Smartphones & Kids – A discussion of The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt

A discussion of Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt, addressing the risks of smart phone use to kids and adolescents. Also, what parents can do to mitigate those risks.

Image a ChatGPT & me collab.

SKIP TO: Key Takeaways

SKIP TO: Action Items for Parents

In The Anxious Generation, Haidt links the rise in mental health issues affecting the youngest millennials and Gen Z today to increased time spent on smart phones. This link probably isn’t particularly surprising, because smart phones already have a reputation as being bad for kids.

But what are the risk factors parents should watch for? Why specifically do phones harm kids? Does a 13-year-old have the same risk level as a 16-year-old? Are the risks for boys and girls the same? Haidt answers these questions, making this book a great read for parents with young kids who want a deeper understanding of the issues making smartphones potentially problematic. I personally found The Anxious Generation very helpful in thinking through how to approach smart phone usage and screen time limits more generally.

Haidt describes that, aside from some specific harms that are caused directly by smartphones (discussed in depth below), the primary problem is that smart phones interfere with kids doing typical kid things in the physical world. Typical kid things include playing, making friends, taking risks, making up games, getting in arguments, etc. These actually serve a developmental purpose. Who knew?

Haidt dedicates several pages at the back of the book to practical tips for parents, including how to get the developmental process back on track and how to handle smart phone usage by age. [1] Love that. The action items I list below are generally in line with what he has to say in those pages, but I’ve focused on the bits I found most interesting throughout the book.

1. Focus on Sleep and Social Time;
2. Encourage Free Play in the Physical World;
3. Build a Ladder; and
4. Get Friends and Neighbors Involved.

For the most part, the screens themselves are not creating problems. Rather, the issue is what kids are missing out on doing when they’re spending time on screens. The two most important of these activities are (1) sleep (both quantity and quality) and (2) face-to-face social interactions. Rather than focusing on phone usage in itself, Haidt suggests that parents shift their focus to whether or not their kids are getting enough sleep and in-person social time.

Sleep

Sleep deprivation compromises one’s focus and memory, as well as reaction times, decision making, motor skills, irritability, and anxiety levels. It’s particularly problematic for teens who are already going through major developmental changes.

Prioritizing good sleep can be a challenge. In The Anxious Generation, Haidt suggests that parents restrict access to phones after bed time by physically removing the phone from the bedroom to ensure there is no temptation to turn it back on after hours. He acknowledges that even the best behaved kids will feel this temptation at times, and fighting the temptation alone can disrupt sleep. Parents can help their kids to get better sleep by simply removing the temptation.

Socialization

Social deprivation is a problem because socially deprived children don’t learn to tolerate setbacks, manage their own emotions, respond to the emotions of others, cooperate, resolve conflicts, and play fairly. Haidt argues that this time must be had in person and in real time in order to develop these skills and in order to encourage a sense of belonging.

It’s also important to note that important social interactions include both parent-on-child time and child-on-child time.

Parent-on-child time is important as parents serve both as mentors and as models of adult behavior for their kids. Haidt suggests ensuring regular, good quality parent-on-child time where no one, parent included, is on a phone. For instance, Haidt suggests that all family meals be phone-free (ideally by removing the phone from the room entirely). Kids are watching their parents and learning from them, so apart from the support parents can provide directly by fully tuning into their children, they can also set a good example of good phone hygiene in a social setting.

To ensure kids get good quality child-to-child time, parents should prioritize unorganized face-to-face time with peers over other more organized adult-run interactions. In other words, prioritize free play. This is the topic of Action Item #2, below.

One of the core themes of The Anxious Generation is that parents are supervising their children too much in the physical world but not enough in the virtual world. Free play in the physical world has benefits that free play in the virtual world is missing. Many kids today need more free play – in other words – play that involves interacting with other kids in an unstructured environment largely free from adult intervention and supervision.

This type of unstructured play enables kids to take risks and make mistakes. It teaches them that it is okay to make mistakes. Kids learn to handle situations independently when things go wrong. Haidt points out that taking small risks is something children will do naturally if left to their own devices. Age-appropriate risk-taking is desirable because it teaches children to learn to gauge risk for themselves and encourages children to feel they can handle themselves. It naturally inoculates children against anxiety. It encourages a default mode of operating that is social, happy, and open to new experiences – not fearful of failure or the unknown.

If kids are prevented from getting the thrills they are programmed to seek in the physical world, they will not develop these important skills. And they will still seek thrills elsewhere. The online world, which became more readily available with the advent of the smartphone, is one such place. The online world may appear safer in the short term (e.g., video games are less likely to result in broken bones), but there are many underappreciated risks. And few benefits: it does not teach real-world skills or involve learning about real-world risks and consequences.

Historically, rites and challenges around the time of puberty have served the purpose of guiding a child to become a full member of society with the requisite knowledge, skills, virtues, and social standing. The rites served as milestones, marking the increments where freedoms and responsibility increased as a child moved closer to adulthood.[3] Haidt argues that the existence of these rites across so many different cultures suggests a basic need or practical wisdom that our culture has forgotten.[4] Haidt writes, “a human child doesn’t morph into a culturally functional adult solely through biological maturation. Children benefit from role models (for cultural learning), challenges (to stimulate antifragility), public recognition of each new status (to change their social identity), and mentors who are not their parents as they mature. . . .”[5]

With the exception of some religious traditions, most of these adolescent rites of passage have vanished since the early 20th century. Even little signals, for instance, being able to attend a PG-13 movie at a movie theater without an adult, being able to drive at 16, or being considered a true adult at age 18 expected to get a job or go to college and granted the ability to buy cigarettes, vote, marry, or join the military, have become less meaningful in today’s culture. Haidt says that the younger generation has increasingly become less engaged with many traditional signifiers of adulthood.

