Anna Lembke’s book Dopamine Nation is the book to read to understand how and why digital activities can become addictive. Lembke is a psychiatrist and professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine, where she is the chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic. We drew on Dopamine Nation in writing the behavioral addiction section of chapter 5 of The Anxious Generation, where we quoted her memorable line: “The smartphone is the modern-day hypodermic needle, delivering digital dopamine 24/7 for a wired generation.”

So when Jon saw her name listed as a guest on Peter Attia’s excellent podcast, he tuned in and learned a lot. They discuss the nature of addiction, the role of dopamine, and behavioral addictions such as gambling. At 1:08 in the podcast, they discuss sexual addictions and the effects of pornography on a boy's developing brain. Then, at 1:43, they turn to social media.

Attia brings up The Anxious Generation and notes that there is extensive debate over whether (and to what extent) heavy social media use is merely correlated with anxiety and depression, or whether there is evidence that social media use causes these bad mental health outcomes. He notes that there was a similar debate about tobacco in the 1950s and 1960s, a debate that was not resolved by experiments with control groups (since it would be unethical to randomly assign one group of subjects to smoke for a few decades while a control group went without cigarettes). Rather, Attia mentions the “Bradford Hill criteria” that were used within the scientific community to address when one factor (such as cigarette smoking) can be said to have caused a health outcome (such as lung cancer), and he asks Lembke to give her thoughts.

When Jon heard Lembke working through these criteria in regard to social media, he immediately thought that this would be of interest to readers at After Babel. We invited Lembke to turn that section of the podcast into a post, and we are grateful to her for putting in the time to do so. In the post below, Lembke will detail each of the nine factors of the Bradford Hill criteria, illustrating how this framework can be applied to questions about the effects of social media on adolescent mental health. Throughout the post, examples from Zach will help clarify how this method can guide us toward answers to key questions about causality in regard to social media.

To be clear, we are not using this post to claim that a causal relationship has been definitively established. This would involve a lot more work, since, for example, all relevant studies and available data need to be considered to properly evaluate the Bradford Hill criteria. Rather, we aim to introduce a powerful method that researchers can use to approach questions of causality more systematically. One of the central issues in current debates is that there is no consensus on which criteria must be met to conclude that a causal effect exists. We hope this discussion will move us closer to common ground.

Finally, it’s important to recognize that establishing causality does not require every individual to be affected in the same way. The vast majority (close to 90%) of lifelong smokers never develop lung cancer, and not all adolescents who use social media heavily will experience harm, not to mention develop clinical depression. Individual differences matter, and some groups are more vulnerable than others. Certain behaviors can also offer benefits even if they come with significant risks. The bottom line is that it is often hard to establish causality, but we can look back to previous public health challenges to help us think more clearly about this one.

– Jon and Zach

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Applying The Bradford Hill Criteria To Social Media Use and Adolescent Mental Health

Multiple large databases have shown a correlation between social media use and poor mental health outcomes in teens. Namely, teens who are heavy users of social media are more likely to suffer from depression, eating disorders, body dysmorphia, and other mental health harms. The link is often larger for girls.

The core question is whether (and to what extent does) A) heavy social media use causes poor mental health in teens, B) poor mental health causes teens to use more social media, C) some combination thereof, or D) some third variable (such as, say, parental neglect) causes students both to use social media more and to have worse mental health, creating what appears to be a correlation but yet would not mean that social media caused mental health problems. In this essay, I show how the Bradford Hill Criteria can be used to answer these questions. The criteria provide a useful paradigm for examining the question of causality, especially in instances when there is a delay between exposure to a risk factor and occurrence of a disease, and when other causal factors might play a role. The classic example is smoking cigarettes (risk factor) and much later on, developing lung cancer (disease).

For much of the 20^th century, the scientific literature reported an “association” (correlation) between exposure to cigarettes and the occurrence of lung cancer, that is, lung cancer was found to have occurred more frequently among smokers. However, cigarette manufacturers denied their products “caused” the increased number of lung cancer cases and attributed the association instead to other factors––third variables like innate propensity for cancer and exposure to other environmental toxins, such as asbestos and air pollution.

In 1956, the noted British epidemiologists Sir Austin Bradford Hill and Sir Richard Doll published an influential study of smoking and lung cancer among physicians in Britain. This article rejected alternative explanations for the increase in lung cancer, e.g., the claim “that smoking does not produce cancer in a person in whom cancer would not otherwise have occurred at all, but merely determines the primary site of a growth that is destined to appear in some part of the body,” and that “atmospheric pollution” might explain the increased risk.Hill and Doll observed a higher mortality rate in smokers than in non-smokers, a higher mortality rate in heavy smokers than in light smokers, and a higher mortality rate in those who continued to smoke than in those who gave it up. In 1964, their study became part of the data set that resulted in the 1964 Report of the United States Surgeon General that “cigarette smoking is causally related to lung cancer in men; the magnitude of the effect of cigarette smoking far outweighs other factors. The data for women, though less extensive, point in the same direction.”

In 1965, one of the authors of that landmark smoking study, Sir Austin Bradford Hill, published an essay that has become the framework for answering the question of when a statistical finding of association meets threshold criteria for causation: “What aspects of that association should we especially consider before deciding that the most likely interpretation of it is causation?”

The “Bradford Hill factors,” as they have become known, are generally accepted in the scientific literature as a leading methodology to determine whether there is a causal relationship between exposure to a risk factor and the occurrence of a disease, particularly when working with empirical data and when randomized controlled trials are difficult if not impossible to conduct.

The nine factors cited by Bradford Hill to determine whether an association is causal are as follows: (1) Strength of the association, (2) Consistency, (3) Specificity (4) Temporality, (5) Dose-response relationship, sometimes called “biological gradient,” (6) Plausibility, (7) Coherence, (8) Experiment, and (9) Analogy.

These factors are a guide, not a checklist. As a reference manual on scientific inference explains:

There is no formula or algorithm that can be used to assess whether a causal inference is appropriate based on these guidelines. One or more factors may be absent even when a true causal relationship exists. Similarly, the existence of some factors does not ensure that a causal relationship exists. Drawing causal inferences after finding an association and considering these factors requires judgment and searching analysis, based on biology, of why a factor or factors may be absent despite a causal relationship, and vice versa. Although the drawing of causal inferences is informed by scientific expertise, it is not a determination that is made by using an objective or algorithmic methodology. These guidelines reflect criteria proposed by the U.S. Surgeon General in 1964 in assessing the relationship between smoking and lung cancer and expanded upon by Sir Austin Bradford Hill in 1965 and are often referred to as the Hill criteria or Hill factors. (Italics added for emphasis.)

I provide here a brief primer on how the Hill criteria might be applied to social media exposure and mental health disorders in teens. This is neither an exhaustive review of the criteria nor a complete analysis of any one criterion.

Important to this analysis is study stratification based on the amount of social media being used in a given study population. Unlike cigarettes, in which no amount of tobacco consumption is healthy, a small amount of social media consumption may be neutral or even beneficial, whereas excessive use is likely to be harmful, analogous to the application of the Hill criteria to alcohol and sugar beverage consumption. It has also been applied to gambling.

For example, alcohol research has shown that the healthiest people drink no more than one to two standard drinks a day, and above that amount, all-cause morbidity and mortality increases. People in this category are also healthier than non-drinkers, not because drinking has any specific salutary effects, but rather because non-drinkers include the sub-group of ‘sick-quitters’ – people who had to stop drinking due to severe illness, often alcohol related. A secondary modifying factor is that people who drink in moderation also do other things in moderation, like eating and exercise. More recent data shows that no amount of alcohol consumption is healthy in young people.

Criteria 1. Strength of the Association

In epidemiology, the strength of association between exposure and harm is typically measured as relative risk (RR), such as the finding that smokers have a roughly 70% higher annual mortality compared to non-smokers. There are various ways to measure exposure and harm (such as annual versus lifetime), but as long as there is a robust and relevant RR measure result, it may be considered for the Bradford Hill 'Strength of Association' criteria.

For cigarette smoking, for example, the risk of lung cancer in smokers is approximately 10 times the risk in nonsmokers. For heavy drinkers (> 7 drinks/week for women and > 14 drinks/week for men), the risk of death from all causes is 1.15 times the risk in non-drinkers, showing an increased relative risk, but not of the same strength as smoking and lung cancer. A smaller strength of association does not mean there is no effect, but in general, a larger association can be evidence that it is more plausible that a causal relationship exists..

In the case of social media, the relative risk of mental health harms will be impacted by other factors such as pre-existing psychiatric conditions, adverse social determinants of health (poverty, trauma, discrimination, etc), and gender. Hence, application of the Bradford Hill criterion needs to account for subpopulations of teens who may be more vulnerable. The strength of association between social media exposure and mental health harms may be weak for the general population but stronger in vulnerable groups. In my clinical experience, teens with co-occurring psychiatric disorders are more likely to get addicted to and be harmed by social media than teens without, and girls are more vulnerable than boys.

Illustrative Example from Zach:

Using the UK Millennium Cohort of 10,904 UK 14-year-olds, Kelly and colleagues (2018) found that the risk of depression in girls who are heavy social media users (spend > 5 hours a day) is 3 times higher than in girls who do not use social media at all. For males, the risk of depression is 2 times larger for heavy users compared to non-users.

Criteria 2: Consistency

Consistency refers to whether similar findings have been “repeatedly observed by different persons, in different places, circumstances and times.”

In the case of alcohol, much of the discourse in the early 20th century was about the beneficial health effects of alcohol. But with more research over the intervening decades, the literature now indisputably shows “the harmful effects of alcohol on different body systems.”

The scientific literature on the mental health impact of social media is still in its infancy, but as more studies emerge, I suspect that, as with alcohol, there will be mounting evidence that heavy social media consumption, especially by vulnerable populations, contributes to mental health harms.

Illustrative Example from Zach:

In Amy Orben’s 2020 narrative review of reviews and key studies, she finds that the associations between social media use and depression range between .10 to .15 across a variety of meta-analyses. One of those meta-analyses, Hancock and colleagues (2022), examining 226 studies from 2006 through 2018, found a significant relationship between social media use and anxiety (r = .13, p < .01, 95% CI [.04, .22]) and depression (r = .12, p < .01, 95% CI [.07, .17]) and that “relationships between social media and all forms of psychological distress were not different between participant regions.” (Regions included North America, Asia, Middle East, Australasia, Europe, and others).

Criteria 3: Specificity

Specificity has to do with the absence of any other likely explanation for the rise in disease incidence. Indeed a common defense of environmental toxins by their commercial manufacturers is ‘other aspects of modern life.’ The tobacco industry defended cigarettes in part with “... statistics purporting to link cigarette smoking with the disease could apply with equal force to any one of many other aspects of modern life.”

Naysayers of social media harms have often pointed to other aspects of ‘modern life’ that can contribute to our youth mental health crisis, such as social dislocation, trauma, discrimination, and so on. But just because other factors play a role, that doesn’t detract from the impact of heavy social media use on poor mental health.

Given the complex etiology of mental illness, specificity may not be fully achievable for this analysis; but keep in mind that “One or more factors may be absent even when a true causal relationship exists.”

Illustrative Example from Zach:

In one After Babel post, Psychologist Jean Twenge walks through thirteen alternative explanations for why teen mental health has worsened over the last decade and shows why these explanations are not sufficient to explain the vast majority of the rise.

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Criteria 4: Temporality

According to Bradford Hill, “A temporal, or chronological, relationship must exist for causation to exist. If an exposure causes disease, the exposure must occur before the disease develops. If the exposure occurs after the disease develops, it cannot have caused the disease.”

Proving a temporal relationship for mental illness can be difficult because mental illness tends to have a slow onset and a relapsing and remitting course, making it difficult to identify a specific time point when the mental illness began. Further, mental illness may be a risk factor for exposure to the environmental toxin, as well as being caused by the environmental toxin, in a feed-forward cycle that is causally true in both directions. For example, people struggling with psychiatric disorders are more likely to use drugs and alcohol, and drugs and alcohol can cause or exacerbate psychiatric symptoms. Early onset cannabis use has been correlated with later development of psychosis and worsened schizophrenic symptoms in patients followed over decades.

Therefore, naturalistic studies which examine rates of disease in large populations before and after exposure to a toxin, and cohort studies which follow a population over long periods of time, are powerful tools for examining temporality in the setting of mental health harms.

Illustrative Example from Zach:

Looking at 990 non-depressed young adults (ages 18-30), Primack and colleagues (2021) followed these young adults for six months and found that their “baseline social media use was strongly and independently associated with the development of depression during the subsequent 6 months.” They also add that there was no association between the presence of depression at baseline and an increase in social media use over the course of the study. Similarly, a new 2024 meta-analysis by Ahmed et al. (2024) found that “Baseline SMU was associated with later depression, but not vice versa.”

Criteria 5: Dose-response relationship, sometimes called “biological gradient”

Of the dose-response relationship, the Bradford Hill paper states:

[I]f the association is one which can reveal a biological gradient, or dose-response curve, then we should look most carefully for such evidence. For instance, the fact that the death rate from cancer of the lung rises linearly with the number of cigarettes smoked daily, adds a very great deal to the simpler evidence that cigarette smokers have a higher death rate than non-smokers.

The literature for cigarettes, alcohol, and sugar all show a compelling biological gradient: The more of the substance ingested, the greater the harms. For social media, evidence for a biological gradient is robust. The more time teens spend using social media, the more likely they are to suffer adverse mental health consequences.

Illustrative Example(s) from Zach:

A meta-analysis by Liu and colleagues (2022) of 27 studies of a total of 55,340 adolescents found a 13% increased risk of depression for every one hour increase of use of social media.

Example figure of the dose-response effect from Kelly et al. (2018):

Percent of UK Teens Depressed as a Function of Hours per Weekday on Social Media

Figure 1. Heavy users of social media are more depressed than light users, in a “dose-response” fashion. (Source: Millennium Cohort Study, analyzed by Zinawala, Kelly et al. 2018 (study mentioned in criteria 1). [Zach’s spreadsheet]

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Criteria 6: Plausibility

According to Bradford Hill, “Biological plausibility … depends upon existing knowledge about the mechanisms by which the disease develops. When biological plausibility exists, it lends credence to an inference of causality.”

The organ we’re using when we’re consuming social media is our brains. The organ that is affected in any psychiatric condition is the brain. At its most basic level, it is biologically plausible that heavy use of social media, which provides hours each day of an unusual kind of stimulation, can harm our brains, just as it is biologically plausible that inhaling cigarettes harms our lungs.

One of the mechanisms by which social media might cause mental health harms is through its addictive design features – notifications, algorithms, infinite scroll, and so on – leading us to consume social media beyond what is healthful or even pleasurable. If indeed the harms of social media are mediated in part by compulsive overuse, i.e. addictive use, then it would be important to show that social media acts on the brain’s reward pathway, the part of the brain that is affected by the disease of addiction. Indeed there is such evidence.

The brain’s reward pathway is activated by oxytocin, our love hormone, which binds to dopamine-releasing neurons in the brain’s reward pathway, dopamine being our brain’s reward neurotransmitter, which explains why falling in love feels so good. Beyond this single study, a rich literature in neuroscience supports the finding that making human connections—a definitional feature of social media—is rewarding for the human brain.

Human brain imaging studies demonstrate that tasks that involve “acquiring a good reputation” robustly activate reward-related brain areas and overlap with the areas activated by monetary rewards. The authors conclude, “Our findings support the idea of a ‘common neural currency’ for rewards and represent an important first step toward a neural explanation for complex human social behaviors.”

Meshi and colleagues have shown that reward-related activity in the left nucleus accumbens, a core nucleus of the brain’s reward pathway, predicts Facebook use, strengthening the biological plausibility that Facebook and drugs of reward activate the same reward pathways in the human brain.

To be sure, more studies of social media’s specific impacts on the human brain are needed, but I believe there is sufficient evidence to date to infer that it is biologically plausible that social media use can cause mental health harms.

Illustrative Example from Zach:

Maza and colleagues (2023) followed the social media habits of 169 sixth- and seventh-graders for three years, along with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of their brains. They found that “participants who engaged in habitual checking behaviors showed a distinct neurodevelopmental trajectory within regions of the brain comprising the affective salience, motivational, and cognitive control networks in response to anticipating social rewards and punishments compared with those who engaged in nonhabitual checking behaviors”.

The authors concluded that “habitual checking of social media in early adolescence may be longitudinally associated with changes in neural sensitivity to anticipation of social rewards and punishments, which could have implications for psychological adjustment.”

Criteria 7: Coherence

Bradford Hill’s coherence criterion is one of unification, an attempt to ensure that the various data points supporting causality do not conflict.

The examples Hill gave for coherence included the microscopic effects of smoking on lung cells and the difference in lung cancer incidence by sex. These examples could fit under biological plausibility as well as coherence. The point is that coherent information supports causality and conflicting information is evidence against causality.

For social media, an example of coherence is the idea that addiction to social media is a mechanism of brain harm, and that social media harm occurs in a dose dependent fashion (biological gradient): The more social media consumed, the worse the mental health outcomes.

Illustrative Example from Zach:

Hill used the “association with cigarette smoking coherent with the temporal rise that has taken place in the two variables over the last generation and with the sex difference in mortality” as evidence of coherence. We can point to similar coherence with social media. See Rausch and Haidt (2023) and Haidt (2024) where Jon and I demonstrate the corresponding rise of smartphones with social media platforms (especially Instagram) with the rise of internalizing disorders among adolescents (especially girls) in the early 2010s.

Criteria 8: Experiment

Bradford Hill explains, “Occasionally it is possible to appeal to experimental, or semi-experimental, evidence. For example, because of an observed association some preventive action is taken. Does it in fact prevent? The dust in the workshop is reduced, lubricating oils are changed, persons stop smoking cigarettes. Is the frequency of the associated events affected? Here the strongest support for the causation hypothesis may be revealed.” Hill AB, The Environment and Disease, fn. 105, above, at 298-299 (emphasis added).

In clinical care, we frequently observe significant improvement in mental health outcomes when patients abstain from digital media, including social media, for a period of time. We always warn patients that they will likely feel worse before they feel better, as immediate cessation is often accompanied by withdrawal. The universal symptoms of withdrawal from any addictive substance or behavior are anxiety, irritability, insomnia, dysphoria, and craving. The first 10-14 days are the worst, and thereafter patients start to feel better. If they can maintain abstinence for at least four weeks, they often feel better than they have in a very long time, without receiving any other treatment. This observation perhaps more than anything else has convinced me that heavy/addictive social media use can cause mental health harms, and likewise cessation or reduction of social media use can improve mental well-being.

Any scientific study looking at outcomes of mental health indicators after stopping social media should take into account the period of withdrawal which will initially make psychiatric symptoms worse. Also, although reduction of use may be beneficial, for more severe psychiatric problems, complete cessation of use for a period of time may be necessary, at least based on my clinical experience.

Illustrative Example from Zach:

Davis and colleagues (2024) randomly assigned 220 students with high emotional distress to lower their social media usage to 60 minutes per day or else to make no changes to their social media use (control group), for three weeks. They found that students who were asked to reduce social media use showed significant decreases in depression, anxiety, and FoMO (fear of missing out), and increases in sleep.

Criteria 9. Analogy

Hill's description of analogy involves contrasting two bodies of evidence, one from an established causal relationship, to infer a causal relationship in the experimental condition.

There is remarkable phenotypic similarity between social media addiction and drug and alcohol addiction, suggesting they are the same disease process.

In the case of drug and alcohol addiction, or even addiction to behaviors like gambling or food, an individual who finds a given drug reinforcing is likely to continue to use that drug repeatedly, especially if it is readily available at low or no cost. The more they use, the more their brain adapts to the rewarding effects of the drug, and the more they need to get the same effect, called tolerance. Eventually they may progress to the point where they’re experiencing the 4 C’s of addiction: 1) Out of control use, 2) compulsive use, 3) cravings, and 4) consequences, especially continued use despite consequences [DSM-5]. They can experience acute withdrawal when they cut back or stop, a predictable physiological reaction that lasts on average 10 to 14 days. At this point, the brain mistakes the drug as necessary for survival and the individual has lost some degree of personal agency, such that they cannot stop using even if they want to.

In clinical care, we see patients who consume social media to the point of not being able to control their use, compulsively using even when they don’t plan to or want to, craving social media when they’re not using, and experiencing significant mental health consequences as a result of overuse. They can experience tolerance, like needing to get more ‘likes’, maintain a certain ranking or social standing on the platform, and/or needing more extreme content to get the same effect. We also observe some patients experiencing physical and mental withdrawal when they try to stop social media. In children, withdrawal from social media often manifests as extreme rage, anxiety, dysphoria, and insomnia, which typically resolves within 10 to 14 days of abstinence.

Illustrative Example from Zach:

Zhao and colleagues (2022) used data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, which included structural MRI scans from 10,691 adolescents. They found a pattern of structural features that was associated with heavy “Screen media activity (SMA)”. The authors report that:

“This covariation pattern highly resembled one previously linked to alcohol use initiation prior to adulthood and was consistent in girls and boys. Subsequent regression analyses showed that this co-variation pattern associated with SMA (β = 0.107, P = 0.002) and externalizing psychopathology (β = 0.117, P = 0.002), respectively.”

Conclusion

In conclusion, the Bradford Hill criteria provide a roadmap for exploring causality between heavy social media use and mental health harms, analogous to addictive use of drugs, alcohol, and sugar. As with any new environmental toxin, sentinel case reports and clinical observation will always precede clinical studies. Indeed it is just these early reports and observations that inform the need for causal analyses to follow. As with any addiction, some groups will be more vulnerable than others. In this case we can expect that adolescents, those with co-occurring mental illness, and those facing adverse social determinants of health such as poverty and trauma will be more vulnerable to harm from social media. These vulnerable subpopulations should be considered separate and apart from the general population. The complexity of mental illness means that for any given person, there will likely be multiple causative agents, but the presence of multiple risk factors does not block us from pointing to a probable causal contribution of social media to poor teen mental health.

Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy has issued an advisory report on the harms of social media in children and has recommended in an Op-Ed essay in the New York Times that social media carry a warning label, cautioning consumers about the dangers of social media. I agree.

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After more than a decade of mounting evidence of harm and rising parental concerns, Congress finally acts in a stunningly bipartisan fashion to craft a modest bill that would remove a few (just a few) of the toy’s most dangerous features, without restricting children’s continued access to the toy. The bill is designed and modified carefully over several years and many hearings to take into account every conceivable objection from the left and from the right. It passes the Senate by a landslide vote of 91 to 3 and is then sent to the House of Representatives, where it also enjoys strong bipartisan support. And then, after all that work and all that support, the House leadership kills the bill without giving any believable justification.

This situation would be a travesty of democracy and common sense, and yet it is exactly what is happening with social media and the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), which has only one more week to be enacted. Speaker Mike Johnson said that he is killing the bill because he still has free speech concerns, but as we’ll show, this objection is not grounded in reality.

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Industrial Scale Harm Committed by Snap, ByteDance, and Meta

For documentation of our claim that social media is as harmful as the hypothetical toy described above, you can see the footnotes and our many essays on After Babel. We’ll also add a few more facts here to establish that we are not exaggerating the harm or the need for greater protection of children and adolescents.

We know from the briefs filed by many attorneys general, which reveal internal communications from social media companies, that Snap gets 10,000 reports of sextortion per month. As reported in State of New Mexico vs. Snap Inc.,

Snap was specifically aware, but failed to warn children and parents, of ‘rampant’ and ‘massive’ sextortion on its platform–a problem so grave that it drives children facing merciless and relentless blackmail demands or disclosure of intimate images to their families and friends to suicide. Snap trust and safety employees acknowledged the ‘psychological impact’ of sextortion on its victims ‘especially when those victims are minor.’ By November 2022, Snap employees were discussing 10,000 user reports of sextortion each month, while acknowledging that these reports ‘likely represent a small fraction of this abuse’ given the shame and other barriers to reporting.6

The shame and fear that hits each and every one of these young victims is a huge cost in itself, and that cost climbs far higher when we consider that some of them then end their own lives. An FBI report investigated 12,600 cases of online sextortion that occurred between October 2021 and March 2023. They identified 20 deaths by suicide directly linked to these cases.7 Those teens would still be alive if not for a product that, by design, easily connects children with adult strangers, via disappearing photos, with few safeguards. In addition, according to the 2023 Federal Human Trafficking Report, Snapchat has been identified as the leading recruitment platform for sex trafficking victims.

Snapchat has also been a crucial marketplace for illicit drugs, compounding the teen opioid crisis. Snapchat’s internal researchers found that at least 700,000 Snapchatters are exposed to drug content every single day, “in the areas that we scanned” — and that “some teens have even died as a result of buying drugs that they found through Snapchat.”8

We know from the work of those attorneys general, and from investigative journalists, that Tiktok is also harming children at an industrial scale, and they’re well aware of it. We are fortunate that one of the briefs (Kentucky vs. TikTok) was posted to the internet with many sections redacted, but redacted improperly so that the hidden text could be copied out by anyone from behind the black bars. (We have done so in this PDF file, which shows all of the hidden text).

