious about the results of the following hypothetical (albeit flawed) study:
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Twin 1: raised in a small village fishing/farming community that disallows internet access, but allows full unfettered access to a vast library.
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Twin 2: raised in a heavily populated coastal city with a smartphone from age 6.
A constant, instant stream of knowledge of horrific things happening hundreds or thousands of miles from you, and the barrage of social media toxicity, must come a negative mindset about the world. I don’t see any way it doesn’t. Sure there is wholesome and humble content on every platform, but the vast majority is either neutral or negative, and negativity generally spreads much faster than neutral or positive; it’s the human condition.
It affects everyone, but your reality will be much different if it’s been affecting you since you could, quite literally, remember.
I’ve seen multiple grassroots efforts of insightful teens who recognize this and are going dumbphone-only. Those kids are the future I’d place my bet on.
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Social media is designed to be a vice. Its not suprising it causes depression
When you link page, please make sure that you dont link its paywalled version or at least paste article contents into post’s text
Here you go friend:
Meh…it’s a terrible article full of conjecture and frankly shitty casual causation.
The reason kids these days have higher rates of self harm and suicide isn’t digital. They’re getting fucking shot at when they go to school.
The parents are hyper aware of this and are overly protective. The kids aren’t going out after dark to cause havoc or just hang out with their friends any more.
There’s also a severe culture war going on between liberals and conservatives across the globe that’s distinctly split previous social groups.
None of this is due to a kid holding a smart phone. It’s down to really shitty adults doing really shitty things and then blaming the phone for exposing kids to said shittiness.
This article sucked.
By a variety of measures and in a variety of countries,
Getting shot going to school is an American problem.
Your comment sucked.
Your comment is equally guilty of assigning blame to something without any strong evidence or similar.
Without actual studies looking into it it’s all conjecture.
They’re getting fucking shot at when they go to school.
American Defaultism
Did you read the article? In the first sentence it’s literally stated that the data used is of adolescents from the USA.
It’s about American kids.
The article is literally about American kids, from the perspective of Americans with an audience of Americans.
I have to disagree with most of that.
Raising a kid right now is weird, the way they interact with tech is nothing like when we were kids. I was lucky growing up in the 90s with a computer, I could play with it all day and never get into any kind trouble it was just video games and poking around, seeing what it could do. I think having access to a computer at such a young age was transformative and wonderful.
But today, there’s so much trouble to get into, it’s crazy. I need to lock down that computer for my kid, there’s not enough parental control software in the world to make it safe for a defiant child, so I just can’t give him free access to the computer. I log him in for every session and make sure he’s monitored the whole time (which is exhausting).
He had access to some public Minecraft server for a while and initially I was like “this is fine”, but it was like 5 days before he was telling people to kill themselves in the chat and yelling ethnic slurs into his headset… he’s 7.
I truly dread having to deal with him interacting on social media. It’s going to be ugly.
Edit: I should clarify, this article is garbage, I’m not sticking up for it. The problem is not kids these days or bad parenting, it’s just a more complicated world. Social media, predatory tech companies, consumerism, polarized politics, all this crap adds up to a more complicated world, more riddled with potential landmines than ever before.
I’ve been dreading this and it saddens me to hear from you that my worst fears were correct.
I’ll just take solace in the fact that I had 30 year head start and that my tech-fu will hopefully stay one step ahead of my 1-year-old
Yeah, the technical problems are also pretty frustrating. I’ve been an IT guy for a long time, and I knew that I a second hand iMac would be a great machine for him, so that’s what I got. But unfortunately apple has abandoned their support for 32bit applications, seriously slashing their library of software. So I’ve stuck to an older Mac OS that does still support it. Steam has a “family view” mode and with that I can easily curate my own huge steam library and allow him to play appropriate games. Except of course, that about 2/3 of that library will be unavailable soon, as with future steam updates they will not be supporting the last macOS version that still runs 32 bit programs. Sigh.
I already tried installing Linux mint on that Mac and it was a nightmare. Linux doesn’t really do parental controls, at least not out of the box. The only silver lining was that at least when he clicked on every single web link he found, the dozens of malicious .exe files he downloaded won’t run on Linux.
But I guess to reassure you, the tech can be hard, but the kid doesn’t have to be. Our situation is a bit extreme, probably atypical. We adopted a 6 year old, so we have a lot of problematic behaviors, distrust, and defiance to train him out of. That shit is hard. But if you can build love and trust right from the start, you can set norms for tech usage and behavior. It’ll be ok.
But I do fear social media, it looms in our future…
He had access to some public Minecraft server for a while and initially I was like “this is fine”, but it was like 5 days before he was telling people to kill themselves in the chat and yelling ethnic slurs into his headset… he’s 7.
The battle is real, I’ve heard and seen things out of my kid the same age that left me speechless. Kids think that because it was on the screen or in their headset 100x that this must mean it’s ok, and with the number of people who just give it a pass by not paying the least attention…
Formative years are no place for such anarchistic environments, particularly when they’re used as an unmonitored substitute for actual engagement.