Rebuilding Rites of Passage

This muddied path to adulthood comes in the context of a world that in practice fails to delineate children from adults online. The online world has few true limits that a motivated child cannot get around. The result is that children act as de facto adults online.

To rephrase the issue, children are treated as less capable and more delicate in the physical world even as they are thrust into a fully adult world online with very limited guidance. It’s adult because it has few guardrails as to age-inappropriate materials, one can make mistakes with permanent consequences (pictures are forever!), there is limited protection from predators (adults can directly send private messages to a child in many social media apps), and platforms are designed to shift a user’s attention and focus away from other areas of life in a potentially unhealthy way. There are no clear stepping stones into the online world, designed to slowly give children more freedoms and responsibilities, and to train them how to interact with the online world in a healthy way.

Haidt believes there are significant benefits to parents of re-implementing certain rites of passage in the physical world. And creating some stepping stones in the online world.

The Ladder

In The Anxious Generation, Haidt suggests deliberately treating even-year birthdays as special milestone years. On these birthdays, new freedoms and responsibilities kick in. This might encourage kids to feel that “they are climbing a ladder with clearly labeled rungs, rather than just [celebrating with] an annual party…[6]”

I loved this idea. It plays well into the idea that children need to feel useful and competent in order to develop a sense of purpose and agency, factors protective against depression and anxiety. (See more discussion on this topic in Never Enough).

Below are some of the milestones Haidt suggests parents recognize.[7]

Age 6

Physical World: Responsible for basic chores; earn a small allowance.

Age 8

Physical World: May play in local groups without parent supervision and can run errands within walking/biking distance.

Online: May have a basic phone designed for kids (without internet access) for emergencies only.

Age 10

Physical World: May roam more widely. Parents should limit adult-led “enrichment activities” and should encourage the child to find friends to hang out with in person.

Age 12

Physical World: Parents should encourage children to begin earning money outside home by performing tasks for neighbors or relatives. Parents should encourage children to find adult mentors other than parents, such as trusted relatives.

Age 14

Physical World: May roam farther via bike, bus, subway, etc. Parents should consciously find ways to rely on the child at home for cooking, cleaning, errands. They should encourage the child to get a job and/or join an athletic team. Consider finding ways for them to mentor younger kids, as this will encourage the development of leadership and empathy.

Online: May have a smartphone without a social media account enabled. Without a social media account, they can access social media posts, but not a targeted, bottomless feed. (Note that 14 is the minimum age Haidt suggests, and he says there is a good case to wait longer!)

Age 16

Physical World: More independence (provided they have historically shown responsibility). Permission to hang out somewhere other than home or school (the Y, the mall, a park, or a café). Parents should encourage getting a driver’s license and should rely more on teen at home.

Online: Parents may permit children to open a social media account. Haidt suggests encouraging the child (not the parent) to talk about how they find social media helps or hinders their goals and life in the physical world. The goal is to encourage children to be reflective about this question, not necessarily to get them on board with a particular viewpoint.

Ideally, adults would band together with others nearby in order to normalize certain milestones for youngsters growing up together. Below are two particular challenges when it comes to normalizing these milestones and some solutions Haidt suggests in The Anxious Generation.

Free Play

Permitting free play can be a challenge for parents because it is not a common way to parent these days. Parents who encourage building independence in their children can feel socially isolated and/or judged as irresponsible. In some states, there may even be legal consequences if the parents are considered to be neglectful.

One approach Haidt suggests is organizing a regular weekly time to have food and toys out for any neighborhood kids to come drop by and play. If it’s a regular time when kids know other kids will be around, they’re more likely to show up.[9] The host family should be clear that an adult will be inside and available in case of emergencies, but that the adult will not be closely monitoring the kids. Based on Haidt’s milestone advice above, I think the youngest neighborhood child at this sort of gathering would need to be at least around age 8 to ensure he or she has reached an age of some responsibility.

Delayed Cell Phone Introduction

The smart phone problem is a difficult one for parents to face alone because kids face tremendous social pressure to use smart phones to stay up-to-date with their friends. Parents who want their children to go without a smart phone often worry they are also thereby forcing their children to go without a social life. Haidt writes, “Few parents want their preteens to disappear into a phone, but the vision of their child being a social outcast is even more distressing.”[8]

This is a collective action problem. One escape is for parents to find other like-minded parents who agree to band together with respect to delaying smart phones. This way, the kids and parents can stick together in resisting the social pressure by knowing there will be others foregoing smartphones. They may also attract more and more parents to their point of view. Groups like “Wait Until 8th” are good examples. (Although Haidt thinks 8th grade is at least one year too soon for a child to receive a smart phone.)

Haidt begins The Anxious Generation by identifying how the widespread adoption of smart phones has coincided with a “surge of suffering” – namely, marked increases in depression and anxiety in the generations that were preteens when smartphones rolled out. He argues that smart phones interfere with the ordinary process of growing up and are the cause of this surge in suffering. To explain why this is the case, Haidt takes a step back to describe how children traditionally develop. Then he pinpoints what aspects of growing up smartphones have altered.