Let’s examine a few quotations from executives at ByteDance, which owns TikTok. One executive explained that “The product in itself has baked into it compulsive use.”9 Another stated, “The reason kids watch TikTok is because the algo[rithm] is really good. . . . But I think we need to be cognizant of what it might mean for other opportunities. And when I say other opportunities, I literally mean sleep, and eating, and moving around the room, and looking at somebody in the eyes.”10 Internal documents show that they know that teens are especially susceptible to compulsive use, with one internal report stating that minor users are “particularly sensitive to reinforcement in the form of social award,” have “minimal ability to self-regulate effectively,” and “do not have executive function to control their screen time.”11

Internal research from TikTok also reveals that they have failed at preventing highly inappropriate content from reaching users. For example, the researchers found that 35.71% of “Normalization of Pedophilia” content, 33.33% of “Minor Sexual Solicitation” content, 39.13% of “Minor Physical Abuse” content, 30.36% of “Leading Minors Off Platform” content, 50% of “Glorification of Minor Sexual Assault” and 100% of “Fetishizing Minors” content was missed by TikTok’s content moderation process.12

We know from many whistleblowers and journalists that Meta is also harming children at an industrial scale, primarily through Instagram. Arturo Bejar, a whistleblower and former Senior Engineer at Instagram, revealed internal research showing that on Instagram, about 20% of 13 to 15 year-olds say they were the target of bullying in the past seven days. Bejar also revealed that 13% of 13 to 15 year-olds said that they have received unwanted sexual advances… in the past seven days. Bejar describes these findings like this: “Instagram hosts the largest-scale sexual harassment of teens to have ever happened.”

Other internal research, brought out by whistle blower Frances Haugen, found that in or around 2021, 6% of teen girls in the U.S. and 13% of teen girls in the U.K. “traced their desire to self-harm/commit suicide to Instagram.” One in eight Instagram users told Meta’s researchers that they thought the platform made thoughts of suicide or self-injury worse. Not to mention the widely-known findings that Instagram “makes body image issues worse for one in three teen girls”; and that one in five teens state that Instagram makes them feel worse about themselves.13

There is an active debate among researchers about whether social media use, in general, is a cause (versus a mere correlate) of the rising levels of internalizing disorders (e.g., anxiety and depression) at the “population level” (meaning: those hockey stick graphs of rising anxiety and depression in the early 2010s that we showed in Chapter 1 of The Anxious Generation.) But when we look at the individual level, as Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has urged, the direct harm to specific children cannot be denied. Not one of the hundreds of parents whose sons and daughters died by suicide within a few days of being sextorted have mistaken correlation for causation.

It is the heroic parents of these dead and injured children who are the driving force behind KOSA.

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KOSA is Not a Threat to Free Speech

KOSA is a straightforward bill that puts in place a few protections for kids online (defined as those under age 16). Its key features include: 1) setting the strongest privacy settings for kids by default, 2) restricting addictive product features and personalized recommendation algorithms for minors, and 3) mandating that companies remove design features for minors that are known to contribute to suicide, eating disorders, substance abuse, and sexual exploitation, or that are advertisements for certain illegal products (e.g. tobacco and alcohol).

This third protection has been most contested — opponents have raised concerns that the government will use the “duty of care” as a way to censor political or ideological content that a particular administration does not like. But this is a fallacy. KOSA does not limit free speech and it does not regulate content.

Here is the provision in the bill that specifically outlines this point:

Nothing in subsection (a) shall be construed to require a covered platform to prevent or preclude any minor from (A) deliberately and independently searching for, or specifically requesting, content; or (B) accessing resources and information regarding the prevention or mitigation of the harms described in subsection (a).14

In other words: KOSA places absolutely no restrictions on what any person can say on a social media platform—even if they want to say horrific things that promote eating disorders or suicide. KOSA also places no restrictions on what any child can search for—even if they are interested in finding horrific stuff about eating disorders or suicide. KOSA merely says, for the first time, that the platforms bear some responsibility for the content-neutral design choices they make. There are therefore no implications for free speech.15

But some opponents of regulation continued to say that KOSA could, conceivably, down the road, maybe pose a threat to free speech. That’s why Elon Musk recently got involved. Musk is among the most ardent free speech advocates in the world. He owns a platform that will be covered by KOSA. He hired a CEO (Linda Yaccarino) who had been a critic of social media, and who seems genuinely to care about children’s safety. In late November, Yaccarino and others from X engaged in negotiations with the two Senate co-sponsors, Richard Blumenthal and Marsha Blackburn, to add language that specifically says that KOSA cannot be used to censor anyone or to expose the companies to liability for what anyone posts. The new provision states:

Nothing in this section shall be construed to allow a government entity to enforce subsection (a) based upon the viewpoint of users expressed by or through any speech, expression, or information protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

Yaccarino then posted on X her report on the negotiations, which is worth quoting in full:

At X, protecting our children is our top priority. As I’ve always said, freedom of speech and safety can and must coexist. And as a mother, it’s personal.

When X testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee last January, we committed to working with Congress on child safety legislation. We’ve heard the pleas of parents and youth advocates who seek sensible guardrails across online platforms, and the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) addresses that need.

After working with the bill authors, I’m proud to share that we’ve made progress to further protect freedom of speech while maintaining safety for minors online. Thank you to @MarshaBlackburn and @SenBlumenthal for your leadership, dedication and collaboration on this issue and landmark legislation.

We urge Congress and the House to pass the Kids Online Safety Act this year.

Musk immediately posted his approval of Yaccarino’s post, adding on “Protecting kids should always be priority #1.”

With Musk and Yaccarino now backing the revised version of KOSA, many other prominent Republicans, including Donald Trump Jr. and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, have been standing up for KOSA and calling for its passage. As Senators Blackburn and Blumenthal put it, “These changes should eliminate once and for all the false narrative that this bill would be weaponized by unelected bureaucrats to censor Americans.”

Speaker Johnson’s expressed concerns are not relevant to KOSA. The free speech protections are as explicit as possible, thanks to Musk and X.

We cannot know what Johnson's real reasons are for blocking KOSA, but it may not be a coincidence that Meta, together with ByteDance, has spent more than $200,000 a day in the first half of 2024 to block KOSA. Meta also recently announced that it will spend ten billion dollars to build an AI facility in Louisiana, the home state of both Speaker Johnson and of House Majority Leader Steve Scalise.

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Pass KOSA by Christmas

There is indisputable harm happening to children at an industrial scale—reaching literally millions of children. KOSA is a bipartisan bill that would begin to address those harms. Elon Musk and Linda Yaccarino stepped in to enshrine free speech protections in explicit language in the bill. Many tech companies now support KOSA. So did 91 Senators. So do leading Republicans and Democrats. So do most parents.

It’s time to pass KOSA. The clock is about to run out. The objections have been addressed. Pass the bill now.

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In Chapters 9 and 10 of The Anxious Generation, we examine how social media companies are themselves caught in a collective action trap. Each feels compelled to introduce more addictive features and reach younger users because failing to do so risks falling behind rivals who will. It’s exactly these kinds of industry-wide dilemmas that make regulation necessary.

Legislation helps overcome the collective action trap by ensuring that all companies shift their behavior simultaneously. Yet, industries often fiercely resist moving from an unregulated environment to one with these safeguards. For example, when the government tried to regulate the tobacco industry, they would fund political campaigns, employ dedicated lobbyists, spread misinformation about the health risks of tobacco, and create front groups to appear as grassroots movements. Social media companies—particularly Meta and TikTok—are engaging in similar practices right now to avoid the passage of the Kids Online Safety Act, and it’s important for the public to recognize these patterns. (For the latest on KOSA, and how Elon Musk and Linda Yaccarino (the CEO of X) have helped get it back on the negotiating table, see here)

To better understand the playbook some social media companies are now using to avoid meaningful regulation—a pattern that stretches back to Big Tobacco, we reached out to Gaia Bernstein, a law professor and author of Unwired: Gaining Control over Addictive Technologies. In this post, Bernstein highlights the strategy of corporate blame-shifting—diverting full responsibility onto users, including children and overwhelmed parents.

— Zach and Jon

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The tech industry1—and especially social media companies—have long resisted regulation. Tech companies persistently claimed they could fix their own problems.2 For years, this strategy worked.3 But accumulating scientific evidence documenting harm to children, combined with damning whistleblower testimonies created change. These days, few believe that Big Tech will or can regulate itself.

Since the end of the pandemic, across the country and in Congress, a wave of legislative action emerged. Hundreds of bills targeting excessive screen time and other online harms sprouted. Some have already become law. This movement includes the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), which passed the Senate with overwhelming bipartisan support, and is now before the House. There are many proposed solutions. They range from implementing an age minimum on children's social media access to imposing duties of care on online platforms and eliminating addictive design features. But, while seemingly diverse, these solutions converge into two exclusive models and a hybrid option. Each alternative endorses a different idea of who should be the gatekeeper over kids' online safety.

Should tech companies, parents, or both be responsible for protecting kids online? One model is the Tech Liability Model, which holds technology companies responsible for preventing harm. For example, some laws require social networks, games, and other digital platforms to eliminate design features known to manipulate user behavior and extend screen time. The other model is the Parent Gatekeeping Model, which shifts responsibility to parents by requiring platforms to provide parents with monitoring tools and controls. For example, some laws require parental consent for minors to use social media. The third alternative is the hybrid approach, where legislatures combine the two models, giving both tech companies and parents roles.

What would the tech industry prefer? No doubt its first choice is to avoid regulation altogether. But if regulation is inevitable, it would opt for laws that place exclusive responsibility on parents. Tech companies endorse the parent as the gatekeeper.

Tech Resistance Follows an Old Playbook Drafted by the Tobacco Industry

The tech industry is in the business of innovation. Yet its response to evidence of child harm shows little creativity. Tech companies are following a well-established playbook, which originated with the tobacco industry. For decades, industries have resorted to this playbook when evidence revealed that their products harm their consumers. In my book Unwired: Gaining Control over Addictive Technologies, I looked at how industries developed this playbook, and how the tech industry applied it.

A key strategy is shifting responsibility from the industry to consumers. “You chose to use our product, so you are fully responsible for the harms.” The tech industry applied this strategy by extending responsibility to the parents of their minor users. They have so far implemented the strategy in two steps:

1. Declared that kids chose to use their products, and the parents are responsible for their children’s choices.

2. Provide parental controls to shift the responsibility for kids’ online access to parents.

These two steps then lead to a logical third: opting for parent gatekeeping laws.

Let us look into each of these steps in more detail to better understand how this plays out in the real world, drawing on historical examples.

The Playbook, Step 1: It’s Not Us, It’s You

When smokers and their families sued the tobacco industry for smoking-related devastation, including lung cancer and early death, tobacco companies quickly resorted to shifting the responsibility. For decades, smokers lost lawsuits because the tobacco industry argued that they chose to smoke and were, therefore, responsible for the consequences.4

The tech industry started out by employing the same strategy. Confronting challenges about addictive features, tech companies argued that users voluntarily engage with their platforms. When the Federal Trade Commission evaluated restricting loot boxes, an addictive feature5 common in video games, video game manufacturers claimed players choose to play and spend money. No one forces them to do so.

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The Playbook, Step 2: Our New Tools Will Help You Control Yourselves

These industries don't just blame users; they also provide "solutions" that reinforce their strategy of shifting responsibility. They offer products or tools that help consumers make “better choices.” In the 1950s, researchers published the first studies showing the connection between smoking and lung cancer. In response, tobacco companies introduced filtered cigarettes, marketing them as healthier options "just what the doctor ordered." However, these filters were a facade – to compensate for lost flavor, companies used stronger tobacco, maintaining similar nicotine and tar levels as unfiltered brands.

Once again, the tech industry followed the traditional playbook by offering “digital well-being" tools. They offer us tools like Apple Screen Time, which notify us of how much time we spend on screens. They also allow us to restrict time on certain apps, but then we can override these restrictions. We can choose to set our devices on “do not disturb” or “focus times.” Instagram set a feature to remind us to take breaks. Yet, screen time continues to creep up. These tools are not successful because just like the “filtered cigarette,” they are not meant to solve the problem. Their goal is to shift responsibility to us, as we unsuccessfully face devices and apps that manipulatively entice us to stay on.

For children, tech companies have developed specialized “digital well-being tools” known as "parental controls”. The tech industry introduced two forms of parental controls:

• Device-level controls that permit parents to limit children’s time and access on phones and computers.

• Platform-specific controls allowing parents to set notifications and time limits on different platforms, most commonly social media accounts.

Once again, parental controls, while helpful to some parents, largely failed to change kids’ screen time but served the tech industry’s goal of shifting responsibility– in this case, to the parents of their consumers.

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The Playbook, Step 3: Parent Gatekeeping Laws

Parent gatekeeping laws represent an evolved version of this responsibility-shifting strategy. Under the Parent Gatekeeping Model, some laws require parental consent for minors to use online platforms, most commonly social media. These laws vary in their application, covering children under the ages of fourteen to eighteen. Other laws mandate that technology platforms enable parental supervision, including setting time limits and scheduling breaks on children's accounts. Regardless of the specific mechanism, these laws ultimately absolve tech companies of responsibility by positioning parents as the gatekeepers.

The tech industry’s primary preference remains blocking any regulatory intervention. However, if regulation becomes inevitable, the industry's second-best strategy is to push for laws that place responsibility exclusively on parents. These laws will provide the industry with a convenient legal shield, effectively allowing them to argue that they have been absolved of responsibility because a legally mandated intermediary – the parent – now stands between the tech product and the child.

Why Fight for KOSA?

KOSA is a hybrid law: it draws from the Tech Liability Model and the Parent Gatekeeping model. KOSA provides parents with tools to monitor their children online. For example, it requires online platforms to let parents set their children’s privacy preferences and view their screen time on a given platform. However, KOSA does not rely on parents exclusively as the gatekeepers. The heart of KOSA involves imposing a duty of care on online platforms, including social media. This means platforms must exercise "reasonable care" in making sure that their design features do not cause harm, including mental health harms, addiction, and sexual exploitation. For example, KOSA would impose liability on a social media platform, which uses a design feature that is detrimental to kids’ mental health and fails to mitigate the problem. KOSA is a powerful law because it places the responsibility where it belongs - with the tech companies.

But KOSA is currently stalled in the House, with only eight days remaining in the legislative session before it dies. Now is the time for us to act. Your voice can help push this bill over the finish line by contacting your House representative using this resource from the Anxious Generation’s website.

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One of the most consistent findings in the correlational research on social media and mental health is that girls are disproportionately at risk of harm from heavy social media use compared to boys. In Chapter 6 of The Anxious Generation, we discussed the range of harms that hit girls harder than boys, including visual social comparison, perfectionism, relational aggression, social contagion, and online predation.

However, there is much more to this story than what we covered in that chapter. Thankfully, at the same time The Anxious Generation was published (March 2024), another important book was published on this same topic: Over the Influence: Why Social Media is Toxic for Women and Girls – And How We Can Take It Back. The author is Kara Alaimo, Associate Professor of Communication at Fairleigh Dickinson University. In this post, Kara provides a summary of her new book, including practical solutions to help parents better prepare their daughters for life online. Kara endorses the four norms we propose in The Anxious Generation while also advocating for more comprehensive education for both parents and teens on the harms of social media. Kara goes far deeper into the lives of girls than we were able to in our chapter on girls.

– Zach and Jon

p.s. We plan to publish many more pieces exploring the role of education and digital literacy. We also plan to publish more pieces on the unique challenges boys and men face online. For a preview of that, see our post on why we are increasingly worried about boys, too.

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In The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt lays out some of the reasons why social media (especially visually-oriented platforms like Instagram and TikTok) tends to harm girls more than boys, on average. Girls often spend more time on these visually-oriented apps. They’re more affected by perfectionism and social comparisons. Because girls tend to be more relational, they’re particularly hurt by things like online gossip and other forms of cyberbullying that impact their reputations. He also reports that girls are more affected by the emotions of the people around them. And, of course, girls are more vulnerable to predation.

“Social media is a trap that ensnares more girls than boys,” he writes.

I have found the same thing. As a communication professor and CNN contributor, my research, writing and teaching focus on what social media is doing to us all. At nearly every turn, I have seen that women and girls are most affected by the harms inflicted by social networks.

For this reason, I interviewed women and girls across the country about their experiences on social media for my new book “Over the Influence: Why Social Media is Toxic for Women and Girls – And How We Can Take It Back.” Published in March, the book follows the arc of a woman’s life and explains how social media is impacting every aspect of it – from the teen years to online dating, our careers, and even how we parent our children. Every chapter ends with a section called “What We Can Do About It,” laying out realistic things users can do and demand from tech companies and lawmakers to solve these problems.

There’s an old saying that we write the books we need to read. As the mom of daughters, part of my motivation for conducting this research was that I was trying to figure out how I would handle my own girls’ use of social media. In The Anxious Generation, Jon laid out 4 new norms: no smartphones before high school, no social media before age 16, phone-free schools, and more unsupervised play and childhood independence.

These are essential solutions. In addition, my research makes clear that we need to talk to our daughters—ideally long before they start using social media—about some of the pressures and dangers they’ll be up against and how they can best handle them. Four of the big ones we need to discuss are (1) content that overemphasizes personal appearance, (2) the sexism and misogyny they’ll see, (3) sexting, and (4) the dangers of dating apps.

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Conversation 1. Appearance-Driven Content

One of the most common problems related to social media is the heavy emphasis on personal appearances on many apps. The first chapter of my book, “Girl Meets Instagram,” looks at what happens when girls join social media for the first time. I tell the story of a woman who asked me to call her Vivian. She wrote to me after reading one of my CNN columns and told me her eating disorder as a teenager was driven by her use of Instagram. Vivian joined the app at age 15 and was into yoga, so she posted a picture of herself doing a handstand. That picture was picked up by a so-called “fitspo” (for the uninitiated, “fitness inspiration”) page, which sucked her down a rabbit hole of toxic fitspo content. Soon, she was counting calories herself. Today, in her 20s, Vivian continues to struggle with an eating disorder, even after years of treatment.

Social networks don’t just fail to protect girls from such content – often, their algorithms actively push it to them. For a simple demonstration, the Center for Countering Digital Hate set up accounts pretending to be a 13-year-old on TikTok and paused on and liked content about mental health and body image. Within minutes, the app was serving up posts about suicide and eating disorders.

Like Jon, I’m particularly worried about girls because girls often spend more time on visually oriented apps, where they’re bombarded with images of other peoples’ seemingly flawless lives and bodies. Of course, the so-called “Instagram body” can usually only be achieved offline through surgery. But social apps don’t send signals to remind us that the photos we see are often heavily manipulated.

This is why we need to talk to our children about why they shouldn’t compare themselves to the highly filtered and curated content they see online. We also need to talk about why we shouldn’t judge anyone – including and, in fact, especially ourselves – for their appearances. If children are still young, it’s a good idea to start having these conversations before they join social media. But even if they’re already on Instagram, it’s never too late.

In her important book “Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia,” Cornell philosopher Kate Manne wrote about how she sat down with her young daughter and pulled up photos of people of different races, sizes, and types of ability on Instagram – then remarked that she’s glad the people whose images they viewed are in the world with us. It’s one of the most beautiful ways I’ve ever heard of teaching kids this lesson.

Conversation 2. Sexism and Misogyny

As I write in Over the Influence, on mainstream social networks, kids are often exposed to sexism and misogyny. “Extremist misogyny that was once really segregated to platforms like Reddit forums is now disseminating onto much more popular platforms like TikTok and permeating into youth culture more generally,” Kaitlyn Regher, an associate professor in digital humanities at University College London, told me in an interview for my book. “It’s much more socially acceptable to throw around incel terminology now.” What we’re talking about here are things like “jokes” about what a woman’s anatomy looks like after violent sex.

This is why it’s essential for us to talk to kids about what they’re seeing online so we can reflect together about whether it’s in keeping with our values and how we can process and respond to it. I have been speaking to parents and teachers in schools about how to handle kids’ use of social media. A lot of parents tell me they’re intimidated by the idea of having these conversations because they don’t fully understand how some of the social networks their kids are on work. Don’t be. You don’t need to know how to create a viral TikTok yourself to sit down at the dinner table and ask your child what kinds of things they’ve been seeing on their social apps lately. (Bonus: this is also a good way of bonding with your child by learning more about what interests them.) As part of this conversation, you can say that you’ve heard there are some very hateful things on these apps, like posts that suggest it’s funny to hurt people. Ask if they’ve seen them and how they feel about them. Then you can share how you feel about them.

Conversation 3. Sexting

Another thing that puts girls at risk is the widely held expectation among peers for them to share intimate images. Shocking though it may be to us as parents, among young people today, this is the norm. One girl who I interviewed for my book – with whom I was put in touch by her mother – explained to me that she and her friends take these images in advance of being asked for them and store them on My Eyes Only on Snapchat, so they’re at the ready when requested.

It’s essential for parents to talk to kids about why they should never take, share, or ask for such images. For starters, children could be prosecuted for producing child pornography of themselves. What’s more, those images could be hacked or shared with others when a relationship sours – or just for kicks.

Often children are targeted by someone online who establishes an emotional relationship with them and convinces them to share one racy image. Then the next message that comes through is something like: “Venmo me $500 in the next hour or I’m going to post this on social media and message it to all your friends and family members.” This is called sextortion. According to a lawsuit against Snap filed by the Attorney General of New Mexico last year, by 2022, the company had 10,000 monthly reports of sextortion and believed that to represent just a fraction of the instances that were occuring on its platform. He is also suing Meta for allowing adults to solicit pornography from kids on its platforms.

As I write in Over the Influence, when these intimate images end up online, it’s often life-destroying. It can put victims at greater risk of sexual assault, depression, and suicide. It can also make it harder for them to date or get a job. Often kids don’t think through these potential consequences, so it’s critical for us to talk about them.

This is also why lawyers who handle cases of cyber sexual exploitation have told me one of the most important things parents need to tell their children is that, even if they break all the rules, if they get in trouble online, they can come to them for help without fear of the consequences. One attorney told me she’d seen some girls afraid to tell their parents they were being sextorted because they were worried about having their phones taken away.

Conversation 4. How Dating Apps Can Facilitate Sexual Assault

As our daughters move into their dating years, the physical dangers they face on social apps are in some ways heightened. One of my biggest concerns is dating apps. The United States doesn’t keep statistics on how many violent crimes are tied to them, which is awfully convenient for these companies. However, in 2019, Columbia Journalism Investigations published the results of what it called a non-scientific survey of over 1,200 women who had dated online over the previous 15 years. An astounding 31% of them said they’d been raped or sexually assaulted by someone they had met online. If this number is anywhere close to accurate, online dating is far, far more dangerous than most people appreciate.

While dating apps have been widely hailed as a valuable way to meet people, according to a 2020 Pew survey, the majority of women say dating is harder now than it was 10 years ago. (The majority of men disagree.)

In Over the Influence, I explore how online dating has turned people into commodities to be quickly swiped on and how, as part of the “online disinhibition effect,” users are willing to treat others far worse online than they would in person.

Women I interviewed said our culture left them feeling like they were overly emotional or needy if they asked for what they wanted on these apps– like better behavior, or a real relationship.

One good idea, of course, is not to use dating apps at all. If our daughters do use them, it’s critical to offer tips on how to protect their safety. For example, they should video message a person before agreeing to meeting up with them in person to confirm that they seem to be who they say they are (a lot of sextortionists are being held as slaves themselves in places like Cambodia). If they meet up offline with someone who they met online, they should tell people where they are going and make sure the person they’re meeting knows that their loved ones know where they are. And they should never be alone with someone until they have solid evidence they can be trusted.

Of course, I’m only getting started here. There’s a lot more in my book on the dangers our daughters face, and on the conversations that can help them. Sadly, most kids aren’t learning about these dangers in school. I recently created a new academic program in social media at Fairleigh Dickinson University, and many of my undergraduates tell me that my classes are the first place they have ever been educated about how to protect and empower themselves on social media. While schools should also be incorporating these topics as part of their curricula, it’s essential for parents to stay in ongoing discussion with their kids about what they’re seeing online, the risks they could face, and how to handle them. As these dangers continue to evolve, so too should our conversations, and our national norms. Our daughters would face so much less danger, and they’d be so much more capable of protecting themselves, if most of us waited until high school to give them a smartphone and until 16 to let them open social media accounts.

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Why do modern societies impose minimum legal ages for many activities and products, such as drinking, smoking, gambling, porn, driving, skydiving, or watching R or X-rated movies? There are many reasons, but these four stand out for this list of activities:

1. Graphic sexuality

2. Graphic violence

3. Addiction risk

4. Significant health/safety hazards

For these kinds of activities, we give adults great leeway to make their own decisions. They have mature prefrontal cortices; they are better than children at inhibiting impulses and evaluating risks. When it comes to children, however, there is a broad consensus that companies who profit from children by exposing them to any of these four harms must stop. We understand that these companies—which typically place the interests of their shareholders above those of any other stakeholder—must be strongly incentivized to enforce minimum age requirements by the threat of lawsuits, fines, and penalties. Unless they are social media companies.

When used normally, social media exposes children to all four of these harms, often without the knowledge or consent of the child’s parents. Once children get their own smartphones or tablets and social media accounts, they are likely to begin spending five hours a day on these platforms, on average, which means 35 hours per week, roughly a full time job’s worth of work producing and consuming content for the platforms. During those long scrolling hours, many will be exposed to pornographic images, videos urging them to undertake dangerous challenges, and videos of violence committed by real people against real people. Something on the order of 10% will develop “problematic use” which sure looks like other behavioral addictions, such as gambling. Their risk of anxiety, depression, and self-harm will increase substantially, especially if they are girls. Their risk of falling prey to sextortion (and therefore suicide) will increase, especially if they are boys.

On November 29, the Australian government took the boldest move yet by any nation in the long struggle to protect children from these harms by changing the incentives within which the companies operate. The new law sets a minimum age of 16 for opening accounts (effectively raising the age from 13). The law will take effect in 12 months' time, during which the government will work with platforms to determine the best way to do age assurance. Penalties will be imposed on platforms, not parents or children.

The move by the Australian government is very popular with Australians. Most people understand that children are different from adults and that minimum ages are appropriate for many activities. The main objections to the bill, from what I have read, revolve around privacy concerns, particularly the idea that the new law will require people to give their private identity documents to social media companies. But this is not true. The bill was amended in the Australian Senate last week to address this concern by explicitly stating that no company can offer only the use of a government ID; they have to offer other options (and there are many other options).

