My biggest wish for 2025: that young people be better protected online. It’s one of the reasons I created this blog in 2018; and today, these concerns are expertly expressed in Jonathan Haidt’s must-read book, The Anxious Generation.
What’s the problem? Today, children are “over-protected in the real world and under-protected online”, says Haidt.
As a result, suicides of 10-14 year olds in the US have risen 167% for girls since 2010, and 91% for boys (below).
Just one of the many data points Haidt offers as damning proof that the combination of smartphones and social media has tipped young people worldwide into depression, since 2010. More proof below: after a few graphs, that grey bar, representing the onset of smartphones and social media, takes on a grim-reaper-like presence…
It didn’t necessarily start in the 2010s, though, as Haidt explains. In the 80s, the first reports of child abuse started to emerge. Those reports saw a major uptick in the mid-90s, leading parents to over-protect their children, based on the assumption that the world is dangerous.
Kids born from around 1995 were therefore deprived of the real-life experiences they need to activate what Haidt calls “discover mode” (you know, the one you developed if you were lucky enough to have parents who let you go off and ride around on your bikes all day, as most kids used to?) So kids today are stuck in “defend mode“, whereby people are “more defensive, anxious, and see new people and experiences as threats”, says Haidt.
As is often the case, smartphones and social media weren’t the causes of this creat depression, but the accelerators. As such, today:
- 1 in 10 US high school boys and 1 in 5 girls experienced cyber bullying every year, 2011-19
- Heavy users of social media are 3 times more likely to be depressed than non-users
- 15% of American men have no friends in 2021. In the 90s, that rate was just 3%.
So, what are the solutions? According to Haidt:
- No smartphones before high school
- No social media before 16
- Phone-free schools
- Way more unsupervised play and childhood independence
All four solutions are challenging, but not impossible.
Phone-free schools in particular – pupils put their phones in lockers when they arrive at school, and take them out when they leave – are already starting to pop up all over the US, and are reporting higher grades and lower bullying rates. Haidt has even asserted most US schools will be phone-free by September 2025.
The only point not covered by the book: the potential for AI to accelerate the above harms. The two recent cases of teen suicides or murders encouraged by chatbots in Character AI (more chilling details on the first one here; thanks Tristan Harris & team for shining a light on this) should come as an urgent warning that such platforms need to be more strictly regulated.
Meanwhile, limit your kids’ screen time, of course; keep an eye out for unusual and durable character changes, naturally; but also, get them out of the house more!
Send them on errands, encourage them to explore the neighbourhood (safely) and challenge them to achieve simple tasks without their phones.
Who knows? You may just get them back into “discover mode”….
BetterTech 