The Traditional Role of the Play-Based Childhood

Haidt writes, “Play is the work of childhood, and all young mammals have the same job: Wire up your brain by playing vigorously and often.”[10] He clarifies that the critical aspect of play is that it enables children to take risks in an environment where mistakes are not costly. In addition, they constantly, and in real time, receive direct feedback from their playmates.

Haidt says that it is in “unsupervised, child-led play where children best learn to tolerate bruises, handle their emotions, read other children’s emotions, take turns, resolve conflicts, and play fair.”[11] Further, it facilitates the process of social attunement: the process of turn-taking, developing a sense of timing, and handling unpredictability in social interactions.[12] Additionally, older children (especially girls) seek out synchrony via rhyming and clapping games, which encourage “a sense of communion and belonging.”[13]

Discover or Defend

Play also teaches children to handle risks and challenges – this enables them to operate primarily in what Haidt terms “discover mode” versus “defend mode.”

To explain these two modes, Haidt describes how humans have long needed to operate in an environment of safety and abundance interspersed with periods under threat.[14] For this reason, we have two modes of operation. In discover mode, we are curious, open, sociable, and eager for new experiences. In defend mode, we are defensive, anxious, experience few moments of perceived safety, and see new situations, people, and ideas as potential threats.[15]

Haidt argues that as children grow, they naturally seek out things that may have initially frightened them. They are programmed to seek out thrills. They look to adults or older kids for guidance to learn to distinguish dangerous from non-dangerous thrills, and they push themselves to master the fear.[16] By doing this, they learn to judge risk, develop skills, and learn how to handle problems on their own when things go wrong. This is a natural antidote to childhood anxieties and leads to a default of discover mode. On the other hand, when a person does not learn to distinguish dangerous from non-dangerous situations, they must always be on guard and their default mode is defend.

Learning Processes

Haidt points out two other processes that have long enabled children to develop into competent adults: the conformist bias and the prestige bias – both of which smartphones hijack in a way that is developmentally unhealthy for children (discussed in Takeaway #2 below).

The conformist bias encourages children to learn by looking around them and copying what most people are doing. Especially for newcomers to a society or a new environment, copying what most people are doing is a strategy that promotes safety. In its counterproductive form, the conformist bias becomes peer pressure.

An efficient method for implementing the conformist bias is to determine those individuals with “prestige” – i.e., those widely considered to have achieved excellence in an area the child values. Children are typically drawn to those with prestige in order to maximize their own learning and to maximize their status.[18] This is called the prestige bias, and it essentially dictates who a child will copy and seek out closer relationships with.

Now let’s discuss Haidt’s view of how smartphones can interfere with taking developmentally appropriate risks, the conformist bias (which tells kids that copying is a safe strategy) and the prestige bias (which tells children who to seek out as a model or mentor).

Ending the Play-Based Childhood

What happens when children don’t get risky play?

In The Anxious Generation, Haidt writes, “Well-intentioned parents who try to raise their children in a bubble of satisfaction, protected from frustration, consequences, and negative motions, may be harming their children. They may be blocking the development of competence, self-control, frustration tolerance, and emotional self-management. Several studies find that such ‘coddling’ or ‘helicopter parenting’ is correlated with later anxiety disorders, low self-efficacy (which is the inner confidence that one can do what is needed to reach one’s goals), and difficulty adjusting to college.”[25]

Some History

Haidt describes how the end of risky play began long before smart phones came onto the scene. In the 1990s, parenting became more “intensive, protective, and fearful.”[26] Haidt notes a marked increase in “time spent parenting” by mothers beginning around 1995.[27] At the same time, kids began to spend less time playing, and more time in school or other structured activities.[28] One factor may be increased pressure surrounding college admissions (see Never Enough for more discussion on this theory specifically). Another factor is that parents switched away from a “natural growth” parenting style to a style of “concerted cultivation.” Concerted cultivation embraces the notion that children need a high level of care, training by adults, and a high level of protection from risk.[29]

Why the switch to a more fearful parenting style? Haidt raises several possibilities. The most interesting is the “breakdown of adult solidarity.” Historically parents have relied on other adults to help out kids who get into trouble or to reprimand kids who are out of line. However, adults took a step back in the 80s and 90s. Around that time there were several notorious and widely-reported scandals involving adults abusing children. This contributed to the feeling that adults couldn’t be trusted around children. Children were taught to fear strangers, and adults internalized the message that they shouldn’t interact with other people’s children.[30] Parents came to understand responsible parenting as synonymous with constant supervision. Once a majority of parents took this approach, unsupervised children became rare. A vicious cycle began, leading adults to report the rare unsupervised child to authorities.

Regardless of the exact reason, the result was a decline in free play among kids.

Relationship with an Increase in Anxiety Disorders

Haidt writes about the research of Nassim Taleb, who wrote the book Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder. The premise is that certain complex systems (like humans) were designed to function in an unpredictable world. In order to become strong and develop properly, however, these types of systems must be stress tested. Take the immune system as an example – if you block a child’s immune system from any exposure to bacteria, it won’t develop properly. He argues that child psychology is similar. Overprotected children are more likely to be anxious, have fewer closer friends, learn less, and experience ordinary conversations or conflicts as more stressful.