The most eloquent statement on the urgency of implementing minimum ages for social media was made by my friend and NYU-Stern colleague Scott Galloway in an essay he wrote last June on his blog No Mercy / No Malice. With his multiple podcasts (Prof G, and Pivot) and his many books about tech, finance, and society, Scott knows far more about the tech industry than I do. He also writes with more moral force, emotion, and humor than I do. Scott has two teenage sons, and he cares and speaks a great deal about the threats to boys, as well as to girls, in the digital age.1

So when Australia passed its landmark social media legislation and some critics said it was not needed or not possible, I asked Scott if I could bring his powerful essay to the readership at After Babel. Here it is. I believe it will increase the confidence of legislators and citizens in Australia, that they are doing the right thing. I hope it will inspire leaders, legislators, and citizens around the world to take collective action in their own countries.

– Jon Haidt

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Age Gating

By Scott Galloway

Social media is unprecedented in its reach and addictive potential — a bottomless dopa bag that fits in your pocket. For kids it poses heightened risks. The evidence is overwhelming and has been for a while. It just took a beat to absorb how brazen the lies were — “We’re proud of our progress.” Social media can be dangerous. That doesn’t make it net “bad” — there’s plenty of good things about it. But similar to automobiles, alcohol, and AK-47s, it has a mixed impact on our lives. It presents dangers. And one of the things a healthy society does is limit the availability of dangerous products to children, who lack the capacity to use them safely. Yet, two decades into the social media era, we permit unlimited, all-ages access to this dangerous, addictive product. The reason: incentives. Specifically, the platforms, dis-incentivized to age-gate their products, throw sand in the gears of any effort to limit access. To change the outcome, we must change the incentives.

Adult Swim

I’m a better person when I drink, more interesting and more interested. One of the reasons I work out so much is so I can continue to drink — muscle absorbs alcohol better than fat does. Kids are different, and we’ve long been comfortable treating them differently. In 1838, Wisconsin forbid the selling of liquor to minors without parental consent, and, by 1900, state laws setting minimum drinking ages were common. There’s a good case to be made that the U.S. alcohol limit of 21 is too high, but nobody would argue we should dispense with age-gating booze altogether.

That trend has paralleled laws restricting childhood access to other things. The right to bear arms is enshrined in the Constitution, yet courts don’t blink at keeping guns out of the hands of children, even as they dismantle every other limitation on gun ownership. If there’s a lobbying group trying to give driver’s licenses to 13-year-olds, I can’t find it. Age of consent laws make sex with children a crime; minors are not permitted to enter into contracts; we limit the hours and conditions in which they can work; they cannot serve in the military or on juries, nor are they allowed to vote. (That last one we may want to reconsider.) These are not trivial things. On the contrary, we exclude children from or substantially limit their participation in many core activities of society.

Late Night With the Dawg

The only time I have appeared on late-night TV was when Jimmy Fallon mocked me — showing a CNN video clip where I said “I’d rather give my 16-year-old a bottle of Jack and weed than Instagram.” Four thousand likes and 265,000 views later, it appears America agrees. My now almost 17-year-old son has engaged with all three substances. Alcohol and Instagram make him feel worse afterward — not sure about weed. However, he is restricted from carrying a bottle of Jack in his pocket, and his parents would ask for a word if his face was hermetically sealed to a bong. Note: Spare me any bullshit parenting advice from nonparents or therapists whose kids don’t come home for the holidays.

He, we, and society restrict his access to these substances. And, when he abstains from drinking/smoking, he isn’t sequestered from all social contact and the connective tissue of his peer group. We freaked out when we found (as you will if you have boys) porn on one of his devices. But the research is clear: We should be more alarmed when we find Instagram/Snap/TikTok on his phone. Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg are the pornographers of our global economy. Actually, that’s unfair to pornographers.

Peer Pressure

Age-gating social media is hugely popular. Over 80% of adults believe parental consent should be required for social media, and almost 70% want platforms to limit the time minors spend on them.

Those numbers are from last fall, before my NYU colleague Jonathan Haidt published The Anxious Generation, which builds on the work of Jean Twenge and others, making the most forceful case yet that social media is hurting our children. Reviewing the shocking increase in depression, self-harm, and general suffering our children are experiencing and the explanations offered by the platform apologists, Professor Haidt highlights the twin specters of social media and mobile devices and the lasting damage they’re doing to a generation. Unconstrained smartphone use, Haidt observes, has been “the largest uncontrolled experiment humanity has ever performed on its own children.” And the results are in.

Legislatures are responding. States from California to Utah to Louisiana have passed laws that limit access to social media based on age. If you haven’t noticed any change in the behavior of the platforms, however, that’s because courts have blocked nearly all of them. A social media and digital commerce trade group called NetChoice is quick to sue any state that interferes with its members’ ability to exploit children for maximum profit.

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“Complicated”

Judges are siding with the platforms, and probably not because they enjoy seeing depressed teenagers fed content glorifying self-harm, or teenage boys committing suicide after being sextorted. The platforms and other opponents of these laws, such as the ACLU, make two main points: First, they claim that verifying age online is too complicated, requiring the collection of all sorts of information about users, and won’t work in all cases. Second, requiring users to collect this information creates free speech, privacy, and security concerns. (The platforms also deny their products are harmful to children.)

On their face, these points are valid. It is more difficult to confirm age online, where there’s no clerk at the counter who can ask to see your driver’s license and reference your face. And these platforms have proven reckless with personal data. It’s sort of a “they’re so irresponsible, but we can’t take action” dilemma.

But these objections are not about age verification, children’s rights, free speech, or privacy. They are concerns about the platform companies’ capabilities. Their arguments boil down to the assertion that these multibillion-dollar organizations, who’ve assembled vast pools of human capital that wield godlike technology, can’t figure out how to build effective, efficient, constitutionally compliant age-verification systems to protect children. If this sounds like bullshit, trust your instincts.

Illusion of Complexity

This isn’t a conversation re the realm of the possible, but the profitable. When you pay an industry not to understand something, it will never figure it out. (Just look at the tobacco industry’s inability to see a link with cancer.) What’s more challenging, figuring out if someone is younger than 16, or building a global real-time communication network that stores a near-infinite amount of text, video, and audio retrievable by billions of simultaneous users in milliseconds with 24/7 uptime? The social media giants know where you are, what you’re doing, how you’re feeling, and if you’re experiencing suicidal ideation … but they can’t figure out your age. You can’t make this shit up.

The platforms could design technology that reliably collects sufficient information to confirm a user’s age, then wipes the information from its servers. They could create a private or public entity that processes age verification anonymously. Remember the blockchain? Isn’t this exactly the kind of problem it was supposed to solve? They could deploy AI to estimate when a user is likely underage based on their online behaviors, and seek age verification from at-risk people. If device manufacturers (or just the device OS duopoly of Apple and Alphabet) were properly incentivized, they could implement age verification on the device itself. (This is what Meta says it wants, when it isn’t fighting age-verification requirements.) Or, crazy idea, they could stop glorifying suicide and pushing pornography to everyone.

The reason Zuck and the other Axis powers haven’t built age verification into their platforms is it will reduce their profits (because they will serve fewer ads to kids), which will suppress their stock prices, and the job of a public company CEO is to increase the stock price. Period, full stop, end of strategic plan. So long as the negative impact to the stock price caused by the bad PR of teen suicide and depression is less than the positive impact of the incremental ad revenue obtained through unrestricted algorithmic manipulation of those teens, the rational, shareholder-driven thing to do is fight age-verification requirements.

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Flip the Script

If we want the platforms to make their products safe for children, we need to change the incentives — force them to bear the cost of their damage. Internalize the externalities, in economist-speak. There are three forces powerful enough to do this: the market, plaintiff lawyers, and the government. The market solution would be to let consumers decide if they want to be exploited and manipulated. And by consumers, I mean “teenagers.” One big shortcoming of this approach is that teenagers are idiots. I have proof here, as I’m raising two and used to be one. My job as their dad is to be their prefrontal cortex until it shows up. I told my son on a Thursday it was Thursday, and he disagreed.

The next approach is to let the platforms do whatever they want, but if they harm someone, let that person sue them for damages. This is how we police product safety in almost all contexts. Did your car’s air bag explode shrapnel into your neck? Sue Takata. Did talcum powder give you cancer? Sue J&J. Did your phone burn the skin off your leg? Sue Samsung. People don’t like plaintiff lawyers, but lawsuits are a big part of the reason that more products don’t give you cancer or scald you. Nobody can successfully sue social media platforms, however, because of a 28-year-old law, known as Section 230, which gives them blanket protection against litigation.

I’ve written about the need to limit Section 230 before, and whenever I do, a zombie apocalypse of free-speech absolutists is unleashed. The proposition remains unchanged, however: If social media platforms believe they’ve done everything reasonable to protect children from the dangers of their product, then let them prove it in court. Or, better yet, let the fear of tobacco/asbestos-shaped litigation gorging on their profits motivate them to age-gate their products.

Finally, the government can go after companies whose products harm consumers. The Federal Trade Commission has fined Meta $5 billion over privacy violations to no apparent effect. This was perfect, except it was missing a 0. For these firms, $5 billion is a nuisance, not a deterrent. There’s a bill in the Senate right now, the Kids Online Safety Act, which would give the FTC new authority to go after platforms which fail to build guardrails for kids. It’s not without risk — some right-wing groups are supporting it because they believe it can be used to suppress LGBT content or anything else the patriarchy deems undesirable.2 But I have more faith in Congress’s ability to refine a law than I do in the social platforms’ willingness to change without one.

Until we change the incentives and put the costs of these platforms where they belong, on the platforms themselves, they will not change. Legislators trying to design age-gating systems or craft detailed policies for platforms are playing a fool’s game. The social media companies can just shoot holes in every piece of legislation, fund endless lawsuits, and deploy their armies of lobbyists and faux heat shields (Lean In), all the while making their systems ever more addictive and exploitative.

Or maybe we have it wrong, and we should let our kids drink, drive, and join the military at 12. After slitting their wrists, survivors often get tattoos to cover the scars. Maybe teens should skip social media and just get tattoos.

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This essay was originally published in Scott Galloway’s No Mercy / No Malice newsletter. Subscribe here

Australia is correcting two of the most consequential blunders in the creation of the early global internet: the setting of the “age of internet adulthood” to 13, combined with the stipulation that companies have no responsibility at all to verify that anyone actually is 13. Both of these blunders were made in a single well-meaning law passed by the US Congress in 1998: The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, known as COPPA. (See here for the history of COPPA)

Congressman (now Senator) Ed Markey drafted the bill motivated by the problem that, in the early days of e-commerce, companies were taking data from children without their parents’ knowledge or consent. The question he sought to settle was: at what age is a child mature enough to be treated as an adult, able to sign Terms of Service agreements and give away personal and family data, without the knowledge or permission of their parents? Markey proposed that adolescents should not have to wait until age 18 to gain such status; he thought that 16 might be old enough to make wise personal decisions. In the initial bill, he specified that anyone under 16 was to be treated as a child, meaning that companies would have to obtain consent from a child’s parents in order to enter into a commercial relationship with that child if it involved collecting their personal data. 

The e-commerce companies were not happy about that, and lobbied heavily against the bill. In the negotiations, a compromise was reached that the age would be lowered to 13. The decision had nothing to do with adolescent brain development or maturity or safety; it was simply a political compromise.  Nonetheless, 13 became the de facto age of “internet adulthood” for the United States, which effectively made it the age of internet adulthood for the world. As Senator Markey later said, “It was too young and I knew it was too young then. It was the best I could do.” The final bill also absolved the companies of responsibility or liability, unless they had direct evidence that a child was under 13. Anyone who is old enough to lie and say that he or she is 13 can be exploited and manipulated in all the ways that the companies do to adults. 

Well, Australia is going to fix those mistakes, and in doing so it may provide a model for other countries. On November 21, the Australian Government introduced into parliament the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024, which will set a national minimum age for opening accounts on the major social media platforms. It mandates that the companies making money from our children bear the responsibility for enforcing the age minimum. Note that the bill would require companies to check age only once for each person, at the time of creating an account and agreeing to the Terms of Service. (Is it unreasonable for companies to check that the person signing a contract is old enough to sign a contract?)

To explain what Australia is doing and why, we are honored to bring you a post by Andrew Leigh, a member of the Australian Parliament, where he also serves as the Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities, Treasury and Employment. Leigh is perfectly placed to interpret the law for us because he is also an academic. He earned a Ph.D. in public policy from Harvard and was a professor of economics at the Australian National University before his election to Parliament in 2010. He understands academic research and has published a lot of it. 

Reading Andrew’s essay makes me think about what the world would be like today if America had not made those two blunders. Imagine if the US Congress had insisted that the companies profiting from the early internet had to make some provisions to protect children from exploitation. It might have slowed down the development of e-commerce by a bit, but if the internet had been designed from the start with a recognition that children would always be a large portion of the user base, it would have prevented or at least dampened the explosion of online harms to children that were yet to come (such as those from Snap, TikTok, and Meta). 

The U.S. Congress seems to be having difficulties taking even modest steps to protect American children. The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) reflects years of cooperation between Republicans and Democrats. It passed the Senate by a vote of 91 to 3. Yet Meta and other tech companies may be able to kill it in the House of Representatives by spending enormous sums on lobbying, even larger sums on investments in the home states of the House Leadership, and by making a different set of specious arguments to the left and to the right. If Congress can’t pass a bipartisan bill like KOSA, it will suggest that Congress may never do anything to protect children online. We urge all Americans to call, email, or write a letter to their representatives and urge them to demand that KOSA be put up for a vote before the holiday recess. 

We applaud Australia for stepping up and doing the right thing. 

— Jon

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Why Australia is Setting a Minimum Age of 16 for Creating Social Media Accounts

Last week, the Australian Government introduced legislation into parliament to set a minimum age of 16 for young people to open accounts on social media platforms. Social media is doing social harm. Our government’s goal is to ensure that young Australians are not being exploited by harmful and deceptive business practices, and ensure that young people can spend more time enjoying real-world experiences and hanging out with friends without the addictive pull of social media. In this essay I explain why we are acting and what we are doing.

In Australia, the worsening of youth mental health has paralleled the drop in many other Western nations. Inspired by Jonathan Haidt’s book The Anxious Generation, health researcher Steve Robson and I analyzed Australian data on trends in mental disorders, self-harm hospitalisations, and suicide deaths from 2007-2010 (when smartphones and social media emerged) until 2019-2022 (the most recent data available).1 

Over the period from 2007-2010 to 2019-2022, the mental wellbeing of young Australians became worse. Much worse. The share of young people reporting a mental disorder rose by 40 per cent for males and 60 per cent for females. Self-harm hospitalizations rose 15 per cent for males and 43 per cent for females. Suicide deaths rose 23 per cent for males and 70 per cent for females. 

The Evidence of Harm

Why do we think that the mass adoption of smartphones and social media is partly to blame for these shocking statistics? A few pieces of Australian evidence point in a similar direction to the data from other nations (particularly the United States) compiled by Haidt and Rausch. In long-running population-wide surveys, it is clear that the drop in mental wellbeing is much larger for young people than for middle aged adults, making it unlikely that we are simply capturing broad economic or social conditions. 

Another piece of evidence is that in Australian observational data, there is a clear dose-response relationship between mental ill-health and usage of social media, with heavy users reporting lower levels of mental wellbeing. Furthermore, when Australian teenagers are asked why they believe mental health problems have worsened, their top answer is “social media,” ranking it above concerns such as “work or study pressure,” “bullying,” or “political, social, and environmental issues.” 

To this, we can add the evidence that comes from natural experiments and randomized trials in other countries. One natural experiment, for example, found that as Facebook rolled out across US university campuses, mental wellbeing among students declined. In randomized trials, akin to the approach used to test new pharmaceuticals, people who forgo social media tend to experience improvement in their levels of anxiety and depression.2 

Acute and Specific Harms of Social Media

While the deterioration of youth mental health has been a key factor in the minds of policymakers, other acute and specific harms experienced by Australians have also surfaced. In 2023, Mac Holdsworth, a Melbourne teenager with dreams of becoming a carpenter, was targeted in a sextortion scheme. He was deceived into sending an explicit photo of himself and then blackmailed through his Snapchat and Instagram accounts. He took his own life on October 24, 2023. 

A year later, Mac’s father, Wayne Holdsworth, launched Unplug24, an initiative calling for a nationwide day of social media silence on October 24, 2024, the anniversary of his son’s death. The Holdsworth family intends to make Unplug24 an annual event. 

Young Australians report online harms at alarmingly high rates. According to research by the office of the eSafety Commissioner, the average Australian child encounters online pornography for the first time at age 13. Young people described unintentional encounters with online pornography (which often includes sexual violence) as frequent, unavoidable and unwelcome.  

Another survey by the office of the eSafety Commissioner asked young people in 2020 about their experiences online in the previous six months. According to the report, forty-four percent of teens experienced at least one negative online incident, including being contacted by a stranger (30 percent), receiving inappropriate content (20 percent), being deliberately excluded from social groups (16 percent), or facing online threats or abuse (15 percent). 

Evidence of benefits from the reduction of smartphones and social media is most clearly seen in Australian schools that have banned smartphones. Anecdotally, smartphone bans have been welcomed by educators, parents and students. At one of the earliest schools to adopt a phone ban, the principal told the media ‘I hadn’t anticipated the level of noise’, noting that ‘There was laughter, people were actually interacting and socialising.’ A year on from the smartphone ban taking effect in New South Wales, Australia’s largest state, a survey of public school principals found that 95 percent supported it.

Yet banning phones in school is not enough—the effect of social media on the lives of young people goes well beyond the thirty or so hours each week that they spend in school. 

In a recent speech, Communications Minister Michelle Rowland pointed to findings from the eSafety Commissioner’s Social Media Pulse Survey. That survey reveals that 84 percent of 8 to 12-year-olds have used at least one social media or messaging service, with 75 per cent accessing traditional social media platforms. Among 9-year-olds who used social media or messaging services, over a quarter had their own account or profile. Additionally, only 13 percent of 8 to 12-year-olds with an account reported having it shut down due to being underage. 

Social media platforms’ lax approach to underage users contrasts with their vigorous enforcement of copyright laws. Upload a copyrighted video, and you can expect it to be removed within minutes. Clearly, social media companies have the skills and tools to regulate who and what is allowed to be on their platforms. But the proliferation of underage users suggests that platforms are devoting little attention to enforcing their own age minimum.

Public Support Builds for a Social Media Age Minimum

A growing international movement is pushing for stronger action to reign in the social media giants. Parents don't just want better parental controls. They want a legislated minimum age for opening social media accounts and becoming customers of these companies. They want appropriate enforcement of age rules by platforms. In August 2024, a survey found that 61 percent of Australians supported banning the use of social media platforms for Australians younger than 17. Sixty-one percent of respondents also felt that social media had made their life worse.

State premiers have helped advance the conversation about limiting young people’s use of social media. In October 2024, the state governments of New South Wales and South Australia partnered to deliver a first of its kind, two-day, two-state summit focused on exploring and addressing the impacts of social media. The summit convened experts, policymakers, academics, young people, and community representatives to explore the impacts of social media.

Alongside the public summit, the Australian Government was consulting extensively with young people, parents, carers, academics, child development experts, community leaders, industry representatives, civil organizations, First Nations youth, and state and territory governments.

Governments Reach Consensus on Age 16

On 8 November 2024, the Australian Government convened National Cabinet, a body comprising federal, state and territory governments, to discuss the issue of setting a minimum age for social media access. All jurisdictions agreed with the policy, and all but one (Tasmania) agreed that the minimum age should be set at 16. While the Tasmanian Government would have preferred a minimum age of 14, it agreed to support the age minimum of 16 to maintain national consistency.

Legislation to implement this reform has now been introduced into parliament. It places responsibility on social media platforms, rather than on parents or young people, to take reasonable steps to ensure essential protections are in place. If they fail to comply, digital platforms face fines of up to A$49.5 million for systemic breaches.

Just as banning mobile phones in school has helped students become more focused in the classroom and more active during playtime, limiting access to social media will extend these positive outcomes beyond school grounds.

There will be a lead time of at least 12 months after the passage of the legislation to enable industry, governments, and the eSafety Commissioner to establish the necessary systems and processes. To prevent a rush to sign up for accounts, there will not be any ‘grandfathering’ of existing accounts. The age minimum will apply to all young Australians across all defined social media platforms. Punishments for breaches will apply to platforms, not users.

The worst effects of social media have been associated with user accounts. So the Australian age restrictions will apply to opening a social media account. The legislation will not regulate viewing social media platforms in a ‘logged out’ state. 

The Bill creates a new definition of ‘age-restricted social media platforms’. This will include Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, and X, among others. Certain classes of services will be carved out. In the first instance, the legislation will not apply to messaging apps (which do not have the same risks such as infinite scrolling among content chosen by algorithm), online games (which are regulated under Australia’s National Classification Scheme), and services that primarily function to support the health and education of users (such as Headspace, Kids Helpline, and Google Classroom). The legislation contains flexibility to deal with evolving technology and emerging harms. 

An age assurance trial will inform the technological approach to implementing the new restriction. This transition period will also be used to develop clear guidance for parents, carers, and children ahead of the changes. 

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From Legislation to Implementation

Australia’s legislation is a world first. So it’s no surprise that questions have been raised about the effectiveness of age assurance technologies. This will indeed be a challenge, but it is one for which the industry already has the tools. There are dozens of companies currently offering a great variety of age assurance methods. If Australia and other countries require the platforms to enforce minimum ages, the industry will improve the current set of choices rapidly.

Some critics of Australia’s approach have suggested that if it can’t be foolproof, we shouldn’t do it. This is wrong for two reasons. 

First, law reform is replete with examples in which some people seek to circumvent limits. Underage teens drink alcohol. Drivers run red lights. Taxpayers overclaim deductions. Employers underpay workers. Pedestrians jaywalk. People litter. The fact that a law will be tested is not in itself a reason against legislating.

Second, while some children may still find ways to bypass the restrictions, an age minimum for social media has value in establishing a strong societal standard. The age minimum will serve as an important reference point, empowering parents to have meaningful conversations with their children about appropriate online behaviour and setting clear boundaries.

Australia’s social media age minimum will reduce the online harms that are affecting young people. Like phone-free schools, keeping social media out of the lives of under-sixteens will help reduce cyberbullying and online exploitation, and it will improve mental wellbeing. It will encourage more young Australians to step out of the cycle of social media addiction and experience the many joys and opportunities of the physical world and face-to-face communication. And it will stop social media companies from continuing to use predatory business practices to take advantage of vulnerable young people. Australians pride ourselves on our beaches and parks, our love of playing sports and socializing with friends. Less doom-scrolling means more chances to spend our precious hours relishing the remarkable world around us. 

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Katherine Martinko is one of the most thoughtful voices on navigating family life in the age of digital oversaturation. In an era of unregulated addictive social media, gaming, and other digital activities it can sometimes feel like there is little one can do as a parent to reduce the harms of the phone-based childhood. Katherine, however, shows that there is a lot that can be done to push back against the deluge of digital devices and help our children (and ourselves) even before new regulations are enacted or new collective norms are established. 

Katherine is the author of Childhood Unplugged: Practical Advice to Get Kids Off Screens and Find Balance (2023), with a foreword written by Lenore Skenazy. She also spent over a decade as a journalist at Treehugger. Katherine has been raising her three children (ages 9, 13, and 15) without smartphones, social media, or even television. She believes it is her responsibility to provide her children with memories of an independent, play-based childhood full of adventures and in-person social interactions. 

Zach and I enjoy her writing so much that we invited her to join us more formally on the Anxious Generation team as a speaker to schools and parent groups and writer here on After Babel. We’ve already published one of her essays: Modern Luddites: On Being a Digital Minimalist Family in a Tech-Saturated World. You can expect more from her in the coming months. Welcome, Katherine!

– Jon and Zach

This past summer, I was at my youngest son’s soccer practice, reading a lengthy email, when suddenly my son came sprinting out of nowhere. He tugged the phone out of my hands and tossed it onto the grass. “Mom, get off your phone!” he yelled. “Please watch me!” He was gone as quickly as he’d appeared.

His coach laughed, and I joined in, somewhat sheepishly. My son was right. The email could wait till we got home. What I needed to do at that moment was pay attention, not because I was particularly interested in soccer drills, but because it mattered to him, and it was our first time together that day. 

It wasn’t just about watching him. It was about being alert to his little bids for connection, the frequent times when he looked over to make eye contact or wave or smile at me. He wanted to know I was present, mentally as well as physically. He needed to know that he was more important than my phone. 

That day was a valuable reminder of what our children perceive when we, their parents and guardians, are on our phones in their presence—particularly when it becomes habitual, as it was for me. Phone use often feels justified to us adults. We are busy booking appointments, ordering food, texting grandparents, arranging play dates, tracking fitness goals, or earning much-needed money through a remote job. But a child does not understand that. All they see is the back of a phone, blocking their parent’s face.

This doesn’t mean a parent needs to be attentive to their child every minute of the day. That would be exhausting and unsustainable. Instead, the goal is to be fully engaged in the moments that matter most, and let go the rest of the time, letting the child play independently while the parent does whatever they need to do.

Now, many children are oversupervised, rarely afforded “the luxury of being unnoticed,” as novelist Mona Simpson put it. This can make it hard to tell which moments should “matter” when we’re constantly with our kids. Yet, if we give them space to play independently, they become remarkably adept at entertaining themselves, which is good for them and for us. By removing ourselves from the role of playmate or constant chaperone, our kids find things to do on their own, and we gain time and space for ourselves, which in turn makes it feel less onerous to be fully present when a meaningful moment arises, like my son’s soccer practice. 

When we give our children more independence while also putting our phones down more often, something powerful happens. Children learn that they are trusted, capable, and that there’s nothing more important to us than being present with them. In turn, they see that these devices are not all-important, making it less likely they’ll grow up believing that they, too, need that “magical thing” in their hands.

