Jonathan Haidt’s gripping latest publication, The Anxious Generation, features a chilling monochrome image, probably taken in the 1920s, of an alarmingly towering playground in Texas where small boys are clambering. The structure is about 7 or 8m in height. Haidt argues that parents since the 1980s have been growing increasingly wary of commonplace hazards. A playground of such scale could not be seen today. However, the potential upshot is that children might be denied running around in schoolyards, hence missing critical development milestones.
In stark contrast to the overbearing worry over children’s safety in their physical environment, since the early 2000s, we have permitted our children to roam freely in a digital world which equates to a playground towering at 20m, sans any safeguarding.
Haidt interprets this swing as a departure from play-centric childhood, towards a dominantly phone- and gadget-oriented one. The emergence of internet-equipped phones, along with front cameras in 2010 signalled the shift to phone-based childhood.
Surprisingly, a smartphone is owned by roughly 25% of six-year-olds in Ireland, with 45 per cent of ten-year-olds freely using them unsupervised indoors.
Haidt emphasizes the importance of unguided, child-led play, primarily because it offers lessons in handling both physical injuries and emotional ups and downs, learning empathy, conflict resolution, fair play and turn-taking. Modern children seldom get the chance for such play.
The repercussions of a digitally-oriented childhood are manifold: a dearth of face-to-face interactions with peers, sleep loss, fragmented attention, and a near-obsession with gadgets. Haidt asserts his theory that the increasing mental distress among youngsters isn’t merely a by-product of the harsh times we live in, but a direct result of a digitally-dominated upbringing.
Previous generations have witnessed world wars and the looming threat of nuclear eradication. Yet, Haidt argues, the rise in mental health problems isn’t solely due to increased awareness or over-diagnosis. In the US, between 2010 and 2020, the rate of young girls being admitted to emergency wards after self-harming nearly tripled. Girls are more inclined towards social media consumption, and are subsequently more vulnerable to anxiety and depression, while boys are more drawn to online games and pornography, both of which can let to addiction and curtailed real-life social interactions. Neither situation benefits either gender.
Social media architects shrewdly take advantage of the innate desire to fit in (conformity bias) and the allure of prestige (the instinctive urge to emulate those of high status), ensuring young individuals remain tethered to their devices with surgical precision. The unrelenting use of phones disrupts normal teenage social development.
While technology has undeniably propelled monumental progress, it is concurrently responsible for enormous energy consumption in data centres, endorsing appalling working conditions to manufacture the inexpensive, ephemeral clutter we purchase online to satiate our void.
What steps can we take to curtail this? Firstly, Haidt encourages resisting despair, as societal norms can shift. We’ve phased out lead-based paint and introduced seat belt regulations to safeguard our children. This would necessitate collaborative efforts from parents, governments, and corporations, an onerous task but not an unattainable one.
Haidt offers four strategic solutions: refrain from providing smartphones to children under 14, instead opting for basic mobile phones; prohibiting legal social media registration before 16; enforcing entirely phone-free educational environments; and fostering more autonomy, unstructured play, and accountability in the tangible world.
His book encompasses a wide range of aspects that cannot be exhaustively discussed here. This includes a captivating section where Haidt, despite being an atheist, delves into spiritual measures such as meditation and spending more time amidst nature, to mitigate the detrimental impacts of phone usage.
This insightful book portrays a situation that is both more hopeful and dire than what Haidt presents. The generation growing up online will bear the brunt of this, but the world as we know it has altered so fundamentally that countering the pitfalls appears next to impossible.
It’s highly likely that you’re consuming this content on an electronic device. Haidt launched a website, anxiousgeneration.com, in tandem with his book to highlight the central themes of his research.
Merely restricting access to social media for youngsters until the idealistic age of 16 does not address the fundamental issues brought about by the omnipresence of Big Tech, a force so dominant it’s almost imperceptible. It effortlessly guides us as we navigate unknown locations, schedule medical appointments, or keep in touch with acquaintances residing across the globe.
Unless we implement something as radical as obligating 15 minutes of daily meditation for every hour spent online, it’s hard to envisage how we can individually break free from the hypnotic hold of this technological juggernaut.
The incessant online presence is a key contributing factor to the prevalent sentiment of underachievement rather than flourishing amongst adults.
The impacts of society are even more profound and more challenging to address. Indeed, it’s feasible to lessen the risks accompanying vehicle-dependent living through the legal stipulation of using safety belts. However, despite safety belts allowing many to survive, they fail to consider the influence of vehicle-centric commuter lifestyles on global warming and the exhaustion of non-renewable fossil fuels.
Technology has spurred unprecedented advancements, but it also consumes an inordinate amount of power in data centres. It underpins appalling employment conditions to churn out inexpensive, landfill-bound junk that we purchase online to fill our voids, leading to alarmingly high levels of division. It’s become our heavens, our scope and our breath. Haidt’s recommendations are commendable, even worthy. Yet, no one has so far proposed a remedy for grown-ups to counter the impacts of Big Tech on democracy, consumption patterns and attention spans.