In the context of anxiety, children are wired to acquire fears easily either from a bad experience or from seeing others be afraid.[33] But as they grow, children have a natural thrill-seeking tendency and will become interested in some of the things that scare them. Unless we stop them, they will approach those things, looking to adults and older children for guidance to distinguish truly dangerous situations. This is one of the benefits of permitting risky play. Children will naturally seek out things that scare them a bit. In doing so, they learn to overcome their fears, gain confidence in their ability to handle a situation, and learn to distinguish dangerous situations for themselves. Over time, this process inoculates kids against anxiety.

Being Deliberately Frustrating

Haidt says that some of the best advice he received as a parent was him and his wife to “look for opportunities to frustrate our children every day by laying out and enforcing the contingencies of life.”[31] Because people cannot live with others without conflict, children must learn to handle “frustrations, minor accidents, teasing, exclusion, perceived injustices, and normal conflicts without falling prey to hours or days of inner turmoil.”[32] The only way to get good at this is to develop self-control and frustration tolerance. Children can only do this if they learn from the experience of being frustrated.

Haidt’s comments here put a finer point on the source of my discomfort with some top parenting books. Many books describe how to diffuse a child’s anger or frustration by offering the illusion of choice or redirecting their anger. (For instance, see my post raising this concern with the Whole Brain Child.) I’ve worried many books are overly focused on teaching parents how to manage their children more effectively by avoiding triggering a child’s feelings of frustration. The books do not usually acknowledge a role for letting a child experience, process, and learn to manage frustration. Haidt seems to be arguing that allowing children to experience frustration should be a priority for their healthy development.

Enter Smartphones

Haidt says that while blocking children from the experience of free play affected millennials, mental health issues didn’t explode until the entry of smartphones. Smartphones were the second “experience blocker.” The impact of this change was concentrated in Gen Z.[34] Haidt argues that smartphones are so fascinating for children that their interest in other experiences is reduced. In other words, children were no longer just being prevented from taking risks in the physical world. Parents could only have so much success on this front. But after the introduction of smartphones, children stopped even trying to take risks in the physical world. And this is when we started seeing the big increases in depression and anxiety.

Interference with the Natural Learning Processes

The introduction of smartphones has also interfered with the conformity bias and prestige bias. As anyone who has gone through puberty can undoubtedly confirm, these have both positive and negative aspects. Haidt argues that smartphones magnify the negative aspects.

The Conformity Bias

The negative aspect of conformity bias – peer pressure – has natural limits in the physical world. It takes time for a child to collect information about others’ behaviors and feedback about their own personal behavior. And they’re typically around their peers without adults controlling the environment for a limited period of time. Historically, all the kids would separate would go home to eat and sleep at some point. However, on social media, there is instantaneous, constant feedback. This makes it a very powerful “conformity engine.”[17] Children can access lots of data points at almost any time. This means they have little to no breathing room from this pressure. Even when they are not online, their friends can be posting. And their own posts may be receiving feedback, a fact kids are well aware of.

The Prestige Bias

With respect to the prestige bias, children in the physical world determine who to copy by seeing who has the most prestige in their social circle based on skills or attributes they value. Social media mimicks this process by displaying each user’s number of followers and how many people have liked a given post. This creates a “social validation feedback loop.”[19] Online, prestige is determined based on number of likes and follows, not skills or attributes. And the likes and follows can come from any niche group, not the more varied social circle that one is more likely to experience in the physical world.

This has two important consequences. First, children are no longer necessarily imitating those skills that are broadly considered valuable. Second, in the physical world, those with prestige often act as informal mentors. They can facilitate a mentee’s success in a real-world community. There is rarely such a relationship between an influencer and follower online. This type of attention is therefore more likely to foster social isolation – not integration with one’s friends and peers.

There are few periods of a person’s life where experiences are particularly likely to have a lasting impact on one’s sense of self, feelings, and ways of interacting with others.[20] One of these times is between ages 9 and 15. [21]

For this reason, Haidt argues that smartphone use during this period can have a particularly significant impact on the development of a child’s identity, selfhood, emotions, and relationships.[22] Specifically, Haidt cites a study suggesting that the worst years for girls to use social media were ages 11-13. The worst years were 14-15 for boys. The children in these groups reported worse mental health outcomes in the year following an increase in social media use.[23]

Another study reported a direct linear relationship between age at which a child received her first smartphone and poor mental health outcomes. The longer the parents waited, the better the outcome. That said, it is worth noting that the study attributed the effect to cumulative effects of social media use rather than use during a sensitive period.[24]

The Anxious Generation describes four harms that smartphones impose on children. The first two harms are the opportunity costs: the typical childhood activities that smart phones are crowding out. This includes in-person social interactions and sleep.

The second two harms smartphones cause are not opportunity costs, but rather are caused directly by smart phones. They are attention fragmentation and addiction.  