There are many small yet mighty ways that I have learned to fight back against the digital deluge. In this post, I offer seven tips that have helped me and I hope can help you reclaim your time, your peace of mind, your ability to engage in deep thought, and your sense of presence when engaging with a child. Best of all, you will teach your child that it is possible to have an interesting, meaningful life offline. You can try implementing just one of these tips or, if you feel compelled, all of them. Some may be more applicable to your life, while others are not or may be unrealistic. My hope is for them to feel accessible and doable and not at all overwhelming.

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What Parents Can Do

Tip 1. When spending time with a child, leave your phone elsewhere.

You can keep it in a bag, in another room, or in the car. Turn it off, silence it, or set it on focus or airplane mode, so that you have it in case of emergency. You might want to use a customized focus mode that allows calls and texts from certain people, while silencing all other notifications. You could even choose to leave the phone at home when you go out. It is an oddly nerve-wracking feeling, even though many of us did it for years before smartphones existed. I think it’s a good exercise to remind ourselves of how we used to function in the world, before we were so hyperconnected. 

The goal is to create distance between you and the phone so that you are not tempted to look at it as soon as you feel a flicker of boredom. You will also prove to your kid that it’s possible to move through the world without a device in hand. I like how doing this puts the parent on equal footing with a young child, who presumably does not have a phone, either. (If they do, have them leave it elsewhere, too.) Instead of the parent turning away from the child to lose themselves in a device, they are forced to turn toward the child, to lean into a shared moment that will inevitably blossom into something more.

Tip 2. Develop analog habits.

Reject the multipurpose tool that is the smartphone and replace it with things that minimize distraction and maximize interaction, such as cookbooks, pens and paper, calculators, alarm clocks, calendars, physical books, magazines, records, and more. Show your child how things are done in the real world. This is not a call to reject technology outright, but to be aware of when and how technology complicates things unnecessarily.

Tip 3. Embrace the concept of “techno-selectionism,” coined by Cal Newport.

This is the idea that innovations can significantly improve our lives, but that “we can build new things without having to accept every popular invention as inevitable.” In other words, we can test out new technologies and then reject them if they do not serve our interests. Not every technology advancement represents progress, particularly if it undermines certain life skills and your family values.

Tip 4. Implement a weekly digital fast.

Also known as a digital sabbath, this practice involves powering down all electronic devices in a household for a single 24-hour period each week. This creates time and space for offline activities, a slower pace of life, more family connectedness, and a normalization of that unplugged feeling. You can also do a lighter version of a digital sabbath, by choosing, for example, to not check email and social media one day a week (as Zach now does).

An extension of this is to restrict your own phone use to specific hours of the day, e.g., before kids wake up, after they go to bed, or during the workday when they’re at school and won’t see you using the device. If you must use your phone, explain to your child what it is that you’re doing. Try leaving your phone upstairs, downstairs, or in another room as a way of creating friction between the urge to scroll and access to the device. Within that small interval of space, you might choose to do something else.

Tip 5. Delete social media apps.

If you don’t have social media on your phone, you will be less inclined to check it compulsively throughout the day. You can still maintain a social media presence, but make a rule that you will only access your accounts from a computer. I did this with Facebook years ago, and it makes a huge difference. If you don’t want to go that far, keep the apps but turn off all notifications and badges.

Tip 6. Boring-ify your phone.

Some parents who don’t want to get rid of their smartphones altogether have opted to make their phones as unappealing as possible. They use a grayscale filter, scrap the fun background image, and change all apps to plain white boxes with a single capital letter to indicate what they are. 

Tip 7. Don’t roam when you travel.

Whenever I travel out of the country with my kids, I like to turn my phone on airplane mode for the entire trip and only use Wi-Fi. This helps me to be fully present and eliminates the temptation to look at my phone, apart from using downloaded Google Maps and the camera. In an emergency, I could turn my phone on (and incur a high cost, which acts as a disincentive). 

By making a conscious effort to cultivate healthy phone use habits, we set an example for our kids, who learn best by watching us. This may not feel easy or convenient, but it is important, if for no other reason than we want our kids to look back on their childhood someday and know, without a shadow of doubt, that their company was more precious to us than that of our phone. 

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For more from Jackie, explore her other posts on After Babel, where she reviews evidence behind phone bans in schools and, along with , offers research-backed advice on screen policies for young children. 

– Zach Rausch

Techno Sapiens

Psychologist and professor Jacqueline Nesi shares the latest research on technology and the people who use it, plus practical tips for living and parenting in the digital age.

By Jacqueline Nesi, PhD

I am a psychologist who studies the impact of technology use on kids. I’m also a mom to a three-year-old and one-year-old. And I live in the Northeastern U.S., where the end of Daylight Saving Time means the start of a cold, dark winter. 

These facts recently led me to a different kind of research question for my Substack, Techno Sapiens: how exactly is one supposed to entertain young children in the (dark, cold, neverending) hours between 4pm and bedtime? Well, I’m happy to report that I have now tackled this question with the rigor and intensity of an NIH-funded research project. I solicited initial data from my readers. I scoured the Internet, including Reddit threads like this one and this one.1 I did some pilot testing in my own home.2 And now, I’m ready to share the results with all of you.

My criteria for this list of activities were as follows:

• Appropriate for younger children. This list skews toward the toddler and preschool age range, but many activities would work with slightly older kids, too.

• Can be orchestrated by an average (tired) person. Many crafts were eliminated due to complexity, the need for advanced planning, or annoying-to-clean-up ingredients.3

• Do not involve screens. Let me be clear: there’s nothing inherently wrong with screens! In fact, those dark, cold, pre-bedtime hours, when we’re also trying to prep dinner, finish work, or just make it through the day, can be great for screen time. I, personally, spend most of my workdays staring at a laptop, so when I’m not working, I’m often looking to do something less screen-heavy with my kids. Hence this list.

Okay, let’s get to it!

Screen-free activities to get you through the winter

There is a lot here, so I recommend saving this post to revisit as needed. I’ve broken down the list into thematic categories because I couldn’t help myself.4

Activities to get outside

This was the primary suggestion I came across. No matter the weather, the darkness, the kids’ protests: just get outside. Some supplies to consider:

• Kid flashlights. I got these, and immediately implemented “no flashlights inside the house” and “no shining lights in people’s eyes” rules.

• Kid headlamps. Useful for scootering or biking. I got this one, which lights up in different colors. My kids lost their minds.

• Reflective or light-up gear. Learn from my experience, and avoid Amazon “reflective” vests that are actually just strips of gray fabric. Try these or these.

• Warm clothes. For yourself and your kids, as needed. If in a very cold location, consider hand and foot warmers.

Now, once you’ve got the gear, here are some outdoor activities to consider, obviously depending on the type of neighborhood or setting you live in: 

1. Go for a walk. You can make this more exciting by turning it into a scavenger hunt for things like holiday lights or certain trees or animals.

2. Bike or scooter. With his new flashlights in tow, my three-year-old also likes walking by himself and pushing his brother in the stroller.

3. Go to the park. Head to a local park, playground, open field, beach, empty parking lot, or other available space

4. Repurpose the garage. If you have a garage, clear it out and turn it into an “open gym” with toys, hula hoops, bikes, etc.

5. Use the patio. If you have a patio or deck, make sure it is secure and put some toys out there.5

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Activities that double as chores

The key is letting go of any expectation that these activities will actually be useful to you. For kitchen activities, it can help to have a standing tower or stool of some kind (we have this one).  

1. Cook dinner. Have your child “help” make dinner. Grab a plastic cutting board and cheap toddler knife, and give them something soft to chop (my kids love “chopping” fruit and cheese, mostly because they love eating giant mouthfuls of fruit and cheese).  

2. Dishes. Have them “wash dishes.” Stay away from glass.

3. Pack lunch. Pack their school lunches together.

4. Clean up. Scavenger hunt around the house to pick up laundry to put it in the basket, or trash to put in a bag.

5. Other chores. Involve them in other chores: vacuuming the car,6 wiping down counters, dusting, sweeping. 

Places to go (paid)

These will depend greatly on what’s available near you. If these are not accessible to you, due to location, budget, or otherwise, no fear! There are plenty of other, free options, too (see below). 

1. Zoos. Some may have evening holiday light shows!

2. Ice skating rinks. My only concern with this one is that my children will learn that ice hockey exists and ask to sign up for it one day.

3. Gymnastics. Check local gymnastics and other “kid gyms” for classes or open gym time. 

4. Swimming. YMCAs and other local recreation centers may offer lessons or open swim.

5. Museums and aquariums. We, unsurprisingly, love a good science museum.

6. Arts and crafts studios, including pottery painting and other crafting.

7. Bowling. Remember bowling?

8. Trampoline parks. Note: the American Academy of Pediatrics says these are dangerous—and based on injury rates, they’re probably right—so proceed with caution.

9. Indoor play places, i.e., those places with indoor play equipment and, usually, plastic balls covering the ground. My kids get sick every time we go, but sometimes I think it’s worth it?

10. Ropes courses and ziplines. There are both indoor and outdoor versions of these, and a surprising number of them out there.7 Better for older kids.

11. Escape rooms. Also better for older kids.

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Places to go (free)

One of my favorite winter or rainy day activities is to throw the kids in the car and take them on an “adventure” (i.e., to walk around somewhere I want to go).

1. Libraries and book stores. Combine with a cozy reading session when you get home.

2. Pet stores. Just prepare them beforehand that they will not be bringing anything home, no matter how cuddly.

3. Hardware stores. This is your periodic reminder that Home Depot offers free kids’ workshops on the first Saturday of each month.

4. Grocery stores. Put them in charge of picking out a few items on the list. Stay away from eggs.

5. Vintage stores. See also: thrift stores and other odds-and-ends stores.

6. Outdoor stores, like REI and Bass Pro Shops.

7. Malls (where they still exist).

8. Craft stores, like Michaels and JOANN.8

At-home activities (higher energy)

When you want to stay inside, but you also need your children to burn off some energy.

1. Build a fort. Create a fort or play area with couch cushions, blankets, pillows, etc. If you have an extra crib mattress or exercise mat, get these involved, too. Optional: a kids’ modular couch like The Nugget. 

2. Play hide and seek. A classic! Walkie talkies can be fun here, too.

3. Climbing equipment. If you have the space (and money), the Internet is full of cryptically-named wooden structures like the “Pikler Triangle” and “Swedish Ladder.”

4. Other play equipment. The Internet is also full of less cryptically-named plastic structures like mini slides (we have this one) and ball pits.9

5. A mini trampoline. Tell them you’ll count how many times they can jump and then let them loose. 

6. Bubble-wrap. Also a good surface for jumping.

7. A pop-up tent. Good for pretend campfires and sleepovers with stuffed animals.

8. Have a dance party! My toddler once saw a video of Irish step dancing and the rest is history. 

9. Create an obstacle course. Lots of at-home items will work for this: pillows or towels to jump over, tape on the floor as a “balance beam,” etc.

10. Dress up. Save those Halloween costumes! Lots of zombie pirates and, at the other end of the spectrum, pretend allergists at my house right now.

11. Basketball. Anything soft or round, combined with any vessel (laundry basket, trash bin, a corner of the room), works wonders.

12. Scavenger hunts. Go searching for items of a certain type in the house (e.g., anything red, things that start with the letter “c”)

13. PlasmaCars. My kids love these things. We do not have a lot of space, so my 3-year-old just does repeated fast laps around the house until he gets dizzy.

14. Baths (with toys). If your children are anything like mine, this counts as a “higher energy” activity.

15. Puppet shows. Repurpose those giant Amazon boxes! Cut a big hole in it to create a puppet theater. Socks, paper bags, and stuffed animals all make great puppets.

16. Balloon volleyball. Or, if your kids are Bluey fans, “keepy uppy.”

17. Rough-housing. I generally let my husband handle this one. Some of my kids’ favorites: “spins” (kids lie face-up on the ground, you spin them), “throws” (you throw them in the air), wrestling (I recently heard my son request a “single leg takedown”), tickling.

18. Cosmic Kids Yoga on YouTube. Yes, this is screen time, but it’s also fun and active!

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At-home activities (lower energy)

There may be no such thing as a “lower energy” activity with little kids, but here are some more sedentary options.

1. Art supplies. Gather some supplies, and let them go wild. A few useful items: Paper (construction paper and giant rolls or coloring posters), kid scissors, popsicle sticks, felt, pipe cleaners, pompoms, glue sticks, tape, washable paint, markers, crayons, colored pencils, and things to paint that are not paper (e.g., cardboard boxes, tubes, rocks, pinecones, etc.)

2. Easy crafts. A few craft ideas that feel doable:

   1. Paper planes (you can also make a target to throw them at)

   2. Popsicle stick “bookmarks”

   3. Postcards. Decorate them and send to family and friends!

   4. DIY Instruments (e.g., empty tissue boxes with rubber bands around them, jar with dried beans in it)

   5. Origami (good for slightly older kids)

   6. Friendship bracelets and beading (also good for older kids)

   7. Winter themed: pomander balls (i.e., oranges with cloves stuck in them), snow globes (jars filled with water and glitter/sequins)10

3. Clay-like things. I cannot believe how much my children love these. Options include: Kinetic sand, Play-Doh, Monkey foam, Floof (I promise you, I am not making up these names), Silly Putty (or its rebranded cousins, slime and “thinking putty”)

4. Games. Some good options for younger kids (all kid-approved in my house): First Orchard, Don’t Break the Ice, Hungry Hungry Hippos (or, as my 3-year-old calls it, “the one the baby can’t eat”), Kid charades (with pictures instead of words on cards for those who can’t read yet), Card games like Go Fish

5. Building toys. Magna-Tiles, DUPLO (for younger kids) or LEGO (for older kids), gear toys (my kids love these).

6. Bubbles! “Buh-buh” was one my one-year-old’s first words. We like these no-spill containers. If you want to go all out, consider a bubble machine. (Note: depending on how many bubbles you’re working with, you may want to bring this outside).

7. Baking. For young kids, I use this term generously. Aim for minimal ingredients and very little need for precision. I love any recipe that involves dipping and freezing (e.g., pretzels in chocolate, bananas in yogurt) or decorating. Sprinkles and candy eyeballs are always a hit.

8. Stickers. Go for reusable sticker books to avoid sticker residue all over your tables and floors. 

9. Rubber stamps. Also a residue risk here—make sure you get washable ink. I like this kit.

10. Puzzles. Flex the number and size of pieces depending on your child’s age and interest.

11. Playpen. Good for containing babies at the crawling/pre-walking stage while you get other stuff done, though my three-year-old also likes crawling in and out. We have this one.

12. Listen to music or stories. A Toniebox or Yoto Player gives kids control over what they listen to. Some kids like audiobooks and kids’ podcasts, too. Here’s a good list of podcasts for kids from Common Sense Media. 

13. Read. I’ve been told kids love Techno Sapiens. Alternatively, currently trending in our house: Mo Willems’ Elephant & Piggie series (for the 3-year-old), anything Sandra Boynton (for the one-year-old).  

There we have it! Like any research project, this one has limitations, so please send along any good winter activities I may have missed. 

And I’ll leave you with a final idea for managing the dark winter days, which topped the list of suggestions I received: put the kids to bed earlier.  

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When smartphones and social media platforms swept into teens' lives in the early 2010s, schools experienced their own digital revolution, with 1-to-1 laptops, tablets, and iPads becoming staples in classrooms across the Western world. (1-to-1 means one device for every student.) A decade later, the revolutionary optimism is fading. One OECD review found that most educational technology (EdTech) has not delivered the academic benefits once promised. Meanwhile, global test scores in math, science, and reading have been plummeting, as you can see in Figure 1 below. These trends were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, but they began in the early 2010s, just as digital devices were being placed on students’ desks. 

Global PISA Test Scores in Decline

Figure 1. Declines in math, reading, and science scores averaged across the 38 OECD countries. Image source: The Atlantic, from the OECD.

In The Anxious Generation, we advocated for phone-free schools. We made the case that locking up phones from bell-to-bell would improve student performance and focus, and the quality of students’ in-person relationships. (That seems to be happening, at lightning speed, and with very positive effects.) However, the impact of EdTech more broadly on student outcomes was unclear to us. Since publication, we've engaged with leading experts on the subject, and we are now publishing a series of posts to address questions that many educators, parents, and students are asking: Is EdTech actually better than traditional learning methods? When is it helpful, and when do the distraction effects overwhelm the pedagogical benefits? At what age (if any) should students start using iPads and Chromebooks in the classroom? And is the sudden proliferation of 1-to-1 devices partially responsible for the global decline in test scores over the last decade?

In the first post in our series, Everyschool co-founder Amy Tyson addressed five major myths about screens in school. In this post, neuroscientist and educator Jared Cooney Horvath goes further, arguing that the EdTech revolution has been a failure. He explains why schools across Europe and Southeast Asia are moving away from student-facing digital technology, favoring more traditional methods—and why American schools would benefit from considering a similar shift.

Jared is the author of six books and over 60 research articles. He currently serves as an honorary research fellow at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne and leads LME Global, a team dedicated to making the latest brain and behavioral research accessible to teachers, students, and parents. In December of last year, Jared reached out to Jon about a review article he was writing. Jon read an early draft of the article, found it to be powerful and well sourced, and invited Jared to consider publishing a shortened version of it here at After Babel. We hope you find it as thought provoking as we did.

— Jon and Zach

p.s. We are looking for a variety of perspectives on this important topic. We would especially value hearing from those who can make a strong case for the benefits of 1-to-1 digital tech in the classroom, ideally backed by research. If you can make such a case, let us know in the comments below and submit an essay to zach@anxiousgeneration.com.

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The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

by Jared Cooney Hovrath

In May of 2023, schools minister Lotta Edholm announced that Swedish classrooms would aim to significantly reduce student-facing digital technology and embrace more traditional practices like reading hardcopy books and taking handwritten notes. The announcement was met with disbelief among pundits and the wider international public: why would an entire country willingly forgo those digital technologies which are widely touted to be the future of education? 

In a recent survey, 92% of students worldwide reported having access to a computer at school. In New Zealand, 99% of schools are equipped with high-speed internet while in Australia the student-to-computer ratio has dipped below 1:1 (meaning there are more computers than students in school). In the U.S., government expenditure on EdTech products for public schools exceeds $30 billion annually.

With these numbers, you’d think EdTech had clearly demonstrated a strong beneficial impact on student learning.

Think again.

(In this article, I’m defining EdTech as any student-employed, internet-connected digital device; this includes computers, laptops, tablets, cell phones, and smart watches. I am not discussing or evaluating the use of digital devices by teachers.)

An OECD international review of the impact of computers in education reports:

“Students who use computers very frequently at school do a lot worse in most learning outcomes…And perhaps the most disappointing finding of the report is that technology is of little help in bridging the skills divide between advantaged and disadvantaged students.”

After reviewing 126 research studies exploring technology-based education interventions, the global research center J-PAL concluded:

“Initiatives that expand access to computers…do not improve K-12 grades and test scores. [Furthermore], online courses lower student academic achievement compared to in-person courses.”

A recent analysis investigating the impact of computers on reading performance among K-12 students across the U.S. concludes, “…even small daily amounts (30min) of use of digital devices in classrooms are negatively related to scores on a reading comprehension test.” A similar analysis of learning moderators within university settings concludes, “…expanding the use of…technology at the expense of other forms of instruction is likely to have detrimental effects on achievement.” Yet another set of analyses reported that investing in air conditioning has a more beneficial impact on student learning than investing in a laptop for every student (ES = 0.21 vs 0.16)

“But wait,” some readers might say: “if giving every student a laptop has an effect size of 0.16, then surely this means digital tools can improve learning!”

Let’s take a closer look at the data.

Situating the Data

Since the 1980s, a number of meta-analyses (and meta-syntheses pooling these analyses) have been conducted exploring the impact of digital technologies within varied fields of learning. What do the weighted mean effect sizes show?

• Math: ES = 0.33 (22 meta-analyses / 1060 Studies / 1464 effect sizes)1

• Literacy: ES = 0.25 (17 meta-analyses / 736 Studies / 1547 effect sizes)

• Sciences: ES = 0.18 (6 meta-analyses / 391 Studies / 567 effect sizes)

• Writing Quality: ES = 0.32 (6 meta-analyses / 75 Studies / 85 effect sizes)2

• Specific Learning Needs: ES = 0.61 (10 meta-analyses / 216 Studies / 275 effect sizes)3

At first blush, this looks very promising: seeing as each effect size is larger than zero, surely this means EdTech is working, right?

Not quite.

In 2023, educational statistician John Hattie released Visible Learning: The Sequel. In this major work, he analyzes over 2,100 educational meta-analyses exploring 357 different moderators affecting learning within the typical classroom. What he found was equal parts surprising and predictable: nearly everything has a positive impact on student learning. In fact, of the 357 included learning moderators, only 33 reported a negative effect size (this includes things like abuse, malnutrition, illness, and mental disorders). In other words, 91% of everything a teacher does can be said to improve learning.

Although this finding has doubtless been influenced by publication bias and the file-drawer problem, one additional practical explanation concerns engaged time-on-task. Students spending any amount of time explicitly focused on learning novel material would be expected to demonstrate improvement compared to students spending no time focused on learning novel material, regardless of the specific tool or technique employed. 

Seeing as nearly every strategy serves to increase engaged time-on-task (this includes employing air conditioning during hot days), then comparing the impact of digital technologies to ‘zero’ makes little sense. So, when considering effect sizes within education, what is a reasonable baseline? Acknowledging that this is a tricky metric within social science, yet remains the strongest representation of quantified impact we possess within education, what effect size would constitute ‘meaningful’ improvement?

Data suggests that in order for students to maintain a 50th percentile rank nationwide, they must improve an average of 0.42 standard deviations per year (calculated using standardized reading and math data across K-12); anything below this will likely lead to declining rank and vice versa. A similar analysis places this value at 0.46, suggesting an effect size of around 0.44 would be a reasonable educational baseline. As a secondary estimate, when the effect size from all 357 moderators noted above are pooled, Hattie reports the average value sits at a less conservative effect size of 0.4. In fact, he calls this a ‘hinge-point’ and recommends that only those tools and/or strategies with values above this level can be seen to ‘work best’ and should be considered for mass inclusion across education, as those have the greatest chance to deliver the greatest impact to the greatest number of students.

Using the less conservative baseline of 0.4, the aforementioned meta-analyses look much weaker. In fact, the only realm within which digital tools seem to be meaningfully beneficial is in the realm of specific learning needs (a topic we will discuss later in this piece). Use of these tools outside of this context may well be driving learning; unfortunately, that learning will be slower, less robust, and likely lead to a drop in rank compared to other, more powerful, non-digital methods.

The fact that dozens of meta-analyses comprising thousands of calculated effect sizes has done little to quell excitement over digital technology in education suggests that we may be dealing less with an issue of evidence and more with an issue of wishful thinking. So let’s step back from the data and explore why it is that digital technology in students’ hands may be doing more harm than good.

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Multitasking Is Really Bad for Learning

To understand the primary reason why digital devices make learning so difficult, we need to take a quick cognitive tangent. Rest assured, we will return to EdTech and tie this together shortly.

A commonly used phrase amongst educational researchers is, “Attention is the gateway to learning.”

Perhaps the best way to conceive of human ‘attention’ is as a filter. Much like 3-D glasses, which only allow certain wavelengths of light to reach the retinas, attention only allows relevant information to pass into conscious awareness; irrelevant information is blocked out.

What, then, determines if a particular bit of information is relevant?

Much like board games, every task we undertake comes with its own unique set of rules that dictate what actions are required for success. For instance, to successfully read these words, your ‘reading ruleset’ dictates you must move your eyes from left to right, hold each word in memory until the end of each sentence, use your fingers to scroll, etc.

Whenever we engage with a task, the relevant ruleset must be loaded into a small area of the brain called the Lateral Prefrontal Cortex (LatPFC). Whatever ruleset is being held within this part of the brain will ultimately determine what the attentional filter deems relevant or irrelevant.

Here's the problem: the LatPFC can only hold onto one ruleset at a time.

This means anytime we attempt to consciously undertake two tasks simultaneously, the brain simply cannot handle this; the best it can do is quickly jump back-and-forth between tasks, swapping out the ruleset within the LatPFC each time.

This jumping between tasks incurs three significant costs.

Time: It takes the brain about 0.15 seconds to swap out a ruleset, during which time all external information stops being consciously processed and learning slows considerably (this process is called task-switching cost).

Accuracy: Whenever we jump between tasks, there is a brief period of time when the two rulesets conflict and general performance suffers (this process is called cross-talk dual-task interference).

Memory: Memories are typically processed by a part of the brain called the hippocampus. However, when jumping between tasks, memories are more often processed by the striatum (an area of the brain linked to reflexive processes), ultimately leading to the formation of subconscious memories which are difficult to access and utilize in the future.

In sum, multitasking is among the worst things that students can do for learning and memory. When we multitask, we go slower, our accuracy drops, and our learning decreases significantly.

Why does any of this matter?

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What is the Primary Function?

The primary function of any tool can be thought of as the main task or job said tool is believed to perform: or, as I often consider it, it’s the manner in which 80% of people spend 80% of their time employing said tool. 

Consider a hammer. There are many uses for a hammer: door stop, bottle opener, back scratcher, screw driver. etc. However, 80% of people spend 80% of their time using this tool to hit things – as such, if I were to hand you a hammer, you would begin looking for something to hit.

What is the primary function of a computer? When students sit down in front of a screen, what is the fundamental behavior that immediately jumps to mind?

A pre-Covid survey exploring how US students aged 8-18 utilize digital technologies both inside and outside of school provides the answer (values below are per week):

• 10 hours 44 minutes playing video games

• 10 hours 2 minutes watching television or film clips

• 8 hours 14 minutes scrolling social media

• 7 hours 32 minutes listening to music

• 3 hours 25 minutes doing homework 

• 2 hours 5 minutes doing schoolwork 

• 1 hour 14 minutes reading for pleasure

• 52.5 minutes creating digital content

• 14 minutes writing for pleasure

If we extrapolate and consider a typical U.S. academic school year of 36 weeks, these numbers suggest that students spend 198 hours annually using digital devices for learning purposes, and 2,028 hours annually using those same exact tools to jump around between scatter-shot media content. 

