Do smart phones harm adolescent mental health?

On Jonathan Haidt's The Anxious Generation

It feels like a hundred lifetimes ago that an eighth grade student chattily leaned over my desk, her face contorted into a frown as she mused aloud. “Mrs. Newton, I think I’m addicted to my phone. I think I’m going to ask my parents to take away my phone over spring break because I don’t like how much time I’m spending on TikTok.”

Teachers aren’t supposed to have favorites, of course. But if I was told that I really and truly must choose a favorite, she would have been on the short list. Star student, sure. But more importantly, she was eager to cheer others on and, crucially for this particular observation, wise beyond her years.

I never got a chance to ask her if she followed through on her spring break request. A few weeks later, the next time I saw her was via Zoom, when our class— and really, the whole world— moved online in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. In the elite private school I taught at, I was lucky that the overwhelming majority of my students showed up for online classes and continued to complete their assignments (I suspect that parents paying $30,000 a year in middle school tuition helped with this). But still, the impact of entire adolescent lives moved online was hard to ignore.

Social psychologist

Jonathan Haidt

makes the case in his monumental new book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness [Bookshop*] that the rise of smart phones and social media have had a drastic negative impact on teenage mental health. Haidt points to concerning— and statistically significant— spikes in anxiety and depression among members of Gen Z that began well before the Covid-19 pandemic, with the rise of constant social media access through personal smart phones.

Nearly immediately after publication, I reached out to Penguin Press, who graciously gifted me a review copy. Haidt doesn’t exactly need my tiny corner of the Internet for publicity; the book has been a New York Times bestseller for several weeks now. But the topic of phone use— and, specifically, social media— really struck an interesting nerve when we last talked about it a few months ago, and I wanted to see what Haidt’s emphasis on the adolescent experience could add to the conversation. (But! I pinky promise that I’m not making a habit of posting book reviews, despite what these past two weeks might indicate! 😉).

Haidt’s argument is that the rise of smartphones— which make social media and video games, among other things, easily accessible anywhere and anytime— brought “related increase in the four foundational harms: social deprivation, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation, and addiction” for adolescents (Haidt 145). Smart phones, as Haidt sees it, are primarily “experience blockers”— when you are using your phone, you aren’t doing anything else, like sleeping or socializing IRL (is it even cool to still say that? If not, pretend I just said “in real life” like the 30-something I am). And when one in seven teenage girls report spending more than 40 hours a week on social media, it’s easy to see how social media could be blocking other important developmental experiences. On Haidt’s Substack,

After Babel

, he and a number of co-authors have also expanded their research to include emerging harms of social media on young adults. 

Honestly, these harms are so intuitive that I could see them in myself before I re-negotiated my own relationship with social media. I’ve written before about my own ambivalent relationship with my phone, and my slow but steady move away from social media. And I can see the harms to those around me, from distracted acquaintances to loved ones lost in a social media rabbit hole. But that doesn’t make the shift away from glowing screens any easier.

The Anxious Generation has no lack of appalling revelations, including that Facebook has investigated recruiting techniques for children as young as 4 (Haidt 231). As the parent of a very-nearly 4 year old, I can’t imagine any scenario where a preschooler’s life would be at all improved by access to social media. 

In the midst of these revelations and anecdotes is a crucial point: that the root cause of the spike in anxiety and other mental health issues for adolescents is a transformation from a play-based childhood to a phone-based one. In fact, nearly half of children have a smart phone by age 10; by age 14, 91% of children have a smart phone. At the same time, we are less willing to let children play outside or take age-appropriate risks. In other words, “we are overprotecting children in the real world while under-protecting them online” (Haidt 68). 

Photo by Daria Nepriakhina 🇺🇦 on Unsplash

So what’s the solution? Haidt proposes a handful of what he calls foundational reforms, including:

1. No smartphones before high school

2. No social media before 16

3. Phone-free schools

4. More childhood independence. 

One of the serious catches to these reforms is that Haidt poses them as a collective action problem. It doesn’t necessarily require legislators, but Haidt does suggest several shifts for social media companies, including age verification— which poses a rather serious constitutional challenge. And at a minimum, his collective shifts require parents and school administrators banding together to set boundaries on adolescents smartphone use for the common good. We are seeing hints of this movement already, including through the Let Grow movement and the UK-based Smartphone Free Childhood.

But if you are currently a concerned parent or caregiver of young children, you may not have time to wait for collective action and policymakers squabbling over solutions. Of course, not everyone agrees that smartphones or social media are a problem for adolescents. If you are happy with the status quo in your home, great. My personal conversations— as an educator, then as a writer, and as a friend— as well as growing public discourse about social media and smartphones tell me, though, that plenty of people are looking for a change.

If you already know that your family needs a new relationship with technology— in other words, you don’t need any more convincing— I’d actually start with Childhood Unplugged: Practical Advice to Get Kids Off Screens and Find Balance by

Katherine Johnson Martinko

[Bookshop*]. Unlike Haidt, Martinko doesn’t tiptoe around the agency that parents have to delay smartphone use and other problematic technologies during vulnerable developmental periods. Her Substack,

The Analog Family

, is also a great resource. But know this: To get kids off their smartphones, chances are you’ll have to change your own relationship with glowing screens. 

Of course, phones are also practical tools, I can respond to emails, write newsletter posts (albeit far less efficiently than on a computer), or order groceries with the click of a button. But kids are observant, and even very little kids can see that we are distracted. And it’s hard for children to understand what we are doing on our phones; they just realize this glowing screen is worthy of our attention in nearly every spare moment (to the tune of more than 4 hours a day). 

If you are an adult looking to re-negotiate your relationship with social media, I’ve found a few books to be particularly helpful over the years, including Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport and Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jeron Lanier. Of course, the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma is also enough to theoretically scare anyone away from social media, although I watched it years before I was ready to take the step away myself.

And I won’t pretend that stepping away from social media has cured all my phone difficulties: It continues to be a balancing act to figure out how to perform necessary online tasks without distraction, while also being more present for my partner and kiddos. But stepping away from social media sure has helped.

This week, I have a quick favor to ask: I am super-duper close to hitting a milestone of 500 subscribers. If you find value in my writing, I’d love if you “shared”— this post, or anything from my archive— with someone you think would enjoy this newsletter. Thank you, truly.

*All Bookshop links are affiliate links, because if you’re going to buy the book anyway, why not support my work while you’re at it? Of course, your local library is also a great alternative.