The Opportunity Costs

Haidt writes that the first iPhone was released in 2007 as a sort of digital Swiss army knife, but by the early 2010s, phones had “transformed . . . to platforms upon which companies competed to see who could hold on to eyeballs the longest.”[36] Previously there was a natural physical limit to screen time because devices were not carried around. Smartphones and other internet-connected devices removed this limitation. Haidt cites a 2019 study reporting that 8-12 year-olds were spending an average of 5 hours of non-school screen media time per day on their smart phones, while older children averaged 7-8 hours.[37]

Lost Socialization

A major developmental aspect of childhood is the fine tuning of face-to-face interactions (social attunement). Face-to-face, synchronous interactions help children develop a sense of timing, fair play, and belonging. Since around 2010, there has been a notable downward trend in daily time spent with friends across all age groups.[38] Some might argue that the social time has simply migrated from the physical world to the online world. However, Haidt argues that time spent socializing online lacks many of the key benefits of “face-to-face, synchronous, embodied, physical play.”[39]

Interactions on smart phones are not embodied or synchronous. In other words, the participants are not physically present together and there is a delay between prompt and response. This means children are not developing the same ability to read expressions and emotions of others. Nor are they learning to manage unpredictable interactions in real time. Importantly for emotional health, they are not present with another person experiencing the same environment which can impinge on the sense of closeness or belonging with a friend or within a larger group. And even when physically present with friends, phones are a constant distraction. With friends, they detract from a feeling of intimacy and attention to the other person. In an unfamiliar setting, they eat into one’s willingness to interact with new people.

And in fact, although many teens say social media gives them a connection with their friends, they are simultaneously reporting increased feelings of loneliness and isolation. This seemingly confirms that this online connection may not be as good as the one in the physical world it has supplanted.[35]

Lost Sleep

Haidt points out that teens have long struggled with sleep deprivation. Changing sleep patterns, early school start times, and a relatively high sleep requirement (at least 9 hours) all exacerbate this problem. Smartphones have further worsened both quantity and quality of sleep.

Numerous studies have found a positive relationship between poor sleep and high social media use.[40] He cites a study where adolescents who restricted screen use after 9pm on school nights for just two weeks showed improved performance on a task requiring focused attention and quick reactions, as well as earlier and total sleep time.[41] Studies have also found that sleep disturbances were magnified for those using screens in their bed or on social media.

The implications of poor sleep for teens are nothing to sneeze at. Haidt points to a longitudinal sleep study, which followed 9 and 10-year-olds through adolescence. Many papers emerged from this study. One paper found that the size of the sleep disturbance at the start of the study “significantly predicted depression and internalizing and externalizing scores at 1-year follow up.”[42] Another paper noted that shorter sleep times were associated with increased aggression, poorer impulse control, and increased internalizing issues such as depression. [43]

Attention fragmentation

Haidt cites a study finding that the average number of notifications on a teen’s phone is somewhere around 11 per hour – approximately one every five minutes. Particularly heavy users (older teen girls), receive closer to one notification every minute. He quotes the psychologist William James in describing how attention is a choice to stay on one line of thinking, even as attractive off-ramps beckon. When we fail to ignore the offramps, we end up in a “confused, dazed, scatterbrained state.” Adolescents are particularly vulnerable to this due to their immature frontal cortices: “Sensitiveness to immediately exciting sensorial stimuli characterizes the attention of childhood and youth.”[44]

No matter how well some may feel they can multitask, no one really does. Rather, we shift attention back and forth between tasks. This is inefficient and unfortunately results in worse performance on both tasks than if handled them one at a time for the same amount of time. In other words, particularly for children, constant interruptions impede one’s ability to stay focused and to reflect. Studies have found that even the presence of one’s phone in the room, whether on a desk or put away in a bag, interferes with performance on intelligence and memory tests.[45]

Addiction

Haidt describes how social media developers have utilized behaviorist techniques for training animals to design their applications.  Although the majority of adolescents are likely not addicted, Haidt argues that “their desires are being hacked and their actions manipulated.”[46]

One example of this is the use of the “Hooked” model. This model “hooks” users with a four step process that, if implemented correctly, creates a self-perpetuating cycle.

The starting point is a notification, such as an alert that someone commented on your post. This naturally triggers the user to check the social media account.

Checking one’s account leads to a pleasurable event of seeing what nice thing someone said – but only sometimes. Could be something nice, something not nice, or nothing exciting. The variability of the reward is key, according to behaviorist psychology. The impact to the user (i.e., dopamine release) is not as strong if you reward a behavior every time. Rather, a reward about 50% of the time has the strongest effect.[47]

The fourth step is to encourage the user to invest in the app to make it matter more to her, personally. For instance, by creating a personalized account, she puts a bit of herself into the app.

External Notification -> Check Social Media -> Variable Reward -> Personal Investment

Before long, this loop no longer requires the external notification. The trigger is internalized and the user checks social media without prompting. Instead of a notification, the thought of a possible reward triggers the release of a bit of dopamine, causing a craving. Eventually the user checks the account. If she’s disappointed by a lack of anything exciting, the brain still craves a reward, so she begins looking through other posts to get it.[48] She’s “hooked.”

Because the brain adapts to elevated dopamine levels, the user must continue to increase the dosage to get a feeling of pleasure back. Haidt says that dopamine does not cause feelings of satisfaction. Rather, it causes you to want more of whatever triggered the release.[49] On the other hand, if the user interrupts this cycle, the brain will enter a state of dopamine deficit. During this unpleasant period, ordinary life “becomes boring and even painful.” The user will exhibit “anxiety, irritability, insomnia, and dysphoria.”[50] It can take several weeks for the brain to revert to baseline levels.