Do you see the issue?

Seeing as the great majority of students spend over 80% of their digital device time using these tools to multitask, the automatic response for a great majority of students using these tools has become multitasking.. Unfortunately, when we attempt to employ digital devices for learning purposes, this primary function quickly bleeds into student behavior. 

This is why, when using a computer for homework, students typically last fewer than 6 minutes before accessing social media, messaging friends, and engaging with other digital distractions. This is why, when using a laptop during class, students typically spend 38 minutes of every hour off-task. This is why, when getting paid as part of a research study to focus on a 20-minute computerized lesson, nearly 40% of students were unable to stop themselves from multitasking. It’s not that the students of today have abnormally weak constitutions; it’s that they have spent thousands of hours training themselves to use digital devices in a manner guaranteed to impair learning and performance. It’s also that many of the apps being run on those devices were carefully engineered to pull young people away from whatever they were doing.

Perhaps we can draw an analogy: imagine I sat a group of people around a jug of beer and asked them to use that beer to learn about buoyancy. This tool (beer) is perfectly suited to the task, and if the group of people were non-drinkers, I would expect no problem achieving my learning goals. However, if the group of people were alcoholics - individuals who had spent thousands of hours training themselves to use beer in a manner that does not concern buoyancy - then the tool would most likely hinder my learning goals.

And perhaps this is the key point: I’m not saying that digital technologies can’t be used for learning; in fact, if these tools were only ever employed for learning purposes, then they may have proven some of the most important academic inventions ever. The argument I’m making is that digital technologies so often aren’t used for learning that giving students a laptop, tablet, or other multi-function device places a large (and unnecessary) obstacle between the student and the desired outcome. In order to effectively learn while using an unlocked, internet-connected multi-function digital device, students must expend a great deal of cognitive effort battling impulses that they’ve spent years honing - a battle they lose more often than not. (of course schools do often try to implement blockers and restrictions, but this opens up an eternal cat-and-mouse struggle, and the mice are very good at finding ways to evade the cat.)  

To be fair, even before digital devices took over the classroom, students struggled with lack of attention, shallow thinking, overconfidence, and other learning problems. However, with digital devices, the frequency of these problems increases. Many schools were already struggling with issues of engagement, so we need to consider what additional harms may have occurred in the early 2010s when so many schools adopted tools that can be described as distraction machines. 

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The Three Excuses

Seeing as enthusiasts can’t lean on empirical data to support the adoption of student facing, internet connected digital devices across education, they frequently turn to three seemingly compelling arguments to excuse the lack of clear evidence of effectiveness. When placed in context, however, these arguments lose a lot of their exculpatory power.

Excuse #1: Digital devices have so much potential (or “Tech is the future…”).

It’s easy to get swept up in the promise of computers in education. Returning to the J-PAL review quoted earlier, after concluding that computers do not benefit learning, this group goes on to state:

“Computer assisted learning shows considerable promise…against this backdrop, promising uses of education technology have the potential to support massive inroads in learning.”

Potential is what something could be, what it should be, and what we hope it will be – not what it actually is. This means that arguments from potential do not accurately reflect reality; rather, they reflect the faith, belief, and desires of the speaker. In fact, when people say that computers have the potential to drive student learning, they are tacitly acknowledging that these tools are not currently achieving this aim.

I am not arguing against having hope for EdTech; there is a good chance that somebody will someday create a program that outshines even the best teachers in the world. I am simply pointing out that this has not yet happened, and that promissory arguments are not a solid enough foundation upon which to change educational practice at  mass scale.

Excuse #2: Digital devices are ubiquitous (or “They ain’t goin’ nowhere…”)

Health insurance. Taxes. Video games. Dating, marriage, and divorce. Mortgages. Laundry. Student loans. Litigation. Self-defense. First aid. Pet care. Superannuation. Yoga.

I mention these things to highlight that just because something is ubiquitous does not mean it needs to be explicitly taught in school. Teachers have long recognized that they are not alone in the journey of education, and that many essential concepts are meant to be passed along by parents, peers, society, and life experience.

With that said, an argument could be made that schools should be teaching these ubiquitous subjects; that it’s the responsibility of education to ensure all students are well versed in those things they are certain to encounter in their adult lives. 

I think this argument has some merit.

However, to argue that a topic should be taught is far different than arguing that all things should be taught through that topic. The former is an argument about curriculum; the latter is an argument about pedagogy. For instance, you might believe we should teach table manners to students (curriculum), but that’s different than arguing we should teach all classes in a dining room over dinner (pedagogy).  Determining what to teach and how to teach are two very different considerations.

Here is where the excuse from ubiquity goes awry. Through some linguistic alchemy, the argument “we should teach computer skills” has morphed into “we should teach all skills through a computer.” Teachers around the world are being asked by developers, politicians, and their own principals to adopt digital technologies within their classroom, even if these tools aren’t well suited to the learning goals these teachers desire.

Although teaching computer processes, coding skills, and digital etiquette are worthwhile goals (curriculum), it does not follow that we must reconfigure all academic subjects to achieve this goal. When it comes to effective teaching and learning (pedagogy), we should select the tool best suited to the job; not the tool that is most prevalent. Just as power tools are confined to the woodshop and Bunsen burners are confined to the science lab, perhaps student-facing digital devices should be confined to a dedicated computer lab within school; they should not be freely available whenever and wherever. Or perhaps devices should be disconnected from the internet and/or locked using an LMS system that only allows for specific programs to be employed.  Employing mediated devices or a singular location may ensure that teachers choosing to employ tech have a clear reason for doing so, and students choosing to employ tech have oversight and less opportunity for detrimental multitasking.

Excuse #3: Schools are using digital devices incorrectly (or “It’s all your fault…”)

As referenced earlier, following a three-year analysis of hundreds of thousands of data points and concluding that computers significantly reduce learning, the OECD report went on to state:

“One interpretation of all this is that building deep, conceptual understanding and higher-order thinking requires intensive teacher-student interaction…Another interpretation is that we have not yet become good enough at the kind of pedagogies that make the most of technology.”

In the interest of digging deeper, let’s give this excuse the benefit of the doubt. If computers are in fact being used incorrectly in schools, then what is the correct way to use them? As the OECD report states:

“[Digital technology] is linked to better student performance…when computer software and internet connections help to increase study time and practice.”

In case you missed it, let me rephrase that: learning improves when students spend more time learning. 

This revelation is not unique to computers. Flashcards, workbooks, an empty milk jug, my great aunt Justine… as the work of John Hattie mentioned above reveals, when used to increase study time and practice, literally any tool will improve student performance. The relevant question is whether or not computers and tablets actually do lead to increased learning time. Unfortunately, as we’ve already established, the answer to this seems to be ‘no,’ they are at least as likely to increase time spent on video games, video watching, social media, and listening to music.

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When Does EdTech Bring Benefits?

While I am generally critical of the way that EdTech has been put into the hands of students, I do see two ways in which digital technologies can be extremely helpful for teachers and for students. The first concerns teaching. When digital tools are used and controlled by a well-trained teacher to drive pedagogy, then any problems of multitasking and distraction that occur due to student-facing digital technologies can be averted.

However, simply asking teachers to employ computers in their teaching will not, in itself, boost learning. It is essential that teachers continue to select the strongest pedagogical techniques, regardless of whichever tool they choose to employ. For instance, employing PowerPoint slides during a didactic lesson has sometimes been found to impair the amount of verbal information students retain. Again, this is not due to the tool itself; rather, it is determined by the way in which teachers choose to use this tool.

In the words of the great media scholar Neil Postman, “I do not say that [digital technologies], when used properly by a skilled teacher, will not help [learning], but I doubt that it can do better than pencil and paper, or speech itself, when used properly by a skilled teacher.” In other words, digital tools do not obviate the need for sound pedagogy; and sound pedagogy will rarely be dependent upon digital tools.

The second instance where EdTech may be helpful concerns issues of learning abatement. For instance, if learning is abated due to school closures necessitated by environmental disasters (e.g. poor air quality from fires), sociological upheavals (e.g. violent political protests), or health risks (e.g. local epidemics or global pandemics), then it’s worthwhile to employ digital technology as a solution.

With that said, issues of digital distraction, diminished impact, and socioeconomic divide persist or increase during these forms of digital-based distance education. In fact, in a recent survey, 95% of students admit to media multitasking during distance learning,  with 15% admitting going off-task over 30 times per session.

As another example, if learning is abated due deafness, blindness, orthopedic, or other forms of specific learning disabilities that preclude students from engaging with non-digital learning materials, then it’s worthwhile to employ digital technology as a solution.

In the end, if there is no other avenue or option for engaging with learning material besides digital technology, then we are well justified in employing it. However, if there are two or more options for engaging with learning material, then it is best to select the tool that will yield the best results. As we’ve seen, that tool will rarely be digital in nature.

In Conclusion…

Enough.

As mentioned above, we are seeing a shift away from digital reliance in schools across many european and southeast asian countries, not just Sweden. I urge readers to take these shifts seriously and look closely at emerging data in schools that reduce their use of EdTech. If the educational and cognitive research that I have discussed is accurate, then we should see not only improvements in student learning, but also improvements in student relationships, mental health, and physical wellbeing.  

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When I moved from a psychology department (at the University of Virginia) to a business school (at NYU-Stern) in 2011, it felt like moving to another country, with different norms and values, and with a somewhat different language. One of the most common phrases I heard was “creating value.” It took me a while to realize that this was not just some business buzzword; it was the fundamental mission or “telos” of business, akin to “finding truth” in most other parts of the university. Two centuries of entrepreneurs “creating value” is what drives those graphs showing that human prosperity stagnated for thousands of years before suddenly shooting upward in the early 19th century. It is what has driven down global levels of extreme poverty into single digits, for the first time in human history. 

I quickly came to appreciate the way that entrepreneurs think. They’re forever scanning the world looking for holes, unmet needs, missing products and services. Successful entrepreneurs are the first people who can see what the world needs and then mobilize people, resources, and capital to meet those needs. 

Jess Butcher is a role model for young entrepreneurs. She has founded two successful tech companies and invested in many others. She blogs about a range of societal trends from modern feminism to tech-addiction and societal polarization She currently serves on the board of the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission (the government regulator for the UK Equality Act) and has been recognized on Fortune magazine’s list of Most Powerful Female Entrepreneurs.

I first connected with Jess when she reached out to me about my work on The Coddling of the American Mind in 2021. I finally got to meet her when I was in London in April. We had a quintessentially English breakfast while sharing concerns about what was happening to children (she has three young ones), and what needs to be done to change childhood on a mass scale (that is, to undo the mass-scale change that happened in the last 12 years… driven by other entrepreneurs). Jess amazed me with her projects, which include an IRL Pledge community for innovators and individuals and a book written with her son, for pre-teens about the risks of too much screen time and smartphones (tentatively titled ‘How to Avoid the Zombie Apocalypse). She also amazed me with her vision: she has also been thinking about what the world needs in order to roll back the phone based childhood. If tens of millions of parents around the world are not happy with the tech that their children are using, then there is a huge unmet need that entrepreneurs can address. If tens of millions of parents around the world agree that they should give their teens more independence, yet there is no place for the kids to go, then there is a huge need which entrepreneurs can address. 

Some already are. Jess showed me a video about The Den — a for-profit company in the UK that offers teens a safe and interesting place to hang out, with minimal adult supervision. She’ll say more about it below. We clearly need something like this in the U.S.. At the end of the breakfast I realized that we need to bring entrepreneurs into the movement, so I invited Jess to write a post for After Babel. 

Millions of parents around the world are joining the mission to roll back the phone-based childhood. So are teachers, school administrators, legislators, and many members of Gen Z. Everyone’s efforts will be multiplied if we join forces with entrepreneurs who bring the power and scale of business to help us solve our collective action problems. 

— Jon

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When entrepreneurs hear about problems, they see opportunities. This is what I love about the entrepreneurial sectors I’ve spent my career in—the optimism, energy, problem-solving, and value-creation that abound. At the other end of the business spectrum, corporations are increasingly recognizing their societal responsibilities (CSR) and embracing sustainability and social purpose (albeit with ideological tripwires everywhere). 

Given the huge challenges described in The Anxious Generation—the multi-national youth mental health crisis, a generation of kids deprived of real-world independence, and an oversaturation of screens and personal devices—we need both this creative optimism and corporate conscience channeled towards solutions.  

My goal in this essay is to encourage entrepreneurs—both social and for-profit—to see this challenge as a meaningful market opportunity. Millions of parents around the world are mobilizing and clamoring for solutions as their concerns for their children grow. They’re increasingly recognizing the emptiness and negativity of their own digital habits, too. There is a nostalgic hunger in the air for less frenetic, polarized, and superficial times, which means that there's a market for in-real-life (‘IRL’) memory-making and businesses to be built around it. 

The two biggest entrepreneurial gaps are in developing IRL solutions to tackle norm #4 from The Anxious Generation––more independence, free play, and responsibility in the real world––and in creating safer technology tools for young people.  In other words, we need more places for young people to practice and enjoy independence, and we need better  technology that will let young people use their devices as tools (like a Swiss army knife), without getting exploited through those devices by companies that are trying to control and addict them. 

Let’s zoom in on some of the opportunities: 

Opportunity 1: IRL Solutions

To remind kids that the physical world is more meaningful and thrilling than the virtual one, we need to create more compelling spaces and opportunities that encourage independence.  Only with greater access to these spaces will cultural norms shift, prompting parents to give their children more independence.

Teens these days are sadly ‘non-grata’ in many public spaces. With downtown shopping areas and malls in decline across many Western nations, ‘teenism’ (my term) has emerged as a phenomenon. Teens are often unwelcome, barred from entering stores or shopping areas in groups, and left to mill around in dingy parks or communal street areas. Interestingly, McDonald’s has capitalized on this trend with a clever ad campaign in the UK that shows how it has become the teen meeting place of choice. But surely fast-food joints can’t be the only safe public spaces for teens? It certainly doesn’t bode well for their health if so.

Video. McDonald’s ‘Make it Yours’ teenager ad campaign.

There’s a huge opportunity for entrepreneurs to create and expand spaces and organized opportunities for IRL hangouts, entertainment, skills-building, and memory-making.  

There are ambitious commercial entrants to this market, such as ‘The Den’— a membership-based, phone-free youth club brand launching in the UK that aims to scale nationally and then internationally, given the right medium- to long-term investors. These beautifully designed venues for 13- to 18-year-olds feature event calendars, open spaces, DJ decks, cafe-areas, games, shuffleboards, and critically… limited supervision. 

Video. Enjoy The Den’s fabulous vision.

Fabrik, though targeted at adults, is another simple example in the U.S. of creating IRL community hangout spaces.

Grassroots sports, drama, and hobby clubs provide fantastic opportunities for IRL play, socializing, and skills-building. There’s no happier sight for me than standing on the sidelines of my 8-year-old daughters’ Saturday morning football match, while another 10 fiercely competitive games rage noisily on the surrounding pitches, with girls aged 6 to 18 cheering each other on and erupting in delight at every goal. (Interestingly, it’s usually the parents who bring the tone down). 

Unfortunately, many of these organized clubs are struggling. They lack funding, the ability to professionalize, and the resources to scale. They often scrape by on local sponsorship and volunteer support. The Scout and Girl Guide movements—which provide a strong antidote to phone-based childhood—have also seen declining membership over recent decades. Boy Scout membership in the U.S., for instance, has dropped from 4 million in the 1980s to around 1 million today. More needs to be done to reinvigorate these movements and promote their huge, increasing value in modern society. Their resurgence and greater availability will help parents to slacken their reins on children, restore trust, and renormalize unsupervised neighborhood play.   

The lack of provision for community spaces and association rests also with government cuts to community spending (at least in the UK). For example, youth club funding in the UK has been cut by £1 billion (70%) over the last 10 years. However, the investment world is also culpable. Longer-term, slower-growth bricks-and-mortar investments don’t attract the same scale of funding as shiny, tech solutions that promise 100x returns and attract angel and venture capital. While the decline of the high street (or main street) isn’t entirely due to investor short-termism or greed (Amazon and China share much of the blame), it’s certainly a factor. Brands that sink millions into social media advertising are also exacerbating the problem, contributing to the addictiveness and resulting anxiety these platforms fuel while filling the social media companies’ coffers

Corporations and global consumer brands could step in here, offering both employee volunteers and branded sponsorship to fuel successful community initiatives. Burberry, Lego and UBS have done this with the growing chain of Onside Youth Zones in the UK—a sophisticated charity model that harnesses local, public and private sector partnerships to provide valuable youth spaces in underserved communities. With corporate investment and support to professionalize operations, these success stories could be scaled significantly. We don’t necessarily need to wait for governments to dip into overstretched tax revenues. These initiatives would also directly alleviate many of the social inequalities that DEI initiatives have sought (with limited success) to address. 

With so many retail units currently vacant and community facilities—from churches to community centers—underutilized, not to mention the school grounds that lie vacant after hours, are there franchising or ‘pop-up’ opportunities to be exploited? Spaces for dances, musical performances, art collaborations, comedy, theater, or debates? Opportunities for young people to ‘do’—to get together, play, and learn during their free time—rather than wasting hours watching what online strangers ‘do’.  Perhaps partnerships could be established between property owners and companies, local associations or parent groups to repurpose such spaces for youth initiatives? 

An ‘IRL Pledge’ from corporations to better support the in-real-life lives of employees and their communities could combine financial sponsorship for local projects with employee volunteer commitments. This would drive the replication and expansion of successful programs. ‘Big Brothers, Big Sisters’ is yet another example, providing not only strong role models for disadvantaged children, but also fostering valuable social mixing across our ever-widening societal divides. 

But as we improve our real world solutions, we also need to innovate around technology and online solutions.  

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Opportunity 2: Healthier Tech Tools for the Young

Successful solutions will require a combination of hardware, software, product design, branding, and business-building expertise. Critically, these experts must not have a vested interest in recruiting young people into the ‘attention economy’ — a challenge in itself when Big Tech offers such deep incentives (free lunches and bean-bag filled offices) to attract the best of the best. 

The ‘opposition’ is powerful, with billions of dollars of attention economy revenue at risk from restricting social media access to the 95% of teens (40 million the U.S. alone) who currently have smartphones and spend an average of seven hours a day on social media platforms. The main stakeholders in the attention economy are some of the largest, most influential companies in the world, and they are investing millions in lobbying efforts to protect this revenue and their customer acquisition funnel.

But the plucky innovators persist. A growing selection of mobile technologies exists at the other end of the spectrum from the supercomputer ‘phones’—such as simple, non-internet-enabled phones (e.g. Nokia/ HMD), smartwatch trackers, and app blockers—but there are still too few options between these two. Restricting first phones to simple text/call devices, which are unfortunately labeled as ‘dumb’, risks being perceived as punishment to any tween or teen looking enviously at the smartphones in their peers’ hands. While the U.S. has seen the most innovation along the spectrum (with the welcome entry of companies like Light Phone, Gabb, Unpluq and Bark), much more is needed. (I maintain a list of  recommendations here)

Just as children develop rapidly with each year, we need a wider range of tech solutions that can adapt and evolve in healthy ways alongside them. These devices should gradually introduce useful “Swiss Army knife” functionalities—such as maps, payments, calendar-management, Wikipedia access and administrative support apps—while continuing to restrict open-access to the web, social-media, and fast-dopamine distractions for as long as possible, as young brains are maturing and wiring up.

While many big tech companies remain locked into ‘a race to the bottom of the brainstem,’ (as Tristan Harris points out,  in Chapter 10 of The Anxious Generation), some good work is being done. For example, Tristan Harris’s work with ‘The Center for Humane Technology’, the ‘Age Appropriate Design Code’ enacted in the UK in 2020, and increasing attention to raising the age of internet adulthood to 14 or 16, and then enforcing it (as several governments in Australia are now discussing). 

It’s all easier said than done. A phone with internet and data access—required for much of the ‘good’ Swiss-Army knife functionalities—is typically also a device with a browser, enabling access to infinite scroll applications, and there is little agreement as to where to draw the line. Maps? Yes. Payments? Yes. WhatsApp? Not sure. Even the addition of a front camera can be controversial in parenting discussion groups: disliked for the narcissistic ‘selfie’ culture it encourages, but valued for FaceTiming family members. Parental control functionalities would need to expand to include internet-wide age checks embedded within operating systems, applied across the entire web, not just to specific websites. (More modest device based verification methods are possible too.) Arguably, we should build ‘up’ from the simple text/call phones, allowing parents to opt into additional functionality carefully, rather than building ‘down’ from a smart device and requiring opt-outs from specific sites or services, which can feel like a game of whack-a-mole for even the most vigilant parents. 

I know of many exciting initiatives under development and would love to connect with all such innovators to bring together the best options as they come to market. 

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Calling All Corporations, Entrepreneurs, Philanthropists and Investors

While some of these ideas might fall more under philanthropy than ‘investment,’ their impact could be both swift and significant. Yes, some stakeholders might see dollar signs (or reputational advantage), but so what if their ideas and initiatives provide healthier alternatives or make our lives easier, less stressful, or more delightful? If entrepreneurs are prepared to put in the work and take the risks inherent in new ventures, or if corporations are willing to invest their CSR budgets and manpower in local initiatives, then they deserve to reap the rewards. 

Let’s create new community-focused models for entrepreneurship and find new, thoughtful entrepreneurs for the young to look up to.  Role models who inspire the young to invent and create, and build a better future. 

Come on, business community. Come on, innovators. Let’s get to work. Entrepreneurship is the starter motor of economic growth, and corporate scale is the engine that drives new behavioral habits and norms. Those new habits and norms can be pernicious, or they can be helpful. It’s up to us.

Our failing communities—and our young people—need us. 

Please reach out if you have scaleable ideas or solutions you’d like to share or for the potential to connect with like-minded problem-solvers and backers. I am hoping to  create a network of innovators and capital to further the fortunes of the most promising innovations. hello@irlpledge.com 

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Over the past few months, we’ve explored the first act of The Anxious Generation: The loss of community, with a series of essays that draw from Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone. In these posts, we’ve traced how the decline of local communities, beginning in the 1960s, has eroded social trust and deepened parental and family isolation. This isolation—or atomization—has made it harder for parents to feel like they can allow their children to play outside independently, while simultaneously making it more convenient to provide kids with personal digital devices for use at home.

While most of American society has become more atomized, there are exceptions: strongly-bound religious communities. Zach showed that kids who grow up in more religious and conservative families have been more insulated from the effects of this "phone-based childhood," in part due to the in-person bonds these communities offer. To explore this finding further, Seth Kaplan (author of Fragile Neighborhoods) has written a series of essays for us that have primarily been focused on the structures and support within orthodox Jewish communities. In this post, we turn our attention to Christian churches, exploring how congregations can foster collective action and build the robust social bonds and norms needed to counter the harms of a phone-driven childhood.

We are particularly pleased to engage with religious communities and leaders because Jon has long been writing about religion and religious experience, focusing on the community-building effects (because he is a devotee of the sociologist Emile Durkheim.) We wrote about the “spiritually degrading” effects of a phone-based life in Chapter 8 of The Anxious Generation, and Jon has been a guest on a variety of Christian podcasts. 

Today’s post is written by Pastor Darren Whitehead. Originally from Australia, Darren has lived in the United States for 26 years. In 2013, he founded Church of the City, now with several locations across Nashville. He earned his Masters in Ministry from Wesley Seminary and his Doctorate from Capital Seminary and Graduate School, with his dissertation focus on Millennials and the future of the Western church. Darren’s recent book The Digital Fast: Detox Your Mind and Reclaim What Matters Most was released this year. Darren lives with his wife, Brandy, and their three daughters in Franklin, Tennessee.   

– Zach and Jon

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I could never have imagined that what began as a local initiative to help our congregation take a break from the constant noise of digital devices would turn into a national movement. What started as a simple 28-Day Digital Fast at our local church—a focused effort to disconnect from screens and reconnect with God, family, and community—has spread to churches across the United States. The hunger for a deeper, more meaningful life in the digital age resonated far beyond our expectations. What was once a challenge for our local church has now sparked a nationwide conversation about the power of presence, and how intentional disconnection can lead to transformative spiritual renewal.

As the pastor of Church of the City, a ten-thousand-member church across multiple locations in Nashville, Tennessee, I witnessed firsthand how the oversaturation of digital technology was affecting our congregation. People were struggling to connect deeply with God, each other, and even themselves, as technology increasingly monopolized their attention. In response, we initiated a 28-Day Digital Fast—a church-wide effort to step away from screens and rediscover the richness of true presence.

This wasn’t just a temporary lifestyle adjustment; it was a concerted effort to address what social scientists call a collective action problem—where individuals struggle to change their behavior because of conflicting self-interests and societal pressures. But by coming together as a church, we were able to confront this challenge head-on, discovering the “joy of missing out” (JOMO) that replaced the “fear of missing out” (FOMO). What could have been a mere exercise in self-discipline turned into a shared transformative journey of spiritual renewal and collective freedom.

Understanding Collective Action Problems and the Role of Community

The concept of a collective action problem was first popularized by economist Mancur Olson in his seminal book, The Logic of Collective Action (1965). A collective action problem arises when individuals in a group struggle to act in their mutual interest because of conflicting incentives or the lack of a unifying body. In the case of digital consumption, most people recognize the negative consequences—anxiety, loneliness, and a decreased ability to focus—yet find it hard to disconnect because of the societal pull to stay plugged in. When one person decides to unplug, they fear being left out, losing touch, or becoming irrelevant. This creates a paradox: people continue to engage in digital behavior even when it’s harmful, simply because “everyone else is doing it.”