If someone it’s interested at reading about the effects of TV and internet into modern culture you should read a book named Homo-videns by Giovanni Sartori.
Beside the book, I believe the boom of ADHD diagnostics could be related to modern technology use and its effects on brain development, psychological and emotional.
Only available in Spanish ☹️
Yeah I have read it in Spanish, thought there was an English version, maybe an unofficial translation?
and it’s effects
Yes, it is effects.
Also, amusing ourselves to death
Adhd is not something environmental. It’s genetic
we know it’s genetic for sure. but we don’t know if it isn’t enviormental as well, it’s rather hard to check, but to confidentiality claim that it definitely isn’t is silly
That’s how science works. We don’t just consider things as true just in case they might be true
Casting doubt on environmental factors without conclusive evidence simplifies a complex issue. Science thrives on openness to new data, not dismissing possibilities without thorough investigation.
Personally, I don’t think you should be telling folks “how science works”.
No that’s not how it works. If you have a theory, posit it, test it, and peer-review the tests. If you (or someone else) won’t do that, you can’t just muddle the waters like this. This is how anti-science works.
Them:
I believe
They admitted it’s just a theory.
You:
Adhd is not something environmental
Alas, the only definitive assertion in this comment chain. It has been proven that there is a genetic component to ADHD, not that it is exclusively a genetic disorder.
I also believe ADHD is partially environmental. I have diagnosed with and am treated for it.
It’s not anti-science to believe something that hasn’t been disproven. It is anti-science to believe something that has been disproven (e.g. climate change-denying loons).
They admitted it’s just a theory.
You don’t just “I have a theory that aliens caused it” and then start spreading it around like the OP i Was responding to did.
It’s not anti-science to believe something that hasn’t been disproven.
By that argument it’s not anti-scientific to believe in Gods and Astrology…
You’re literally doing the thing you accuse others of—jumping to conclusions without full evidence. Declaring ADHD purely genetic, while ignoring potential environmental factors, is a leap without scientific backing. It’s not about muddling waters; it’s about acknowledging our current limits and exploring all possibilities. That’s the essence of true scientific inquiry.
I believe things that are proven. Claiming ADHD is environmental without proof is on the same scale as “Vaccines cause Autism” and is used to claim shit like “Everyone has ADHD these days” or find something to blame for “causing ADHD” without ever supporting actual people with ADHD. The OP was literally using this exact argument to blame electronics for causing ADHD! This is muddying the waters and is not helping people with ADHD at all and is probably just harming them.
We don’t just consider things as true just in case they might be true
That’s literally what you did in your previous comment when you said that ADHD isn’t environmental. You made a statement of fact about something unproven. By your own logic, your approach is unscientific.
You could say “We haven’t proven that ADHD is influenced by environmental factors,” that research is ongoing to determine the effect of environmental factors, or point out that much of the evidence suggesting environmental factors could simply be correlation - or in some cases that the causal factor is reversed, i.e., that the cause of the environmental factor is the parent/child having ADHD rather than the other way around. But simply saying that ADHD is only genetic is, to be succinct, wrong.
neuroplasticity
This article strikes at a very salient set of points about smartphones and social media. As someone that specifically tries to only use federated social media because it avoids some of these dark patterns, I certainly agree with. I also use my smartphone without any notifications turned on, ever.
Unfortunately the author has a few paragraphs that miss the mark and strike me as coming from more of a centrist or right-wing “kids these days are too soft” which feels very off-base and disconnected from the issue. For example:
This is why life on college campuses changed so suddenly when Gen Z arrived, beginning around 2014. Students began requesting “safe spaces” and trigger warnings. They were highly sensitive to “microaggressions” and sometimes claimed that words were “violence.”
The scare quotes around microagressions, a genuine issue faced my marginalized communities, is really uncomfortable and gives an unfortunate perspective on some of where this author is coming from.
Putting that aside, I really do feel like most of what is said here is on point. Reducing social media use is imperative. Designing smartphone UX that doesn’t shove notifications at you would also be a good idea. Getting younger people involved in communities and forming friendships is incredibly important.
Indeed, that’s why I don’t trust any of these “kids these days” articles. Have they considered that the world is shit and their generation is making it worse and all the kids can do is watch isn’t good for their mental health?
Unfortunately the author has a few paragraphs that miss the mark and strike me as coming from more of a centrist or right-wing “kids these days are too soft” which feels very off-base and disconnected from the issue.
Welcome to The Atlantic. It’s telling they think all these issues are because of phones and not other aspects of society or something like the looming, ever present threat of climate change.
It’s basically The Economist lite at this point.