Files from Facebook released by a whistleblower in 2021 clearly reveal that the primary goal of developers is not to protect the user from overuse or addiction. It’s to keep her engaged with the platform for as much time as possible, with “rewards, novelty, and emotions.” Each app is competing with other apps for user attention in order to be successful. And if an app does not hook a user at a young age, the platform risks losing that user to a competitor. The younger an app can hook a user, the more likely that user is to invest in the platform and remain on the platform as a long term user.

Girls and boys use smartphone differently, and therefore suffer slightly different harms. Of course, it’s important to remember that we are talking about girls, on average, and boys, on average here. The average girl tends to spend more time on social media platforms. The average boy tends to spend more time playing video games or viewing pornography.

Girls

Social media platforms seem to have a particularly bad impact on the well-being of girls. Why?

Haidt points to research showing that a core motivator for many women is to integrate with a larger social unit by caring for others.[51] Social media draws in women with a promise of connection, but the time spent online in fact eats into time for good-quality relationships in the real world. For girls, the quality of friendships is much more important for happiness than quantity of friendships – the happiest girls are the ones with “strong, supportive friendships, even if that means having a single terrific friend.”[52] Social media tends to optimize for quantity over quality.

In addition, social media also exposes girls to harms that tend to be more limited in the physical world.

Below are some specific ways that social media and smartphones negatively impact girls. Haidt devotes the chapter “Why Social Media Harms Girls More Than Boys” to this subject in The Anxious Generation, where each of these topics is explained in more depth.

Group Affects

From a big picture perspective, the availability of social media changes the culture of a school. Because students are focused on checking their phones for social media updates, it leads to fewer face-to-face interactions. This translates into fewer opportunities both to connect with friends and to make new friends – activities that promote happiness. In support of this theory, Haidt refers to studies tracking how the rollout of Facebook across various college campuses (the rollout was staggered across different college campuses) coincided with a measureable decline in the mental health of students in that college.[53]  

Visual Comparison

Social psychologists have argued that our brains are “comparison machines,” constantly letting us know where we stand in a group, and triggering anxiety when we sense a drop in ranking.[54] In theory, this anxiety motivates us to strive to move back up the social rankings. Desirable or not, looks are very important to teenage girls as a status signal. Girls compare appearances both constantly and unconsciously.[55] On social media in particular, girls are inundated with photographs (real or not) of beautiful women. Their interpretation of their own status falls as a result, triggering anxiety. Haidt points out that because the mechanism in the brain performing the comparison is unconscious, reminders to girls about editing software and cherrypicked photos can necessarily have only a limited impact.

Relational Aggression

Whereas boys tend to express aggression physically, girls express aggression by attacking another girl’s social standing and relationships. Social media gives girls an easy tool by which they can target other girls without the target knowing who or how many girls are attacking her. Further, it extends the reach of the bully to a potentially limitless online audience. It is difficult for schools or parents to intervene or determine responsibility.

Transmissibility of Feelings

Sociologists have studied how happiness is literally contagious between friends in friend groups. Depression is even more contagious – but just from women. If one woman is depressed, the odds of depression in her close friends increase by 142%.[56] Haidt says this is likely because female friendship tends to center around communication, whereas men tend to bond by doing activities together.

This trend holds on social media, and is exacerbated by the “prestige bias” effect, whereby the person who is most extremely and obviously depressed tends to accumulate more followers and become a model for social learning. Conversely, Haidt writes that some influencers are “trained” by their followers to become “more extreme versions of whatever it is the audience wants to see.”[57] So some girls may “catch” depression or, at least, be propelled toward it if the influencers they follow are depressed.

Predation & Harassment

The internet has made it easier for predators access a pool of young girls. Most girls want more followers (more followers = higher social status!). Predators can take advantage of this by requesting to follow a girl (even if she has a private account, she may permit this to increase her follower count) and then directly messaging her. From there, a predator could potentially manipulate or harassing her without parents being aware. This is particularly the case if a girl has secret accounts the parents don’t know about (multiple accounts is a surprisingly common get-around for parent-supervised accounts).

In addition, Haidt mentions that the boys at school increasingly ask girls for nude photographs, and may tease and call them prudes if they don’t comply. Once sent, a photograph may be circulated around the school or even posted online, which can be humiliating for the girl. The audience can include schoolmates and the entire internet – and it can be next to impossible to scrub the image from the internet even years later.

Boys

Haidt writes that for boys, “Their decline in real-world engagement starts earlier, their mental health outcomes are more varied, and I can’t point to one single technology as the primary cause of their distress.”[58] He says that his theories regarding how smart phones are impacting young men are more “speculative” than they are for girls. But let’s dive in to Haidt’s speculations, nevertheless.

Other authors have raised structural changes that have specifically impacted men: “an economy that no longer rewards physical strength, an educational system that prizes the ability to sit still and listen, and a decline in the availability of positive male role models, including fathers.”[59] In The Anxious Generation, Haidt adds two further changes that have disproportionately impacted boys: the rise of safetyism in the 1980s and 1990s, followed by the rise of online multiplayer video games in the 2000s and smartphones beginning in 2007.

Haidt focuses on the specific harms caused by these trends.

Denying, then Rerouting the Drive to Adventure

As discussed above, boys ran up against increasing limitations on opportunities to find adventures in the physical world starting in the 1980s with the rise of safetyism.