This is where our church community stepped in. A local church is uniquely equipped to tackle collective action problems because it offers a strong, values-driven framework that inspires unified action. We leveraged our shared beliefs, trust, and sense of purpose to create an environment where people could support one another, hold each other accountable, and celebrate small victories together. By engaging in the Digital Fast as a community, we collectively resisted the societal pressures of digital overuse and helped each other discover a healthier rhythm of life.

The 28-Day Digital Fast: A Roadmap to Spiritual Renewal

Tackling digital overuse required more than simply encouraging the congregation to put down their phones. We needed a comprehensive solution deeply rooted in spiritual practices. The 28-Day Digital Fast was designed not just to abstain from screens, but to reorient our attention and ultimately renew our relationship with God, each other, and our true selves.

The initiative kicked off with a sermon series I titled “The Price of Your Device,” where I laid out the spiritual and psychological impacts of digital distractions. Drawing from both scripture and research on technology’s effects on the brain, I emphasized that the fast was not about deprivation but an opportunity to “be still and know” (Psalm 46:10).

We structured the Digital Fast around four seven-day movements—Detach, Discover, Delight, and Determine—each designed to progressively reshape our relationship with technology:

• Week 1: Detach focused on “Making Your Smartphone Dumb.” We encouraged participants to remove “distraction” apps (social media, games, news, etc.) and keep only utility apps like phone and text. This initial phase was about creating space and regaining a sense of presence.

• Week 2: Discover challenged participants to explore what emerged in the absence of constant digital engagement. Many rediscovered hobbies, rekindled relationships, and engaged in deeper prayer and meditation.

• Week 3: Delight was about cultivating joy in the newfound space and time. We emphasized delighting in God’s creation, meaningful conversations, and activities that nourished the soul.

• Week 4: Determine focused on solidifying lasting changes. Participants were encouraged to decide which digital habits to reintroduce and which to leave behind, establishing a healthier digital rhythm that prioritized spiritual and relational growth.

From FOMO to JOMO: Redefining the Joy of Missing Out

One of the most profound shifts we experienced was moving from FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) to JOMO (Joy of Missing Out). FOMO, the anxiety that arises from the perception that others are having rewarding experiences that you’re missing, is a major driver of compulsive social media use. But through the Digital Fast, we reframed the experience: the absence of digital noise was not a loss but a gain.

JOMO is a positive embrace of quiet, slow, and seemingly uneventful moments. It’s the freedom to say “no” to distractions so that we can say “yes” to what truly matters—relationships, creativity, solitude, and, above all, communion with God. We shared our JOMO moments—stories of reading physical books, having uninterrupted conversations, and sitting quietly in prayer. These testimonies became a celebration of peace, focus, and spiritual clarity.

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The Role of the Local Church in Navigating the Digital Landscape

Our initiative was not just about temporary digital abstinence; it was about modeling how the church can lead in a world dominated by screens. I see the local church as more than a place of worship—it’s a counter-cultural community that stands against the tides of digital conformity. As one congregant noted, “Doing this together made all the difference. If I had tried to do this alone, I would have caved in a week. But seeing my small group also struggling and yet choosing to continue—it made me want to keep going.”

The church’s ability to function as a mediating institution—one that bridges individual and societal needs—makes it an ideal setting for counteracting the formative power of digital technology. Shared faith and commitment create a strong sense of identity and belonging that counters the alienation often felt in the digital age.

The Joy of Missing Out: A Long-Term Vision

The success of the Digital Fast was not just measured by how many people completed it, but by the long-term shifts it catalyzed. As the month came to an end, we challenged the congregation not to return to old habits, but to establish a new relationship with technology. Families reported having more meaningful meals together, small groups found themselves more engaged in discussions, and individuals shared how the practice of digital fasting had spilled over into other areas of their lives.

The ultimate goal was to cultivate a deeper hunger for God’s presence. As I shared in my concluding sermon, “The more we learn to say ‘no’ to what doesn’t matter, the more space we create for what truly does.” This fast was a call to reorder our lives around God’s rhythms of grace, which involve rest, reflection, and relationships—things that digital overconsumption often crowds out.

Implications for Other Churches and Communities

We could never have anticipated that our experience at Church of the City would become a blueprint for churches across the country. Spiritual communities have a unique opportunity to offer a countercultural vision for human flourishing, and the Digital Fast has shown that collective action can be not only possible but truly transformative when driven by shared values and communal support. With hundreds of churches representing over 100,000 people already signed on for this national Digital Fast, we welcome any additional churches to join us in January or during the season of Lent (March) 2025. 

Ultimately, the Digital Fast was about more than technology; it was about reclaiming the sacredness of presence and attentiveness. It was a modern-day spiritual pilgrimage through the wilderness of the digital age. And for Church of the City, it was a journey worth taking—a journey that led us not away from life, but into its fullest expression.

If you or your local church would like to join the other churches across the United States for the 28-Day Digital Fast sign up at DigitalFast2025.com.

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We are all aware by now that this is a lonely age. Friendships feel shallow and superficial. Local communities have deteriorated. The promise of constant connection turned out to be a cruel trap. A generation with access to billions of people say they feel lonelier than pensioners.

Since I was teenager, it seems like everyone has been selling a solution to Gen Z’s loneliness problem. One app after another to find new friends! Constant hashtags and campaigns to bring us together. For years I’ve been promised that some new invention will finally solve the problem (Does anyone really believe that an app will be “the antidote to America’s loneliness epidemic”?)

But I’ve noticed that, recently, the latest “solutions” have nothing to do with meeting in real life. They aren’t encouraging face-to-face friendships or trying to create new communities. They don’t even pretend anymore. At least friendship apps had the pretence of meeting up in person, even if it was always one more swipe or premium package away. Now these solutions have nothing to do with the real world. Now we are being invited into imaginary worlds.

There are the imaginary boyfriends and girlfriends, of course. There are imaginary therapists, a “mental health ally” or “happiness buddy” we can chat with about our problems. And imaginary friends, like that AI necklace who is “always listening”, announced with the tagline: “introducing friend. not imaginary.”

There are even entirely imaginary worlds now. Metaverse platforms might “solve the loneliness epidemic”, apparently. VR headsets could end loneliness for seniors. But by far the most depressing invention I’ve seen lately is a new app called SocialAI, a “private social network where you receive millions of AI-generated comments offering feedback, advice & reflections on each post you make.” In other words, your own imaginary ‘X’, with infinite “simulated fictional characters”. You, alone, in a vast social network of AI bots.

Of course, all children fantasize and imagine. There have always been shy children who retreat into their own imaginary worlds. I drew and cut out paper figurines, I wrote stories, bound them together and illustrated the covers, I created fantasy worlds in my head and sketched out the maps. Sure, I was reserved and withdrawn, but I channelled it into something creative. 

Now we are raising children in imaginary worlds and at the same time killing their imagination. That’s the real cruelty about this. Kids today have their imaginary worlds generated for them. Instead of writing their own stories, they can put prompts into ChatGPT. Instead of creating their own fantasy worlds, they can generate them with a few clicks. I remember me and my friends spending hours after school writing our own songs, coming up with lyrics and drawing album covers—now we would just generate it all with an AI song maker. Children are playing together less, replacing free play with screen time, and creativity scores among American children have been dropping since the 1990s. Part of that may be because children now depend on companies to be creative for them. Their imaginary worlds are designed by software engineers. Their imaginary friends are trying to sell them something. My imaginary world wasn’t trying to drag me anywhere, while algorithms now transport kids to darker and ever more extreme places.

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This is why I’m skeptical of headlines I’ve seen over the years declaring that children have lost their imaginary friends. “Children have fewer invisible playmates than before,” we are warned. “Children too busy with their iPads to have an imaginary friend,” nursery workers say. I understand what they mean. But they haven’t really lost them. They just replaced them. What do we think children are doing when they’re laughing along with YouTubers, alone in their rooms? Eating dinner with influencers? Simulating FaceTime with strangers? Watching gamers play with their friends? Listening to girls gossip on podcasts? Kids haven’t lost their imaginary friends; they have more than ever before. They replaced play-based imaginary friends with phone-based imaginary friends. And for some, those “friends” are all they have left. 

Because, when we think about it, all of this is imaginary. Not only AI boyfriends and girlfriends, but all of social media. Instagram influencers are imaginary friends. We’ve never met them. Soon, we won’t even know if they exist. There is nothing solid or tangible about an online “community”; they are more like imaginary worlds, held together by nothing but pixels on a screen. There are completely computer-generated influencers on Instagram now and everybody thinks it’s weird and dystopian, but what is the difference between that and a real influencer? It’s all a hallucination in my head anyway. And now our feeds show fewer and fewer posts from our friends and family, now they are places we go to see our imagination, thoughts and fears projected back at us. Our TikTok For You feeds and our Instagram Explore pages are so personalized, so predictive, they have become mirrors, reflecting what we want and what we think and what we feel and what we are afraid of. Our inner worlds, which we can now scroll through. Where we can now live. This is all one big hallucination.

I’m not just talking about Gen Z. Adults also live in imaginary worlds. We now have adults who invest more time into their imaginary worlds and reputations than their real ones. Adults imagining they are “socializing” all day when they haven’t left the house. Adults editing their pictures, creating imaginary versions of the selves they pretend to be. Adults arguing with versions of people they have imagined in their heads. Adults ignoring their children to have fun with hallucinations. 

It’s only going to get more addictive, more customized, more controllable. Already we can customize AI girlfriends with traits like “hot, funny, bold”, “shy, modest, considerate” or “smart, strict, rational”, making sure she is “judgement-free” and laughs at all our jokes. “Control it all the way you want to,” promises Eva AI. Design a girl who is “always on your side”, says Replika. Meanwhile we can fill our fake social media feed with “fans”, “cheerleaders” and “charmers” who never ignore or challenge us. We can wear Friend necklaces that slowly become more like us, trained to “develop a personality” that complements our own. It’s easy to laugh at all this, to think it’s ridiculous, to roll our eyes at AI companions and dystopian AI boyfriend ads. But sometimes it hits me—those shy children. The ones who struggle to make friends. Who aren’t naturally outgoing. Who might have hard lives and crave some escapism. Who are growing up with promise after promise of connection and belonging, but forever coaxed into a fake world.

So, yes, we live in a lonely age. We know that by now. The time for talking about it is over. Time to start building. We can’t keep waiting around for a company to come up with the right solution, because they won’t. Loneliness is too lucrative.

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So this week, today, right now, reach out and organize something. Try Phone-Free Friday with your family. Host a block party to bring your neighbors together. Start your own play club. And as well as organizing activities and creating communities, allow kids to get bored. Bored enough to play, to build dens and forts, to act out adventures with friends, to invent their own fantasy worlds. I understand why it might be comforting that your shy, reserved child has an online community to talk to, or influencers to watch and laugh with, but we have to be careful here. Careful they aren’t being hooked to imaginary worlds designed to be as inviting and addictive as possible, so much so that they hide from the real one. Because which would we rather have? Children who live in the real world and get hurt and rejected and maybe even injured, but also feel loved and alive and connected—or children who sit and hallucinate alone? We have to bring children back into the real world. We have to bring childhood back to Earth.

But first we have to let them, and ourselves, feel that loneliness. Feel it enough that we are forced to do something, to build something. To get up and get out. Because when we are venting to AI therapy bots, flirting with AI boyfriends, staying inside watching influencers, playing with our imaginary friends, we are pushing that loneliness down. Dulling it for a moment. Sedating it so companies can continue colluding and conspiring on what to sell us next. We are distracted from doing anything about it. The problem here is not just the imaginary friends or imaginary communities. It’s that more and more of us don’t have the real thing.

As Jon put it in The Anxious Generation, there was Act I of the Tragedy: the disappearance of the play-based childhood. Then came Act II: the rise of the phone-based childhood. But as he and Zach began to realize, there was actually an Act before both of these—the loss of local community. Around the mid-1960s, local relationships began to deteriorate. New technologies and cultural changes, from television to the shopping mall, atomized us. Religious faith declined, church attendance along with it. Bonds between us disintegrated. We stopped trusting and socializing with our neighbors. The reason these imaginary worlds are so powerful is that many young people have never known the real thing. They have never known real community. Some have never known true friendship. They may never have the chance to know deep love. They can only imagine.

But it doesn’t have to stay this way. If someone is selling you a cure to loneliness that comes on a screen, is downloaded from an App Store, or invites you into an imaginary world, I suggest you decline. Keep your money. The only solution to loneliness is in each other. Reaching out to each other, approaching one another, and having the guts to say, God, I feel so lonely, do you? We can’t buy belonging. We can only build it, together. 

The real world is waiting. 

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In The Anxious Generation, we argued that smartphones and social media are significant contributors to the multi-national youth mental health crisis that began in the early 2010s. In Chapter 11, we showed that the harms of the “phone-based childhood” go far beyond mental health, and impact student learning and education outcomes, which have also been declining since the early 2010s in countries around the world. The rapid adoption of smartphones and their acceptance in schools has fueled distraction, cyberbullying, and conflict among students. Educators are dropping out in frustration, and a majority of them believe that phones in schools are impeding student learning and mental health — and they want stringent enforcement from school leaders. We’ve written extensively on this—most notably in The Atlantic—where Jon called for bell-to-bell phone-free school policies. Since the release of the book, we have seen extraordinary success, with states like Virginia developing a comprehensive bell-to-bell policy for every K-12 school in their state. If you are looking to implement (or want to get your kids’ school to implement) phone-free policies, our team has just released an easily accessible and comprehensive phone-free school toolkit exactly for this purpose.

Although we are thrilled by the progress that has been made, we have heard from teachers across the country that the phones are just the first step. They are also extremely concerned about the other kinds of technology that began to saturate the school day at the same time: 1-to-1 iPads, Chromebooks, and other forms of educational technology (EdTech).

When we wrote The Anxious Generation, we weren't entirely sure what the impact of EdTech is on student outcomes. Some of it seems useful, such as supplementing a class lesson with a Khan Academy lesson after school, for high school students. Other uses seem less clear, such as replacing a middle-school class orientation with QR code scans and videos. 

So, what should the role of iPads, Chromebooks, or mobile education gaming be in the classroom? In an era when test scores are declining, how much have these technologies really contributed to student learning? Have the distraction effects of these devices overwhelmed the educational benefits? And at what age should these devices and programs be introduced? 

To find answers to these questions, we invited Amy Tyson to write for us. Amy is a co-founder of Everyschool, an organization dedicated to making schools smarter, happier, and healthier through digital wellness. Amy offers a comprehensive analysis of the current landscape of screens in schools, addressing five major myths that fuel some of the device misuse and overuse in classrooms today. She also provides a clear, actionable roadmap for schools to adopt smarter, more effective technology practices that empower students to thrive in the 21st century.

— Jon and Zach

(P.S., We plan to present a variety of perspectives on this topic—let us know what you think about the role of EdTech in the comments, especially if you have evidence of its benefits.) 

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I founded Everyschool in 2019 with the mission to make schools smarter, happier, and healthier through digital wellness. At the time, the concept of "digital wellness" was still somewhat novel. We define it as an intentional state of engagement with the digital world that does not interfere with—but instead supports—mental, physical, and social health. I started Everyschool because I have come to believe that educational technology is not the panacea we’ve been told it is, and while some technology is transformative for some students, screens in schools have become yet another source of technology oversaturation in our children’s lives, often resulting in students being less smart, less happy, and less healthy. 

I am a former child and adolescent therapist. My partner in Everyschool, Blythe Winslow, was a college professor and is a self-taught “techie.” Together, we’ve spent six years studying screens in schools, which includes the use of educational technology (or EdTech) and the use of recreational devices in schools (mainly cell phones by students). We’ve examined where research in education, child development, and mental health converge to understand how we can expose students to beneficial technology while protecting them from its harmful effects. We’ve spoken with educators, school boards, and hundreds of parents nationwide, all struggling with the same concerns. What we’ve learned has led us to conclude that many schools have not incorporated a research-based approach to implementing technology in education, nor do they acknowledge the potential costs of displacing traditional methods in favor of screens in schools. 

On a personal level, I am a mother of four children who built a home across the street from a top-rated elementary school in a top-rated public school district—a school my own children do not attend after I got a close look at how technology is implemented there. When my oldest was entering Kindergarten, I began to hear rumblings in the neighborhood about the way technology was being utilized in the District. Parent concerns were varied, but a few issues surfaced repeatedly: the amount of time spent on digital games, the large amount of curriculum time spent on devices, students using iPads during downtime and indoor recess, and inappropriate content accessed on school-issued devices. From my years of experience as a therapist and my education in child development, what I was hearing didn’t align with what we know is best for developing minds and bodies. I started investigating, along with a team of neighbors, to find out what was truly happening.

As parents, we know surprisingly little about what happens during a school day. We have to trust the school district’s transparency, which was lacking in mine—and many others. Concerned parents asked our District many questions, but we couldn’t get clear answers on anything: how apps were evaluated, how much screen time students were getting, or whether there were documented benefits to this surge in device use. There was no transparency, and no method to ensure that the tidal wave of devices and screen time were actually producing positive outcomes. Nor was there any desire to pause or wait for more data, despite the potential costs to our children. As one school board member put it, “Your children are the guinea pigs.”

The fundamental problem with the implementation of screens in schools today is that it’s been adopted wholesale, haphazardly, and without the consideration of sound research. Schools tout having tablets as “innovative,” regardless of how they’re actually used. Devices that often require little skill to operate can be tremendously distracting, yet their presence is often sold as progress.

The reality is that we need to strike a balance. We should invest in technology that provides students with unique, high-level skills, while limiting tech that produces questionable outcomes, impairs human connection, and exposes students to unnecessary screen time. At Everyschool, we focus on identifying and eliminating problematic EdTech, but we also support incorporating transformative technology when developmentally appropriate into education. 

Jon Haidt speaks of the “great rewiring of childhood” that took place from 2010 to 2015. A lot of that re-wiring happened in the classroom. For those who don’t have school-aged children, it can be difficult to grasp how fast this transformation has occurred. The problem is so pervasive and multifaceted that it feels less like a specific issue to address and more like a kind of toxic air we all breathe—parents, students, and educators alike.

What are “Screens in Schools?”

"Screens in schools" refers to all device-based usage in educational settings, whether for learning or recreation. This includes two distinct yet often overlapping areas: Educational Technology (EdTech) and recreational screen time.

EdTech encompasses interactive devices, software, or hardware intended to support student learning. Examples include points-based learning games, YouTube videos, Google Classroom, E-Readers, web browsers, and digital worksheets. Generally, when people talk about EdTech, they focus on technology used directly by students, not administrative tools like filters, surveillance software, or digital grade books.

The other area of concern is the surprising amount of recreational screen time allowed in schools on both school-issued devices and personal cell phones. This includes device use between classes, during lunch or recess, as a reward, after completing work, or whenever there’s unstructured time during the day. It also includes student cell phone use during class, which is usually not allowed but is distressingly common.

While these two categories—EdTech and recreational technology—may seem mutually exclusive, they often overlap. For instance, students may use educational apps during downtime, access recreational YouTube videos on school networks, or bypass parental controls on personal devices by using school-issued devices.  

Technology has always been a part of education (a pencil is technology) and computer-based learning has been around for decades (think Math Blaster or Oregon Trail). But since the early 21^st century, and especially by the 2010s, the rapid adoption of digital devices has fundamentally changed education. Today, digital devices are integrated into nearly every aspect of school life.

The Anatomy of the Problem

Technology will continue to be a part of everyday life years from now, and our students need to be comfortable and skilled with its use. Failing to teach our students the transformative aspects of modern digital technology would be negligent. The real question isn’t whether screens belong in schools—it’s about how to incorporate them in ways that teach unique skills or elevate learning while protecting students from negative outcomes. That’s where we’ve gone profoundly off track.

Many school districts have adopted devices without a clear plan. One teacher shared that when her district introduced iPads, the only instruction she received was, “Use the device as much as possible.” That’s not the message teachers receive when they get a new set of math manipulatives, paints, or graphing paper. The directive should be to use technology only when it enhances a lesson in ways traditional methods cannot. How much sense would it make if teachers were told to use paint in every single lesson? Sometimes, maybe even most times, paint is simply not required.

This lack of a driving philosophy results in specious practices. Teachers are pressured to use devices and apps because districts have invested millions in technology. Without a sound philosophy and clear guidance, we see problematic EdTech use. For example, students using reading apps like Epic! can swipe through entire books in seconds to earn digital rewards, without actually reading. One parent told me her second grader “read” 40 books during 30 minutes of silent reading. The teacher’s goal was to use the iPad and practice reading. The child’s goal was to collect badges and unlock a new avatar in the app. What we ended up with is a child who had 30 minutes of pointless screen time and no reading practice.

The problem is that screens have saturated every corner of education, often without any clear limits. Why not use a math app? Why not also use the reading app? No reason to stop kids from reaching for their iPad during downtime. A YouTube video can teach third graders Spanish vocabulary, so why not use that? And why fight teens scrolling TikTok during lunch and in between classes? The device is there, but the plan for its use is not—and the magnetic pull of technology is constant. This leads to students spending much of their school day, and even more time outside of school, on devices.

Even if, someday, EdTech could surpass traditional teaching methods (and we’re not there yet), is this screen oversaturation what we want for our children? 

Screens in schools haven’t proven to be more effective than traditional methods. Instead, they may be contributing to academic and social-emotional challenges, while displacing the human connection students need most. The topic of screens and schools is complex and nuanced, so we have to look at each layer of the problem to gain insight into best practices. To begin to understand the potential costs of screens in schools, we must acknowledge five big myths that have led us to the misguided place we are today. The simplest place to start is the first layer of the problem: effectiveness.

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Myth #1: EdTech Is, On Average, Making Kids Smarter 

Many educators have been led to believe that personalized learning apps, algorithms, and educational games yield better outcomes than traditional teaching methods. It’s easy to assume that technology, with its sophistication and innovation, would naturally enhance education. 

However, there’s a notable lack of independent, non-industry-funded data showing that EdTech is more effective than traditional methods. While this doesn’t mean EdTech is never or could never be effective, the potential costs—both financial and to children’s well-being—should make us proceed with caution. In fact, there is ample data to suggest that we should pause and reconsider current EdTech practices.

Academic outcomes, from standardized tests to IQ scores, show that students aren’t getting smarter. How much technology has to do with these declines is still debated, but it is certainly a part of the picture. Shortly after the wide-spread adoption of school-issued devices, we began to see an alarming downturn in academic outcomes on the Nation’s Report Card beginning in 2012 that has only continued to worsen. While the pandemic is often blamed for the most recent declines, PISA data indicates “performance was already deteriorating before the pandemic” suggesting “other structural reasons for the decline.”

Global PISA Test Scores in Decline

Figure 1. Declines in math, reading, and science scores averaged across the 38 OECD countries. Image source: The Atlantic, from the OECD.

Declines in Math and Reading Since 2012

Figure 2. Declines in math and reading among American 13-year-olds. Note that the decline did not begin with COVID; it began after 2012. Source: Nations Report Card.

International data shows that countries with more digital technology use in classrooms tend to perform worse on PISA, when controlling for GDP per capita and past test scores. In fact, the OECD found that incorporating technology into the classroom has not shown any appreciable improvements in reading, math, or science outcomes. PISA data essentially echoes the OECD, except for finding some benefits in math outcomes when utilizing technology in moderation. Interestingly, after controlling for socio-economics, the benefit we see from utilizing technology to support math outcomes (14-point gain) is almost equal to the decrease in test scores found when students are distracted by their devices (15-point loss). They note that distraction can come from merely having a device open to take notes. Even when there are potential gains from screens in schools, there is often a loss that comes hand-in-hand. 

Despite EdTech companies’ promises, the effectiveness of their products is questionable. Most of the research backing these products is industry-funded with inflated data, and when compared to independent studies, industry data shows inflated gains—up to 70% higher. After independent studies found Pearson products to have no impact, they began funding their own studies—a perfect example of the inordinate influence tech companies have in education. Moreover, when EdTech products are changing, on average, every 36 months, few products remain relevant long enough for us to properly evaluate their effectiveness. Meanwhile, institutions like the American Academy of Pediatrics and the National PTA, which offer guidance on best practices, receive funding from tech companies, raising concerns about bias. 

There is enough evidence to make us question the effectiveness of screens in schools, and conversely, there is also convincing data in favor of traditional methods- specifically print reading and handwritten notes. As e-readers replace print, the number of children reading for fun has plummeted, likely because students are three times less likely to enjoy reading if they only read on-screen. Reading in print has the unique benefits of improved comprehension, recall, long-term memory, attention, working memory, and a deeper knowledge of the material. Likewise, handwriting notes improves memory, recall, and conceptual understanding of complicated material, while supporting brain development in young learners. Neglecting handwriting can hinder fine motor skills and areas of the brain used for reading. 

Though we can’t definitively say that screens in schools are the sole cause of academic problems, it appears that the rise of EdTech has not led to better overall outcomes. In fact, during the same period, academic performance has worsened. While correlation isn’t causation, it’s hard to argue that the current implementation of EdTech is making kids smarter.

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Myth #2: The Delivery Method Doesn’t Matter

The rapid adoption of digital technology in schools sends the message that using screens for educational purposes is harmless. It suggests that EdTech is “neutral,” with no more risk than traditional tools like pencils or paper. However, even if screen-based education was as effective as traditional methods academically, there are still significant losses in using screens as the primary delivery method.

One common form of EdTech is educational gaming, which may seem like a fun way to teach repetitive skills, such as math. But these games are often designed by for-profit companies whose primary goal is to maximize revenue through ad sales and upselling, not learning. Take Prodigy, a popular math game: it takes a staggering 888 questions for a student to show a 1-point improvement on a standardized test. Meanwhile, students are inundated with ads for paid upgrades, creating inequity between students whose parents can afford premium memberships and those who cannot. Imagine a classroom teacher assigning 888 math problems while handing out the best prizes only to students with paid memberships—it’s problematic, to say the least.