I hear all the time about people turning their notifications off and it feels so bizarre. Do you guys keep an internet connection on at all times? That just feels so bizarre and counter-intuitive… I saw several people around me that don’t ever turn off the connection and that gives me massive cognitive dissonance.
presumably the idea is just to use/interact with the device on one’s own terms, rather than being harrassed by it into engagement?
i do both, but they’re different things.
Turning the internet on only when interacting with device does exactly that. That seems like the intuitive thing to do - yet I see people with it on all the time and it feels very bizarre.
I use notifications, but the only apps that can send me notifications are either ones that use UnifiedPush, or have some sort of notification service of their own. So, most of the apps on my device do not send me notifications, and there are only a very few that will. Lemmy (through Thunder), Molly, and Feeder are the big ones that notifications are allowed on. Even ProtonMail doesn’t support UnifiedPush so i have to check email manually.
https://archive.is/Acnze unpaywalled
Da real MVP.
Great article. I agree with everything the author said.
Yeah, give kids easy to use pocket computers to access social media curated by algorithms designed to increase anxiety/engagement and “games” that are single-player gambling simulations, all of which harvests their data just to better learn how to manipulate them, and wonder why kids feel anxious, isolated, or depressed.
This hurts the over-25s too, just to lesser degrees because their brains are fully developed.
For those pissed off cause of the paywall:
I’m tired of every few years the goal post for where one generation ends and another one begins keeps moving around. I demand that there be a ratifying organization that determines officially when generation s begin and end. So say we all!
Generations are (mostly) made up. So of course they’re going to shift around a bit while we all try to figure out what major world event or collective experience defines a particular cohort.
Youn people are dangerously addicted to social media validation, definitely it goes bad…
What about thr costs of a TV based life?
TV didn’t mediate your social relationships.
TV doesn’t give you feedback. It’s purely passive. TV isn’t always on. It can be turned off or walked away from. TV doesn’t fit in your pocket (well, outside of those shitty portable TVs that used 8 batteries every 2 hours) and go everywhere with you. TV doesn’t have your friends on it (unless you live in LA). TV doesn’t have random people from different countries you’ve never heard of tell you, specifically YOU, that you should kill yourself for some embarrassing thing you did.
TV does have negative impacts on our lives, and there are costs that I had on my life that my parents had less of (they still had TV, just black and white with only 3 channels). I definitely spent more time indoors growing up and know less about how to do manual work than my dad. I also know more about the world in general and am open to more ideas than my parents.
know less about how to do manual work than my dad.
Funny, this is the opposite for me and my Dad, because I very much took advantage of all the free knowledge available on the Internet to improve my skills in that area.
He’s the kind of guy to put WD40 and spray foam on everything to “fix” it, while I’ll look up proper replacement parts and the right way to fix something.
I’m comparing TV kids vs 50’s kids, not internet kids vs TV kids. I didn’t have the internet until I was 18.
It’d be weird after half a century of tv, if suddenly in the 2010s it somehow escalated all the self harm/suicide stats.
The terrible cost of bad parenting.
Hey, don’t just blame the parents. In the back half of this article the author points out that social media harms youth no matter if their parents let them use it or not because of the social webs it creates. If you choose to keep your child off social media then they could just as easily end up isolated from their peers because everyone else IS using it.
As an example of this, if I got a C on any report card/progress report, my parents would take my phone away for the following 9 weeks until the next one came out with better grades. As a kid with undiagnosed ADHD, that meant I had my phone taken away…a lot. As a result, I had no real friendships by the end of high school, and ate my lunch alone every day. If you couldn’t text people/connect on socials, then you never got included in plans or developed those relationships with anyone.
It was lonely, painful, and it fucking sucked. My parents were too wanna-be Boomer to give a shit or even ask. I don’t speak to them any more for that and other reasons.
So yeah, social media may suck, but cutting your child off from modern social circles is a much worse parenting choice. Ideally you’d keep an eye on their use and help them form a healthier relationship with it. But I understand parenting is hard, especially when both parents work full time jobs.
I would not have thought of this perspective if you hadn’t mentioned it. Thx.
So collective bad parenting…got it.
Yeah, “it’s bad parenting” is tantamount to saying “guns don’t kill people, people do”.
I mean, people do kill people and crap parents do give their kids a phone too early.
But if you remove easy access to weapons and easy access to powerful computers beaming addictive social cues into children’s retinas 24/7 you definitely have an impact on negative incidents.
It’s not bad parenting if cultural norms have shifted in a way to not participate in it would cause you kid to suffer more anxiety and depression from being ostracized from it
Bullshit.
I’m a parent. The first time my kid catches flak for not having a smart phone he’s going to say exactly what we practiced, “my parents are crazy, they won’t let me have one. It’s so stupid, I hate them”.
The other kids will find something else to pick on even if every kid has a phone. Period. Children are monsters. It’s not worth letting your kid’s brain rot and have them try to off themselves when they’re a teenager because they never had a chance at being well adjusted just to avoid them getting bullied about phones in particular.