The decline of free play impacted boys more than girls in two key ways. First, eliminating the anti-phobic effects of taking risks that “activate the kind of physical fear, thrill, and pounding heart” that help boys learn to judge and manage risks in the real world.[63] Haidt argues that children “need play that involves some risk to develop competence and overcome childhood anxieties,”[64] and boys, in particular, appear to benefit immensely from taking risks. Second, elimination of a strong and stable group of reliable friends – resulting in an increase in loneliness among boys.[65] These two changes have led to an increasing number of internalizing disorders (e.g., anxiety, depression) for boys, whereas externalizing disorders (bad behavior) decreased.

The Role of Video Games

Beginning in the early 2000s, however, boys began to find plentiful opportunities for adventure in the virtual world via video games. Haidt writes that the virtual world “opened up many new ways to satisfy their desires for agency as well as communion.”[60]

Historically, the desires for adventure and camaraderie served as a powerful inducement for boys to develop real-world skills, build relationships, and take on responsibility as members of the community. There were immediate consequences if a boy misjudged a physical risk as well as a sense of camaraderie with the buddies he went on adventures with.

Once video games entered the picture, this drive was rerouted away from real world adventures and into video games. The problem is that even if boys play video games together, the sense of belonging is not as great as in a bond forged via real-life adventures and risk-taking. Further, video games result in little to no development of real world skills. Via video games, adventure-seeking became divorced from school, work, family, friends, and even real-world consequences. They stall out the motivation for a boy to work hard to turn into an accomplished member of society and develop close bonds with his peers.

Rerouting the Sex Drive

Separate from adventure-seeking, opening the online world enabled boys to satisfy their sex drive without the need to interact socially. Haidt says that sex drive has served as a powerful evolutionary motivator for young men to develop the skills necessary to develop into adults.[61] For instance, Haidt notes that their sex drives motivate boys to do things that are “frightening and awkward, such as trying to talk to a girl, or asking a girl to dance at events organized by adults.”

Smartphones increase the accessibility of pornography so dramatically that some boys simply choose to use pornography rather than take risks in the dating world. Even those boys who do engage with the dating world tend to experience lower sexual satisfaction and find their partners less attractive after watching pornography. Consequently some may avoid sexual interactions with their partners.[62] As a result of the rerouted sex drive, many men have retreated from developing healthy romantic and sexual relationships.

Video Game Addiction

Haidt estimates from reviewing several studies that somewhere around 7% of adolescent boys are suffering substantial impairment in the real world due to heavy use of video games.[66] Impairment might include preoccupation with gaming, loss of interest in other activities, withdrawal from friends and family, and reliance on gaming as an emotional coping mechanism. Essentially, they develop an addiction to gaming that is out of their control and compromises their quality of life.

Boys and girls tend to suffer differently as a result of reliance on smart phones. Everyone knows by now that smart phones have a reputation as bad for kids – but I think it’s particularly important for parents to be cognizant of the specific and most likely harms to watch out for.

I really enjoyed this book. That said, below are a couple of areas I thought could perhaps be a bit improved.

Haidt is an advocate of free-range parenting, and he makes a great case for the benefits. But on the other hand, I worry about how this might interact with the point Hochschild makes in her book The Second Shift about how there are major incentives for busy parents to treat their children as if they are older (discussion here). Some parents who are already feeling overwhelmed might be inclined to focus too much on the benefits of free play with other children. They might simultaneously neglect the focused emotional support and attention some children may need from their parents specifically.

I think The Anxious Generation should devote some time addressing how parents can stay in tune with their kids if they are playing unsupervised for significant periods. Children shouldn’t be expected to figure it all out on their own or to trot out a yellow flag if there’s a problem on the horizon.

To be clear, I don’t think Haidt would argue that children should be alone in figuring this out. He specifically mentions the importance of adult mentors and role models in making the transition into adulthood. But I see risks here in the way that some well-meaning but busy parents might interpret his advice. Therefore, I would have liked a discussion of ways parents can be supportive of and in tune with their children’s development while encouraging independence, risky play, and a smooth transition to adulthood. For instance, I would assume that parents should take care to be both available to hear concerns in a low pressure environment and to be extra careful listeners if their children are doing a lot of free play.

The Anxious Generation focuses on kids. I would be curious about how the advent of smartphones has impacted other ages and generations. From conversations with friends and family, it seems like every other person’s mom is playing Candy Crush or constantly scrolling through Facebook or Instagram. I’d be curious how this is impacting the health and wellbeing of other vulnerable populations (specifically Baby Boomers!).

Free Range Kids

Haidt references this book throughout Anxious Generation. In Free Range Kids and on her website, LetGrow.org, Lenore Skenazy argues for letting kids build “confidence, resilience and self-reliance through independent play and real life experiences.” The book offers a critique of fear-driven parenting and practical steps for restoring freedom in everyday life, such as by permitting children walk to school alone to encouraging unstructured outdoor play.

Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

Haidt relies on this book for his argument that kids grow strong by facing risks and challenges rather than being shielded from them. In Antifragile, Nassim Taleb argues that certain systems benefit from stress, volatility, and even failure. Exposure to these types of experiences is not problematic for kids but rather a necessary experience for building resilience. The book describes how overprotection makes people weaker.

The Gardener and the Carpenter

In The Gardener and the Carpenter, Alison Gopnik contrasts two approaches to raising children. A “carpenter” approach to child rearing involves trying to mold kids into a fixed outcome. A “gardener” approach involves creating a healthy environment and allowing children to grow in unpredictable ways. Carpentry narrows opportunities and breeds anxiety, while gardening cultivates resilience. The book is a look into the psychology of learning and development.