Beyond academic effectiveness, educational games trigger dopamine responses, making it harder for students to focus on less stimulating activities later on. This compulsion loop pulls students toward screens for entertainment rather than engaging in more developmentally appropriate activities, such as playing with friends, reading a book, or practicing creativity. We often focus on whether an educational game “works” academically, but we ignore the compounding negative effect it may have on student focus and well-being.

Here are examples from real students that illustrate how the delivery method matters, and why devices aren’t neutral in the classroom: 

• A fourth grader using E-Readers for all assigned reading retains less information and performs worse on tests than previous classes who read print books.

• A fifth grader with a substitute teacher spends music class watching Fortnite shorts on YouTube instead of engaging in healthier activities like reading or playing a board game.

• A third grader is exposed to pornography when a classmate sends inappropriate photos on a school-issued tablet while on a WiFi-enabled school bus.

• A kindergarten teacher reviews class Facebook page "likes" on a smartboard, teaching students that external validation is more important than the intrinsic rewards of learning.

• A student who learned her letters finger-writing on an iPad struggles with handwriting, reducing her conceptual understanding and test performance because she relies on typing.

• Students opening YouTube accounts with school-issued email addresses, without parental consent, gaining access to inappropriate content.

• A seventh grader completes orientation through QR code scans and videos, missing opportunities to connect with peers during a crucial social time.

• A tenth grader struggles with focus due to constant distractions on her laptop and phone, leaving her sleep-deprived, irritable, and underperforming academically.

• The 41% of teens who access pornography during the school day, nearly half of which do so using school-issued devices. No amount of diligence by school staff or internet filters can 100% prevent children from seeing inappropriate content, disinformation, and developmentally inappropriate material. 

The delivery method does matter. Simply using a device in an educational setting doesn’t negate its downsides. Devices bring with them a host of distractions, developmental concerns, and social-emotional issues that can’t be ignored, even in the context of learning.

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Myth #3: EdTech is Necessary to Teach 21^st Century Skills

Tech companies often push the idea that students need tech skills to succeed in the 21st century. Technology is fast-paced, exciting, and can, at times, require complex skills to navigate. We fear our children will be left behind if they are not on devices from a young age and preparing for jobs of the future. 

The reality is, the skills students are more likely to miss are soft skills—critical thinking, collaboration, communication, problem-solving, interpersonal skills, creativity, and even simple eye-contact. These are the skills they’ll need to navigate the ever-changing landscape of technology and future workplaces. 

Let’s look at three crucial 21st-century soft skills that screens in schools may actually be undermining: attention, self-control, and creativity. 

Attention: Current classroom practices with devices often teach distraction more than focus. Students might play overstimulating educational games, rush through assignments to get to recreational screen time, or read online articles instead of reading full-length books. Many EdTech platforms constantly compete for students’ attention, making deep, sustained focus harder to achieve.

Childhood and adolescence are not just irrelevant towns we pass through on the way to adulthood; they are profoundly critical stages for brain development. When students are frequently encouraged to fill downtime with screen use, their brains form automatic habits around device use, making it harder for them to focus on more demanding tasks, or on almost anything in the real world, because the real world is rarely as stimulating as a screen. Adolescents, whose prefrontal cortex (responsible for judgment and impulse control) is still developing, are particularly vulnerable to distractions. Instead of learning to focus, they’re developing the habit of escaping from difficult tasks in favor of mindless digital activities.

Self-control:  Self-control is linked to success in life, but it’s not something adolescents can develop on their own. Their executive functioning is still maturing, so adults need to help them build self-control and self-regulation skills.  

The saturation of devices in school is hindering the development of self-control and setting many students up for failure. PISA 2022 data shows that a quarter of students reported feeling distracted by the devices that other students were using in most or every class, and indicated that devices negatively affected the flow of class. Even back in 2013, one study found that students couldn’t make it 6 minutes before getting distracted by the many enticements their laptop has to offer. Imagine how much harder that is in 2024. If limits on laptops are trending at Harvard, perhaps we need to consider this for our K-12 learners as well.

Creativity: While technology can enhance creativity, it can also limit it. Creativity—defined as the “production of something original and useful”—requires “divergent thinking (generating many unique ideas) and then convergent thinking (combining those ideas into the best result).” Creativity scores were rising for decades but began to decline in the 1990s, coinciding with the rise of technology replacing free play. The decline has been most pronounced in younger students.

Fostering creativity requires openness to unconventional answers and a willingness to follow curiosity—things that pre-programmed educational tech often stifles. When technology sets the parameters, students may lose the ability to think outside the box or take intellectual risks. Creativity researcher Dr. Kyung Hee Kim advises that creativity is nurtured by promoting play, encouraging open-ended assignments, and fostering intrinsic motivation—factors that are often displaced by the nature of EdTech.  

A child starting school this year will retire around 2084. With the rate at which technology is evolving, how on earth can we know what digital tools students will be using during their careers? We can’t. But we do know if they are strong in their soft skills, they will pivot, be creative, problem-solve, and figure it out.

Myth #4: Kids (These Days) Need Fun and Engaging Devices To Learn

There’s no doubt that kids are drawn to screens like a moth to a flame. The lure is even stronger when it’s a personal device that they control. Many teachers, with their earnest desire to create joyful, engaging classrooms, may see devices as tools to keep students interested. But there’s a critical difference between genuine engagement in learning and attention hijacking. Students may appear focused on their screens, but often, it's merely the device (not the material) that has captured their attention.

Waldorf education drives this point home beautifully. Waldorf schools, which avoid all screens until at least the seventh grade and emphasize real-world skills, show classrooms full of engaged, happy students. These students spend time in nature, working with their hands, and interacting with peers—without screens and devices. ​​While this approach may not be for every family, it starkly contrasts with many traditional schools, where students are rewarded with digital prizes and teachers feel pressured to incorporate devices into lessons to maintain engagement. Waldorf schools are heavily used in Silicon Valley by the parents who work in the tech industry, yet actively limit technology in their own children’s education.

The constant presence of overstimulating devices and tools creates a never-ending competition to find something even more exciting to grab students’ attention. But for kids today, devices are hardly novel—the average teenager spends nearly nine hours a day on recreational screen time alone. With the best of intentions, we try to grab student attention through exciting means, but this sets the bar of entertainment in education at a place that is unsustainable when learning gets hard and requires self-governed focus and attention.

Myth #5: Technology is Connecting

In a world where everyone is just a text, Snap, or call away, it seems like human connection should be richer than ever. We can tweet at authors, share our work online, and hear from experts on YouTube. But does this digital interaction really make us feel more connected? 

The reality is that technology is an impoverished substitute for in-person relationships. Despite endless ways to communicate digitally, our students are lonelier and more depressed than ever—nearly 3 in 5 teen girls report persistent sadness, and loneliness has doubled in the past decade. Loneliness matters: having a best friend at school is the best predictor of engagement. What combats loneliness? Human presence, eye contact, and feeling heard. Yet, in today’s schools, students are glued to devices in class and on their phones during downtime, leaving little room for genuine connection.

This disconnecting effect of technology is illustrated in a finding from Jean Twenge, Jon Haidt, and their colleagues. They found that in the PISA dataset, there were 6 questions on loneliness at school. As you can see in the figure below, loneliness self-reports were stable until the 2012 data collection. But over the next few years, when iPads and Chromebooks began pouring into classrooms around the world, loneliness increased, around the world.

Rising School Alienation Since 2012

Figure 3. Changes in school alienation, 2000-2018 (teens ages 15-16), n = 1,049,784. Source: Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), 2002-2018. No data 2006 and 2009.1

Human connection has a foundational significance in a teaching relationship. The “best” teachers aren’t great because of their tech tools; they’re great because students feel they care. That bond doesn’t exist with a computer-based learning program. UNESCO notes that more than 25 million students have used a particular AI learning and assessment system, despite research showing it is not more effective than traditional methods. Digital programs lacking data-backed benefits merely swap face-to-face time with screen time, and jeopardize human connection.

In The Anxious Generation, Jon Haidt refers to “experience blockers” and this concept applies to screens in schools as well. When devices dominate education, they displace essential activities that foster social-emotional growth. Instead of collaborating face-to-face, students often work silently and separately on their own devices. Instead of lively lunchtime conversations, they stare at screens. These moments of interaction are critical for learning life’s important lessons. As devices take over, we lose these little moments, eroding school culture and, more importantly, the connections that make us healthy and happy. 

What Schools Can Do

Our schools need to adopt a purposeful, intentional, research-based approach to technology. Instead of trying to make screens the solution to our educational problems, we must evaluate tech use with a critical, unbiased lens while considering academic outcomes, mental health, and digital wellness.

To help guide schools, Blythe and I developed EdTech’s 10 Best Practices and The EdTech Triangle, which simplify research from education, child development, and mental health. The EdTech Triangle helps schools prioritize technology that is transformative or supportive in the educational environment, while reducing or eliminating tech that restricts learning or breeds habitual use. 

Additionally, we created the R.E.A.C.H. model to guide schools toward digital wellness. Here’s how it works:

• R: Remove Weak Tech – Limit or eliminate tech that disrupts learning or restricts outcomes. For younger learners, prioritize play, movement, and hands-on learning over screens. Avoid using tech as a "brain break" or reward, as screens overstimulate rather than refresh. Encourage print materials for reading and note-taking, and reduce digital homework to minimize distractions and improve sleep. Eliminate the use of social media as a communication tool between the school and students, including school-sponsored athletic teams and other afterschool activities.

  There are no research-based reasons an educator should feel compelled to use devices, but there are many potential harms, especially for our youngest learners (K-5^th).  Until a body of clear non-industry-sponsored research studies say otherwise, eliminating personal school-issued devices completely in elementary school would be ideal. Instead, a computer lab or computer cart would be an effective way to introduce foundational tech skills (i.e.: typing) as students near middle school, without giving them a device that fosters distraction and inattention.   

• E: Embrace Powerful Tech – Use tech that supports learning in unique ways and teaches high-level skills.  Examples of this include robotics, website design, digital marketing, or music editing. Implement multi-year digital citizenship courses and a comprehensive typing curriculum. When students are developmentally ready, incorporating certain skills such as spreadsheet creation, locating online resources, data privacy, online etiquette, citing sources, and design software are tools almost all graduates would benefit from understanding, no matter their career goals. Focus on integrating tech only where it adds value, not where traditional methods work just as well or better.

• A: Accept the Digital Dilemma – Acknowledge that excessive tech use is linked to negative outcomes like poor focus, sleep problems, and anxiety. We have to actively teach students how to minimize the pull of devices and help them develop focus by limiting distractions. 

  Educators are revered as the experts on children, giving schools the unique power to alter the norm by sharing research and data with parents, providing speakers to the school community, and setting the tone for healthy tech use in schools. Providing the space and encouraging parents to come together to build community and support each other in home-based screen time struggles both strengthens parents and helps shift the culture. Everyschool offers a free curriculum to do so on our website.

• C: Create a Tech Plan – Schools should have a clear, written technology plan outlining their philosophy and policies on tech use, including cell phones. The EdTech Triangle offers a simple framework for communicating tech priorities to staff and parents. Thoughtfully evaluate apps, licenses, software, and devices currently in use and determine which ones align with healthy tech use and are actually being utilized by staff and students.  Schools should also ensure accountability and update their tech plan as new data becomes available.

  Have a balanced teacher education plan. Know that if a representative of a for-profit tech company is providing education to your teachers, it is unlikely they will be presenting their product, or its effectiveness, with an unbiased lens. As important as it is for teachers to stay abreast of trends in technology, it’s equally important to balance teacher professional development with experts in child development, mental health, and non-tech methods of teaching.

• H: Honor Human Connection – Human relationships are key to academic success, engagement, and well-being. If technology displaces face-to-face interaction, it’s doing more harm than good. While the device itself can be problematic, what’s even more concerning is all the opportunities lost to develop deep bonds with others, giving and receiving empathy, and developing a sense of belonging to a community that surpasses self-interest.

  The most effective place to start to improve academic outcomes, reduce educational inequalities, and improve well-being is to deal with recreational tech use first by making your school a Phone-Free School. This can improve social-emotional well-being and help students develop deeper bonds with peers and teachers. If you would like to encourage your own district to go phone-free, visit www.phonefreeschools.org, a campaign powered by Everyschool.

It may feel like the genie is out of the bottle, and now we need to live with the disappointing results of a tech-heavy education. However, with intentional steps and purposeful changes, schools can move toward a digitally-well environment that supports the developmental stages of their students, their emotional health, and bolsters academic outcomes. Our students have been guinea pigs long enough, and we have enough data to show us there is a better way. It is time to bring digital wellness to every school for every student.

At After Babel, we are trying to understand what happened to kids born after 1995, around the world. We have hosted a great deal of original research by Zach Rausch and Jon Haidt (on teen mental health, social media, and international variations), Jean Twenge (on teen mental health), and David Blanchflower (on the loss of the U-shaped curve of happiness). We have also featured the work of many other academics, including Mariana Brussoni, Peter Gray, Jacqueline Nesi, Camilo Ortiz, Thomas Potrebny, and Seth Kaplan. 

There is so much more we want to know! Would you like to join us in investigating a variety of research questions?

We are currently looking for academic collaborators:

Academic Collaborators

We are looking to develop an informal collaborative of academics who are already studying issues related to the impact of digital technology on children and adolescents. We are often presented with research opportunities that we cannot take, such as the possibility of running experiments in schools or networks of schools, or funders who want someone to study a particular question. Thus far we’ve not had the capacity to take on these projects, but we’d like to have a network of collaborators that we could share these opportunities with. We’re particularly hoping to find researchers interested in the play-and-independence parts of the story about youth mental health.  If you are interested in collaborating with us, please email Zach Rausch: zach@anxiousgeneration.com with the nature of your interest.

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The Anxious Generation unfolds as a tragedy in three acts. Act 1, the loss of community, begins in the 1960s, as described by Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone. For a variety of reasons, close-knit local communities and organizations started to weaken. Some of these changes were driven by technology: as air conditioning, television, and automobiles became more common, people spent more time indoors and in their cars, reducing interactions with neighbors. By the 1990s, Act 2 begins: the decline of the play-based childhood. With social capital eroding and trust between neighbors fading, adults no longer felt confident that others would look out for their children. Parents became increasingly fearful, in part because of new media-driven scare stories, leading to children being kept inside and placed in structured, adult-supervised activities. This loss of independence set the stage for Act 3: the rise of the phone-based childhood in the early 2010s, when children's social lives shifted decisively onto smartphones and social media.

Today’s post continues our series on Act 1 (more on Act 1 here, here, and here), the loss of community and its broad implications. It is co-authored by After Babel contributors Seth Kaplan and Caroline Bryk. They are long-time advocates for strong local communities, and this essay draws on religious Jewish traditions to offer practical recommendations for secular families looking to build stronger local communities and mitigate the harms of a phone-based life—such as introducing a “digital sabbath” or making the local library “independent kid” friendly.1

— Zach and Jon

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Kids growing up in strong religious communities appear to be among the least affected by the screen-saturation of American childhood, as documented by Jonathan Haidt and Zach Rausch. They are more likely to spend time in person with friends or trusted community members and neighbors, and they are less likely to spend time on screens. Religious communities are built in ways that constantly remind those within them that life is not just about satisfying one’s own needs, but about tending to the larger collective and learning to play important roles there. All this serves as a strong antidote to helplessness and uselessness. As a result, kids in these communities are generally happier, less likely to be affected by mental health issues, and less vulnerable to screen addiction, drug addiction, and loneliness. Of course, like all groups of people, these communities have their own unique challenges, but they serve as potential models for what strong communities can offer to combat our growing isolationism.

What makes these communities different? How exactly do they confer these myriad benefits? Are there practical, transferable lessons others can learn from them? 

In this post, we explore these questions from a Jewish perspective, with an eye towards identifying social practices that can be leveraged by any place-based group seeking to build a stronger community where kids can flourish. Other religious traditions, especially those with a strong communitarian bent, provide similar benefits. While the traditions differ, the lessons have a lot of overlap with Judaism. Seth, the author of Fragile Neighborhoods, is a leading expert on fragile states, societies, and communities. Caroline is the Executive Director of Tikvah’s Jewish Parents Forum. We are each a member of an orthodox Jewish community, and are thus sharing lessons from what we see day in and day out in our communities as well as the broader orthodox Jewish world.

Community (see definition in footnote2) does not just happen in today’s world. Whereas in the past, geography constrained us in ways that nurtured relationships, today technology “liberates” us in ways that actually isolate us from one another. We have far more access to knowledge, to people in faraway places, and distant horizons … but we are far less likely to know our neighbors and local possibilities. Our resulting social poverty presents acute challenges for children: without neighbors they trust, parents are less likely to allow kids to play with each other, especially outside and unmonitored. This prevents kids from developing the independence and resilience necessary to thrive.

In this context, we need to be much more intentional about building communities and relationships that crisscross and reinforce each other. Only neighborhoods with strong social bonds are likely to engender the sense of togetherness necessary for neighbors to support each other and their kids day in and day out. This is true for every resident—whether a parent, a businessperson, or a police officer. Each one of us can play an important role.

Lessons From Jewish Communities

Judaism not only places a strong emphasis on community; it organizes around it. The daily requirements of our faith embed us in an abundance of place-based relationships and institutions that literally structure our lives into real-world communities. 

While religious and ethnic identities can be great spurs towards the building of such communities, what matters most, as Jane Jacobs writes, is a “continuity of people who have forged neighborhood networks.” These require a diversified set of institutions and activities offering many opportunities to interact, collaborate, and contribute in a variety of ways. As she noted, even in places known for their homogeneity (such as the “Jewish” Lower East Side), many of the most active leaders were from other groups.

Here are four ways our faith builds community in ways that benefit youth. Each provides an entry point and set of ideas that we hope you can use in your neighborhood.

1. Reclaim place and embodied experience on a weekly basis. 

The Sabbath, also known as Shabbat, is arguably the most well-known Jewish social practice. It does more to bond and interweave the community than anything else.  By collectively embracing the positive rituals and constraints associated with Shabbat, including banning driving, television, and smartphones, our communities create a 25-hour oasis that especially benefits kids due to the large number of children-centric activities that result: younger kids congregate in neighborhood parks, teenagers lead dynamic youth groups of smaller children, and backyards and streets fill up with mixed-aged gatherings. Meals with neighbors and events in synagogues allow kids to interact and develop ties in a playful, joyful manner that schools hyperfocused on academic achievement and highly structured, organized activities cannot. 

Shabbat forces our community members to live within walking distance of each other and of the synagogue, nurturing social ties that are stronger, more trusting, and more interdependent. This gives parents the confidence to allow their children more autonomy and unmonitored time away from home, all week long.

Let’s bring this concept to life: Earlier this summer, Caroline and her husband both assumed the other was bringing their 7-year-old son home from synagogue and accidentally left him there, almost a mile away from home, with no way to contact him (as we do not use phones on Shabbat).This said, they did not panic. On the contrary, she and her husband remained quite calm—surely, in a neighborhood filled with hundreds of families walking home from the same synagogue, a fellow community member would notice their son alone and bring him home. Sure enough, that is precisely what happened—a fellow community member took responsibility for their son without prompting. 

Key Lessons:

• Identify a group of parents with children in your neighborhood. Agree upon a time of the week when they will all go phone-free and be allowed to free range together around the area or at least within the boundaries established by the homes. Since the first time may be nerve-wracking, identify a couple of parents to keep a close eye on the streets. Also consider sharing this plan with local shopkeepers who can commit to keeping an eye out.

• Work with other parents in your neighborhood to organize community-building events such as block parties, neighborhood gatherings, and holiday celebrations. Make these events kid-friendly so that youth bond and form a set of rooted, real-world relationships that can better compete with online distractions.

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2. Build an abundance of community institutions. 

Jewish communities are strong because we establish a wide network of institutions wherever we go—synagogues, schools, mikvot (ritual baths), cemeteries, gemachim (free-loan funds), professional support networks, and so on. These various social institutions—some formally established, many operating ad hoc or on the margins in smaller communities—play crucial roles not only in helping people when in need but also in bonding them together in a way that builds social cohesion, identity, and resilience. Synagogues, for instance, have a full slate of opportunities for adults and children to learn on a daily basis as well as weekly opportunities to congregate informally over food. (Always a good idea!)

Many of the institutions are specifically designed for children or have a large kids’ component—the gemachim, for example, offer community members a large selection of toys as well as clothes for toddlers and youth—and most of the myriad informal support groups are geared towards families (e.g., babysitting groups, carpool groups, meal trains for new mothers, and mother’s and father’s groups). 

Neighborhood schools mean kids have their own networks within easy walking distance. Nearby kosher restaurants and markets mean kids have places to go on their own—and owners have an incentive to make a specific effort to serve them. Seth’s 12-year old daughter, for example, loves to use her allowance to meet friends for pizza or soup at one of the local places and knows that when the family is in need of groceries, she may be asked to make the trip to the market on her own. 

Key Lessons: 

• Redirect your free time from distant causes online to building a local institution—social, civic, religious, or even political—that can build closer ties with neighbors. Encourage these to provide opportunities for kids to participate in some form—as a volunteer, as a part of a kids group, or even in a leadership role. 

• Reach out to local institutions that can serve, host, or offer a space for youth—including restaurants, coffee shops, civic associations, nonprofits, libraries, and small retailers—to ask them to become more open to kids coming in alone.

3. Establish a culture that offers a clear progression of roles from childhood to adulthood. 

From a young age, kids play important roles as members of the community, with opportunities to take responsibility for others, play leadership roles, and even act as adults well before they are. There are, for example, ample roles for children woven into the rituals and community activities–kids as young as five can open the ark (where our scriptures are held), or lead singing during services. Youngsters of all ages play special roles during the Passover seder and on other holidays. Teenagers lead prayer groups, run backyard camps, act as counselors, and organize play groups for younger kids. 

Of course, when boys become 13 and girls 12, they celebrate becoming a bar or bat mitzvah. This establishes them as adults within the community, with all the responsibilities that this entails. Such rites of passage, which help transition children into competent, flourishing adults, used to be common across many cultures, but many have largely been abandoned by secular societies. Combined with the decline of local institutions, which once offered kids myriad ways to act as young adults, this means fewer and fewer opportunities for kids to act independently and develop maturity while still young. At the same time, in the digital world, they see adult content without safeguards. As a result, children are exposed to an adult sphere online while being infantilized in real life. 

Key Lessons:

• Ask your house of worship, kids’ youth club, or school to orient around and prioritize milestone events that mark the transition from adolescence to adulthood. These milestones should offer rising sets of responsibilities and opportunities and be celebrated by everyone in the institution.

• Empower youth to take leadership roles as early as possible in your neighborhood, school, camp, or club. For example, they could lead fundraising efforts, as sometimes happens in bands, choirs, and sports teams, or mentor younger members. Give them the chance to manage activities, organize younger kids, supervise an event, or just act on their own with their peers to do something for the area. Where these roles are lacking, work with parents to create them.

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4. Reclaim prestige and mentorship for in-person roles strengthening local community. 

In The Anxious Generation, Jon argues that one of the leading strategies young people employ to learn culture is through “prestige bias”—detecting who is most respected and copying whatever they are doing. While historically, prestige has been conferred to those who achieved real excellence in a valued domain, today the currency of prestige is often the likes, retweets and follows in the digital world, privileging outrageous content, distant “influencers,” and zero-sum competition that undermines healthy relationships. 

In place-based Jewish communities, in contrast, the link between excellence and prestige is not severed. Instead, the community continues to elevate individuals who merit respect for their service to the community (through awards, celebrations, and special honors). This elevation extends to youth, who are celebrated in schools, synagogues, and community dinners for the service they do. Strong ties across generations and with educators and rabbis, as well as a deeply engrained culture of mentorship and community support for those in need, A strong emphasis on learning from elders and historical figures with real wisdom mean that there is continuous guidance on how to behave and a broad slate of people to turn to when looking for advice. 

Key Lessons:

• Create opportunities for youth to emerge and be honored as heroes for their in-person behavior towards others in your neighborhood, school, activity, or community. For example, offer youth the chance to contribute to a neighborhood activity (block party, cleanup, nonprofit volunteering, visit to special needs center) and then celebrate those who model the best behavior. 

• Engage your children in activities to honor and celebrate local heroes or historical figures who supported their communities in an exceptional manner (e.g. drawing pictures for the fire station, writing letters of thanks to school leaders, etc.) early and often. When discussing historical figures, point out, as it does in the Torah, that these people were imperfect in many ways, yet still achieved great things for their communities.

Building Community: A Prerequisite to the Reclamation of Childhood 

Jon recently noted that while he originally conceived of The Anxious Generation as a tragedy in two acts—first, the loss of the play-and-independence-based childhood (1990-2010), and then the introduction of the phone-based childhood (2010-2015), he and Zach now see it as a tragedy in three acts, with the decline of local community being the first act that set the stage for all that followed. 

When place-based community is lost, parental fears abound and we witness what British sociologist Frank Furedi calls, “the breakdown of adult solidarity.” The result is less trust, interaction, and mutual support. Kids’ lives are constrained from the risk aversion that results. In contrast, when place-based community thrives, we see a strengthening of social cohesion and trust, and increased childhood autonomy. 

If technology erodes social connectivity and trust by atomizing us on a mass scale, place-based community achieves the opposite: it cultivates social ties, communal cohesion and trust. It facilitates collective action, because it strengthens the collective.

We understand the generational challenge today’s parents face: how do we raise children in an age of ubiquitous, immersive, and addictive technology – not to mention inflated fears about unsupervised kids? While we do not have the panacea, we recognize that rooting children in tight-knit, real-world communities offers tremendous protection by decreasing the likelihood that children burrow into the virtual world. While we are not calling for everyone to move to the types of communities we discuss, we hope readers will feel charged to become more intentional about community-building in their local neighborhoods—after all, in order to reclaim childhood, we must restore community. 