Boys Adrift

Haidt describes some common problems that smart phones present for boys. In Boys Adrift, Leonard Sax focuses on male developmental psychology. He identifies video games as a key factor in draining motivation by rewiring reward centers, reshaping boys’ brains, and replacing real-world achievement with virtual rewards. Combined with other influences—medications, cultural shifts, teaching practices—the result is a widespread disengagement from school and adulthood.

Of Boys and Men by Richard Reeves

When Haidt discusses the particular risks of smart phones for boys, he notes a number of structural issues affecting boys unrelated to smart phones. In Of Boys and Men, Reeves offers a comprehensive exploration of these issues and problems for boys, from education gaps to diminished economic prospects. He avoids simplistic blame, instead proposing targeted reforms to help boys without reversing gains for girls.

Yes!

---

[1] Haidt, J. (2024). The anxious generation: How the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness. Penguin Press. (See pages 267-288)

[3] Haidt, 2024, p. 99.

[4] Haidt, 2024, p. 102.

[5] Haidt, 2024, p. 102.

[6] Haidt, 2024, p. 107.

[7] Haidt, 2024, p. 107.

[8] Haidt, 2024, p. 223.

[9] Haidt, 2024, p. 274

[10] Haidt, 2024, p. 51.

[11] Haidt, 2024, p. 53.

[12] Haidt, 2024, p. 56.

[13] Haidt, 2024, p. 57.

[14] Haidt, 2024, p. 69.

[15] Haidt, 2024, p. 70.

[16] Haidt, 2024, p. 75.

[17] Haidt, 2024, p. 59.

[18] Haidt, 2024, p. 60.

[19] These are the words of Sean Parker, an early leader at Facebook. Haidt, 2024, p. 60.

[20] Haidt, 2024, p. 63.

[21] This is based on research by the Japanese anthropologist Yasuko Minoura, who studied the children of Japanese businessmen who lived in California for several years at a time during the 1970s. She discovered that the children who returned to Japan at age 15 or later had developed an American identity and struggled to revert to Japanese life upon the family’s return.  Those who came to California after age 15, or who returned to Japan well before age 14 were able to readjust. Haidt, 2024, p. 63.

[22] Haidt, 2024, p. 64.

[23] Haidt, 2024, p. 64.

[24] Haidt, 2024, p. 64 (footnote 36).

[25] Haidt, 2024, p. 74.

[26] Haidt, 2024, p. 83.

[27] Haidt, 2024, p. 83.

[28] Haidt, 2024, p. 84.

[29] Haidt, 2024, p. 85.

[30] Haidt, 2024, p. 87.

[31] Haidt, 2024, p. 73.

[32] Haidt, 2024, p. 73.

[33] Haidt, 2024, p. 75.

[34] Haidt, 2024, p. 98.

[35] Haidt, 2024, p. 137.

[36] Haidt, 2024, p. 115.

[37] Haidt reviews several studies, all of which specifically exclude any screen use related to school or homework. He suspects that these numbers are more likely to be under-estimates, because most teens will answer that they are online “almost constantly.” Even when they are not actively online, they are often thinking about it. Haidt, 2024, p. 119. See footnote 11.

[38] Haidt, 2024, p. 120.

[39] Haidt, 2024, p. 121

[40] Haidt, 2024, p. 123.

[41] Haidt, 2024, p. 124.

[42] Haidt, 2024, p. 125.

[43] Haidt, 2024, p. 125.

[44] Haidt, 2024, p. 127.

[45] Haidt, 2024, p. 128.

[46] Haidt, 2024, p. 130.

[47] Haidt, 2024, p. 131. Interestingly, dopamine increases when the action is performed but not rewarded – in anticipation of the reward. This effect has been shown in rats that earn food by pressing a bar. The dopamine levels rise when the rat presses the bar but sometimes does not receive food. The theory is that the rat anticipates the reward which could come at any time.

[48] Haidt, 2024, p. 132.

[49] Haidt, 2024, p. 140.

[50] Haidt, 2024, p. 135, 140.

[51] Haidt, 2024, p. 152.

[52] Haidt, 2024, p. 168.

[53] Haidt, 2024, p. 149.

[54] Haidt, 2024, p. 153.

[55] Haidt, 2024, p. 157.

[56] Haidt, 2024, p. 161.

[57] Haidt, 2024, p. 163.

[58] Haidt, 2024, p. 176.

[59] Haidt, 2024, p. 178. These factors are described in the 2022 book, Of Boys and Men, by Richard Reeves.

[60] Haidt, 2024, p. 185.

[61] Haidt, 2024, p. 187.

[62] Haidt, 2024, p. 188.

[63] Haidt, 2024, p. 192. Haidt points out that today’s boys are taking fewer risks – both healthy and unhealthy. For example, fall related fractures decreased rapidly for boys aged 10-14 after 2009, and rates of injury for young men (and only this group) began to decelerate in the 2000s, then rapidly in after 2012 (at this point, girls joined the trend) until they were less likely to be injured than adolescent girls in 2019.

[64] Haidt, 2024, p. 81.

[65] Haidt, 2024, p. 193. Haidt points out that boys create their strongest and most durable friendships from being on the same team or a stable group – facing risks or rivals together. The bonds of a virtual group are not equivalent.

[66] Haidt, 2024, p. 191.

---