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In the previous two posts (one and two) in this series, we examined and highlighted numerous problems with a recent meta-analysis on social media reduction experiments and mental health. The study, conducted by Stetson University psychologist Chris Ferguson, is titled Do Social Media Experiments Prove a Link with Mental Health? A Methodological and Meta-Analytic Review. We uncovered significant factual errors, including inaccuracies in effect sizes, sample sizes, and study inclusion/exclusion criteria, which were used to conclude that the impact of social media use on mental health is indistinguishable from zero.

In his paper, Ferguson argued that his meta analysis “undermines causal claims by some scholars (e.g., Haidt, 2020; Twenge, 2020) that reductions in social media time would improve adolescent mental health.” This claim is problematic for a variety of reasons, but we want to emphasize one of them, as this is a point that has been missed in the debate around our critique of Ferguson’s meta-analysis.

The central causal claims that we have put forth in The Anxious Generation and on this Substack is that heavy social media use causes increases in internalizing disorders (e.g., anxiety and depression) by a variety of mechanisms laid out in chapters 5 and 6 of the book, including increased social comparison, perfectionism, sleep deprivation, social deprivation, behavioral addiction, and emotional contagion. One way of testing this causal theory is by examining the set of experiments in which people were randomly assigned to reduce their social media use for a period long enough to get past withdrawal effects and measuring changes in symptoms of internalizing disorders. We also predict that effects will be greater for girls than boys, and greater if done by a group, rather than if done individually. See this footnote for quotes where we lay out these claims in The Anxious Generation.1 

Any analysis that combines short-term studies (e.g., one day reduction), which we predict would cause withdrawal, with multi-week reduction, which we predict would lead to benefits, would not be testing our causal theory. Similarly, merging together symptoms of internalizing disorders with broader measures of life satisfaction or temporary mood also complicates any test of our causal claims, as each of these measures will be impacted differently by social media reduction. Ferguson did both of these things and his findings thus do not “undermine” our causal claims; he failed to accurately test our causal claims. 

Beyond the misunderstanding of our causal claims, we identified several additional methodological choices that we believe suppressed the real effects of social media use on mental health: Ferguson combined very different kinds of experiments together, such as three-week reduction studies with five-minute lab exposure studies. His creation of composite effect sizes (e.g., averaging together items like loneliness, self-esteem, social connectedness, depression, etc.) lacked a consistent methodology and transparency, making it difficult for other researchers to replicate his work and test the sensitivity of his results to alternative approaches. Together, these flaws render the meta-analysis difficult to replicate and difficult to interpret. 

In this third post of our series, David Stein demonstrates that correcting Ferguson’s factual errors changes his results from statistical insignificance to statistical significance. Ferguson’s reliance on confidence intervals that include zero is central to his conclusions, and David will explain why his conclusions are incorrect. In future posts, we will be providing our case for causality, starting our analysis from scratch.

Since our last post, we have been in contact with Ferguson, who has acknowledged that he made some errors in his article, including inaccuracies in sample sizes. He also told us the he will be going through the effect sizes and will “correct those as well as needed.” He has said that he will update his study with corrections in the coming weeks. 

[Correction: In the original version of the post, we said that Ferguson acknowledged errors in both effect sizes and sample sizes.]

As we outlined in our previous posts, much hinges on the question of correlation versus causation. Social media companies have consistently dismissed claims—and potential liability—regarding harm reported by parents and teens, arguing that current scientific evidence is merely correlational and does not establish causation. This is why scrutinizing this meta-analysis of experiments is so critical. 

A prime example of this dismissal and the false claim of ‘no evidence’ can be seen in a recent interview from September 25th on The Verge's show Decoder. In the conversation, Mark Zuckerberg tells Alex Heath, “That, I think, is the next big fight,” referring to social media and youth mental health. He goes on to say, “I think a lot of the data on this is just not where the narrative is … the majority of high-quality research out there suggests there’s no causal connection at a broad scale between these things.”

And now, here’s David’s post.

– Zach and Jon

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[Guest Post from David Stein]

In parts 1 and 2 of The Fundamental Flaws of The Only Meta-Analysis of Social Media Reduction Experiments, Jonathan Haidt and Zach Rausch demonstrated a number of errors and shortcomings in the recent meta-analytic review of social media (SM) experiments by Chris Ferguson.

In this part, we will see that the centerpiece of Ferguson’s arguments — a statistically insignificant result within his random-effects model — would not have been possible without the string of errors demonstrated in Part 2. We will also, in the Appendix, examine some of the failures of Ferguson to conduct a proper review of the experimental evidence (and why it matters).

Statistical Insignificance

Ferguson selected 27 experiments and then assigned each of them a sample size and an effect size (Cohen’s d). He then analyzed the data using a random-effects model in Jamovi, which produced a weighted average of d = 0.088 with a confidence interval of (-0.018, +0.197).

Ferguson relied greatly on the fact that this confidence interval includes zero, writing in his paper that “mean effect sizes are no different from zero” and then inferring that this “undermines causal claims by some scholars (e.g., Haidt, 2020; Twenge, 2020) that reductions in social media time would improve adolescent mental health.”’

Later, Ferguson even declared in a tweet that his finding showed that “reducing social media time has NO impact on mental health.”2

In this post, we will see that Ferguson’s model produced a statistically insignificant result only due to a string of errors and that correcting these errors would change the result from insignificance to significance.

Erroneous Data

In Part 2, we saw that Ferguson’s data contained a number of important errors: two experiments were assigned indefensible effect sizes, three sample sizes were substantially wrong, and Ferguson included several studies that violated his own selection criteria (while failing to include several studies that did fit his criteria).

Each one of these errors biased the analysis in the same direction: toward the negative, thus helping to achieve statistical insignificance.

One of the incorrect effect size assignments was in Lepp 2022 (see Part 2).3

After assigning a conservative effect size4 of d = +0.27 to this experiment (in contrast to Ferguson’s original d = -.365), the confidence interval ceases to include zero and p is below 0.05:

d = +0.106 (+0.002, +0.210) with p = 0.046

Ferguson’s finding that the confidence interval includes zero is so tenuous that even a single correction of an effect size within his data can switch the insignificance to significance.

If we fix the two erroneous effect sizes (Lepp 2022 and Brailovskaia 2022) as well as the three large sample size errors (Przybylski 2021, Lepp 2022, and the Kleefield dissertation) and exclude the two studies that violated Ferguson’s own criteria (Deters 2013 and Gajdics 2022),5 the magnitude of the estimated effect increases:

d = +0.146 (+0.048, +0.244)

Including several studies that match Ferguson's inclusion criteria but were left out of his analysis for reasons that are unclear6 — each indicating that SM use is harmful — would increase d substantially more.

The above demonstrates that Ferguson was able to reach an insignificant result only by making a string of errors and that correcting these errors would greatly increase the magnitude of the estimated effect within Ferguson’s model and invalidate his conclusions.

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The Impacts of Social Media Reduction

​In my initial critique of Ferguson’s meta-analytic review, I pointed out that he did not provide a valid model of SM reduction impacts on mental health as proposed by Haidt and Twenge. This matters because Ferguson argues that his study undermines their causal claims.

One of the reasons that his model is not a valid test of the theories of Haidt and Twenge is that Ferguson included many experiments that did not measure outcomes such as depression or anxiety — the mental health disorders that are the main focus of the theories proposed by Haidt and Twenge. The theories of Haidt and Twenge do not blame declines in every imaginable aspect of well-being on social media.7

Let us therefore restrict Ferguson’s model to the 11 studies (out of his original 27) that do measure depression or anxiety. Once we do so, it produces the following effect size estimate and confidence interval:

d = +0.26 (+0.13, +0.40)

Note that none of these 11 studies are SM exposure lab experiments. Instead, these are all SM time reduction field experiments lasting at least one week. The 11 studies that included a measure of anxiety or depression were:

Mahalingham 2023	 1W	+0.175
Kleefeld dissertation	 1W	-0.277
Lambert 2022	         1W	+0.797
Tromholt 2016	         1W	+0.310
Brailovskaia 2020	 2W	+0.154
Brailovskaia 2022	 2W	+0         [Incorrect effect size]
Faulhaber 2023  	 2W     +0.484
Hunt 2018	         3W	+0.232
Thai 2021	         3W	+0.576
Alcott 2020	         4W	+0.090
Hunt 2021	         4W	+0.374

Note: Effect sizes are given as assigned by Ferguson.

Degree of Evidence

It might be tempting to conclude that the above constitutes strong evidence that reducing social media use for at least one week reduces the risk of mental health disorders such as depression and anxiety. 

Unfortunately, the model still relies on Ferguson’s notion of ‘composite’ effect sizes, wherein each study is assigned a single effect size that is the average of impacts on several disparate aspects of well-being selected by Ferguson. Thus one study might be assigned the average of depression and loneliness impacts, while another study the average of anxiety and life satisfaction and self-esteem impacts. The interpretation of such composite effect sizes is problematic at best.

Note that Ferguson had to calculate effect sizes for depression and anxiety in order to determine the composite effect size for those studies that contained these outcomes, but he did not include these results in his paper. When requested to provide the effect sizes he calculated for depression and anxiety, Ferguson replied that he is unable to do so. Furthermore, Ferguson even declined to reveal which aspects of well-being he selected for his calculation of each composite effect size (see Part 2 for details).

In his paper, Ferguson did not define a consistent method of determining the component effect sizes and it appears unlikely, in view of the disparate types of data provided by the various studies, that Ferguson was able to achieve any consistency.

In other words, Ferguson’s composite effects are so disparate, fuzzy and opaque as to provide only very weak evidence for any arguments related to mental health outcomes of SM experiments.

Preview of Evidence

There are at least 17 published studies of SM time reduction impacts on depression or anxiety. According to these study reports, out of the 26 impacts on depression or anxiety measured within these studies, the great majority (62%) resulted in statistically significant evidence of a beneficial impact — and none resulted in statistically significant evidence of a detrimental impact. 

Since methods of effect size determination vary among the studies, we are in the process of obtaining sufficient data from each experiment to enable us to provide consistent methodologies across all the studies. Once we are done collecting the necessary data, we should be able to provide a robust and reliable evidentiary base for a systematic review of the experiments.

Conclusion

Correcting even just a few of the numerous errors Ferguson made increases the effect size estimate substantially and shifts the result to statistical significance. This is yet another reason why Ferguson’s meta-analytic review should not be used to argue that there’s no experimental evidence of social media use reduction impacts on mental health.

Note: See Perils of Flawed Meta-Analytic Methodology for further notes on methodological flaws of Ferguson’s review.

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Over the last few decades, parenting has become a constant battle around screens. Since publishing The Anxious Generation, we’ve focused on a key policy: delay. Delay smartphones until age 14, and social media until 16. Put off, for as long as you can, the beginning of that constant battle.

But then what? And what about all the other tech kids are using at home? These are the questions that we plan to address in a series of upcoming posts. We’ve been searching for the most reliable research to guide families, particularly those with children who already have access to personal devices.

Today, we’re pleased to share an insightful essay by Dr. Jacqueline Nesi and Dr. Cara Goodwin, highlighting a recent meta-analysis on the effects of screens on young children (0-6). Dr. Nesi, a clinical psychologist and professor at Brown University, authors the popular Substack Techno Sapiens, where she regularly breaks down cutting-edge research with practical advice for parents (Check out her recent post on the evidence behind phone-free schools, which we republished on After Babel). Dr. Goodwin, a child psychologist and founder of Parenting Translator, offers clear, research-backed parenting strategies through her widely-read newsletter. (Dr. Goodwin took Jon’s psych 101 class when they were both at UVA.)

— Zach and Jon

It’s the end of a long summer day. Bath time is done, pajamas are on, and you’re settling onto the couch with your child. They snuggle up under your arm, and the faint smell of their shampoo reaches your nose. You grab the remote to turn on the TV, and hug them in a little tighter. Everything is perfect. The TV begins playing their favorite show, and as you settle in for a little screen time, you realize there’s just one thing that could make this moment even more perfect: 

A systematic review and meta-analysis of every study that’s ever been done on kids’ screen time.

Well, good news!

A new study in JAMA Pediatrics offers an incredibly comprehensive overview of the research on screens for young kids. Even better news: the study offers nice, concrete takeaways for families on how best to use (and not use) screens. 

Let’s get to it!

What did the researchers do?

So many parents worry about their children getting “too much” screen time, but research increasingly shows that the type of screen time often matters more than the amount. So, what actually makes a difference when it comes to screens and children’s development? For this new study, a (large) team of Australian researchers1 decided to find out. 

Here’s how they did it:

• They identified all studies on the topic of screen use and emotional or cognitive development in kids (ages 0 to 6)

• They reviewed 12,000+ studies, ultimately narrowing down to 100 studies that fit their criteria

• They combined the results of these 100 studies into a systematic review (translation: a study that reviews all previous relevant studies on a topic by using a comprehensive methods to find all relevant research) and meta-analysis (translation: a study that statistically combines all previous data so you can see trends across studies)

• These studies included 176,742 children (ages 0 to 6) from 30 different countries

They used the following definitions:

• Screen use included any use of electronic devices, such as TV, tablets, computers, and smartphones for video or streaming content, apps, electronic/console gaming, social media, or any use of the internet. 

• Cognitive development included the development of language, executive functioning, and academic skills

• Psychosocial development included the development of social-emotional skills, psychological/mental health concerns, and behavioral problems

The researchers looked closely at each study to separate out types of screen use (rather than overall amount). This included:

• Age-appropriate versus adult content

• TV program viewing versus gaming or app use

• Co-use with an adult/sibling versus solo use

• Background TV exposure

• Caregiver screen use

• Use of screens as a calming tool

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And the survey—er, meta-analysis—says…

So, what did the researchers find? Here are the key takeaways for parents:

1. Avoid using screens while interacting with our kids, including during meals and playtime

It’s unrealistic to think that we’ll never look at our phones when around our kids, but it makes sense to minimize this whenever possible. Across studies, when parents’ tech use frequently interrupted interactions with their children (i.e., “technoference”), children showed worse psychosocial outcomes. In particular, when parents are distracted by their screens, children may show more behavioral problems to get their attention, or they may miss out on opportunities to learn social-emotional skills from parents.

2. Choose age-appropriate, high-quality content for our kids

Studies found that when kids watched more age-inappropriate content (e.g., violence, mature content), it was associated with worse psychosocial outcomes. Alternatively, watching shows that are educational or focused on social-emotional skills (like sharing and being kind) can enhance literacy and emotional development. Studies also show potential benefits of interactive media use, like apps, versus passive viewing. Unsure whether something is age-appropriate? Check out Common Sense Media’s movie, game, app, and TV show reviews.

3. Use screens together with our kids when possible

Using screens together (“co-use” or “co-viewing”) is linked to better cognitive outcomes in kids, like language development and executive functioning. Yes, sometimes the whole point of using screens is to give ourselves a break (or a chance to cook dinner, or send an email), but when we can, it’s good to join our kids in their screen time, and turn it into a conversation whenever possible.

Try asking your child questions about what they’re seeing (How do you think Daniel Tiger is feeling about going in the pool?), explaining anything they might not understand (It looks like Daniel has to get out of the pool because there’s a storm coming), and making connections with their real world experience (Remember how you felt a little nervous before your swim lesson, too?).2

4. Avoid having TV on in the background

When TV is on in the background, kids have more difficulty focusing attention on whatever else they are doing, whether that’s talking to parents, playing with toys, or generally learning from their environments. This may be why studies have found that frequent background TV is associated with worse cognitive and psychosocial outcomes.

5. Don’t worry too much about “fast-paced” content

The research on pacing of shows, videos, or games is very mixed— some studies find a negative impact of faster-paced shows, some find a positive impact, and most find no impact at all. So, if a show is age-appropriate and high-quality, and your child seems to do well with it, there’s no need to pay much attention to “pacing.”

6. Be careful about using screens to calm kids down

It makes sense to try teaching our kids other strategies for managing strong feelings (e.g., deep breaths, talking about their feelings, taking some space), rather than handing them a device when they’re upset. The researchers only found a few studies on this issue, though, so we need more research going forward. 

Where do we go from here?

When it comes to research on little kids and screens, this study is the best we’ve got right now. It summarizes all prior studies on this topic, and gives us some direction on what to focus on as parents. But one side effect of analyzing everything we know on a topic is that it also makes very obvious everything we don’t know.

It reveals that many studies on this topic cannot tell us whether screens are causing these outcomes, only that they are associated.3 It shows that our measures of screen use are imperfect, often lumping together behaviors (e.g., “TV program viewing”) without considering what’s happening in those programs.

And, as always, it reminds us that the research can only get us so far. 

We can take away these useful general principles (watch screens with our kids when possible, avoid background TV, etc.), but what does this actually mean day-to-day? How much, and what type of background TV is actually problematic? How often should we be trying to watch screens together with our kids? Every time? Half the time? Once in a while? If we have a 3-year-old and an 11-month-old, and we want to watch Daniel Tiger together with the 3-year-old, what on earth are we supposed to do with the 11-month-old besides let him watch, too?4

That said, if there’s one key takeaway from this study, it is this: all screen time is not created equal. Context matters. When it comes to screens, we may be better off focusing less on how much our families are using them, and more on how.

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For more suggestions and advice for parents, see our After Babel series “What Parents Can Do Now.”

Confession: I’m really bad at replying to messages. Sometimes it takes me days, even weeks, to get back to people. I constantly find myself typing out some variation of the words sorry for not getting back to you sooner, oops sorry I completely missed this, hey sorry I thought I replied! It’s an endless cycle: feel pressured to reply, feel guilty for not doing it, procrastinate, feel worse the longer I wait, finally apologise, they respond—and then I do it all over again. 

I’ve tried to be better. I’ve made countless New Year’s Resolutions to respond quicker, set myself strict rules to always reply the same day, even added texting people back to my to-do list. Nothing works. But lately I’ve been wondering if that’s because there’s a problem with me, or if it’s this expectation to always be available, to be instantly accessible, that’s the problem. 

Because it turns out I’m not alone in this. There are many others, particularly in Gen Z, who say they feel this constant pressure. Who let all their messages pile up to the point where they can’t face explaining themselves to everyone. Who can’t focus on work because they’re thinking about all the unanswered emails in their inbox. Who can’t be present in the moment because they’re worried about all the people waiting for a reply. And I’ve seen a lot of posts lately claiming that this is a symptom of ADHD, or an anxiety disorder. Some Zoomers even think they struggle to respond to everyone online because of social anxiety.

But think about it—now we’re expected to always be available. 31% of American adults say they are “almost constantly” online. Among Gen Z young adults, that figure is an astonishing 48%. Teenagers spend an average of nine hours a day on screens. We take our smartphones everywhere. There’s just no excuse not to get back to someone straight away anymore. I remember when I used to use MSN after school or chat on Skype with friends and we would say BRB (be right back!) or G2G (got to go!) when we signed out. Now there’s nowhere to go. We “no longer log off”. Some of us haven’t spent more than a few hours away from our phones since we first got them over a decade ago. We don’t say bye anymore because we’re always here. 

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Plus we have more messages than ever to keep up with. Adolescents now receive an average of 237 smartphone notifications a day. A quarter of 18 to 24 year-olds say they send or receive more than 100 texts per day, and over one in ten send or receive more than 200. That’s around 6,000 messages a month – more than double the figure for 25 to 34 year-olds. These days we’ve got group chats going off, voice notes to listen to, Instagram DMs to check, TikTok memes to react to, daily reminders that it’s Time to BeReal! We can’t even go for a walk without our Apple Watches alerting us with messages. Multiple conversations, all the time. And for older Gen Zers add in Zoom meetings, Team Messages, Slack notifications, calendar invite after calendar invite. Must respond. Must react. Must follow up. Suddenly we’ve got dozens of different unopened conversations, and facing them feels unbearable. 

And don’t get me started on all these features that show when we’re online. Facebook’s Last Active feature. Instagram’s Active statuses. Snapchat showing when a Snap has been Delivered or Opened. Even dating apps do this now—Hinge has added a Last Seen feature; Tinder tells you which profiles are Online Now. Sorry, why am I entitled to know when someone last picked up their phone when I haven’t even met this person yet? For what reason does my running app need to show when I was Last Seen? And God knows why anyone needs to know when I was last active on Goodreads. 

I used to feel pathetic for feeling anxious about these features, but now that I’m older I’m wondering, what is the actual point of them? Other than to stoke constant anxiety about why someone isn’t replying, or guilt that we haven’t gotten back to them yet? Give me one good reason why it’s useful to know that someone was Typing and then stopped. It’s completely unnecessary. 

We always talk about Instagram likes and follower counts causing anxiety for adolescents but honestly, the most anxiety-inducing memories from my teenage years are those Read Receipts and Last Active statuses. Sending a selfie on Snapchat and seeing Opened 30m ago. Sending a flirty text and getting left on Read. Arguing with someone and seeing them type for ages before stopping and saying nothing. Thoughts race—why are they Active and not replying? Wait, their Snap Score has gone up, so they’ve clearly got time to respond to other people? Hold on, why have they posted their Story but haven’t got back to me? No wonder we’re socially anxious. No wonder we overthink everything we say. And that we’re all so distrusting of each other now. The way we grew up, human connection was a petty game. Right, I’ll leave you on Read then. Open my Snap and ignore me? Fine, I’ll post on my Story and deliberately leave you on Delivered. 

So the pressure to always be available isn’t just bad for our mental health; it’s also bad for our relationships. Checking in with each other has become a chore. Getting back to my friends shouldn’t be a task on my to-do list. I think this is a big part of why people say friendships feel like admin now, and just another joyless thing to do on a screen. Take two days to reply and get a text saying ARE YOU ALIVE??? Accidentally leave a message on Read and an hour later be hit with helloooo? Take 24 hours for yourself and get hey hey hey we’re going to lose our Streak!! And we end up in this weird situation where so many of us feel lonely and disconnected, but also desperate to be left alone. 

And our interactions have become so low-quality. If I’m expected to always be available and reply instantly, there’s no time to think about what I want to say. Sometimes I want to take my time! I don’t want to argue over text! Or flirt over Instagram! Maybe I’m not ignoring you, maybe I think you’re worth waiting for until I have time to give a proper response. It feels like some young people have this insane idea now that a good friendship is one that’s in constant communication, that it should be a never-ending conversation like a never-ending TikTok feed, even if you’re just sending each other blank Snapstreaks and stupid memes. If that’s friendship, no wonder none of us have time for it. No wonder we’re hanging out less. We’re sick of each other! How can you fully appreciate someone if you never get the chance to miss them or wonder what they’re up to? There’s nothing special about keeping in touch anymore, we killed it. We took all the sentiment out of it. When we’re always reachable, there’s no such thing as truly reaching out. 

And the worst part is, when you’re always available to everyone you’re not fully available to anyone. Certainly not to the people right next to you. “When a conversation partner pulls out a phone, or when a phone is merely visible, (not even your own phone), the quality and intimacy of a social interaction is reduced,” Jon explains in Chapter 5 of The Anxious Generation. “(We) pull out our phone and spend some time pecking at it, leaving the other person to conclude, reasonably, that she is less important than the latest notification.” We’ve all done this, and felt guilty for it. But the problem is, we also feel guilty when we’re ignoring messages while busy with the people physically with us. If we leave someone on Read or take a few days to reply, aren’t we also telling them they’re not important? Guilt again.  

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The only answer, I think, is to be a little less available. My advice is to switch on Do Not Disturb. Absolutely turn off Read Receipts. Nobody needs to know when you were Last Active. Mute as many notifications as you can. Unapologetically use airplane mode when you are with friends and family, or need to focus. And I would say no tracking, anywhere. No SnapMap, no Find My Friends, no unnecessary pressure. 

Then kindly let people know that, no, you aren’t always available. That you would like time to think about what to say. That you would like time to miss people, to feel grateful for who you have around. That you need some peace and solitude in order to accomplish anything. Nothing personal! Nothing to do with you, just want to forget myself for a moment! Nothing to do with you, just haven’t had one day without my phone since I got it at thirteen! Nothing against anyone, just would like a shot at having a creative or interesting thought once in a while! And can we please bring back the assumption that people will get back to you when they can? Some trust that we don’t all secretly hate each other? Some self-assurance that it’s not always a personal affront, that they will reply when they are ready. 

And importantly, don’t apologise for disconnecting. Be respectful and courteous—respond to emergencies, get back to your romantic partner—but don’t say sorry to everyone, all the time, for not being instantly available. Don’t apologise for waiting a while to react to a TikTok. Or taking two days to respond to an email. Because seriously, what are we doing here? Saying so sorry I wasn’t Active, I was being actually active in real life? Sorry I left you on Seen, I was out seeing some of the real world? Don’t apologise for that! How do we stand any chance of disconnecting if we say sorry for taking a few hours to live our lives? If we give an excuse every time? My conversations with a close friend used to be this way, an endless back-and-forth of saying so sorry I didn’t get back to you, I’m the worst sorry! can’t believe I left it this long! until we finally decided to stop. We just said to each other, c’mon, we know we’re close friends. If there’s an emergency, we’ll respond. Nothing has changed; we know that. If there’s a problem we’ll say so. We’ll catch up when we see each other. 

And here’s the thing: if we let ourselves be unavailable a bit more, maybe we won’t take it so personally when someone else doesn’t respond right away. Maybe we won’t get that horrible feeling in our gut when we see our Snapchat was Opened 30m ago and ignored, or our text was Read last night, or their typing bubble popped up and disappeared again. Maybe we can offer other people a little more grace to get back to us when they can. Less apologetic ourselves, more forgiving of others. 

Because I don’t think the problem is us. I think the expectations are too high. Being expected to be available at any time, at any place. for any reason, isn't how humans are meant to interact. It’s not something to feel guilty about; it’s a sign that something needs to change. And by choosing to be less available, I think we will actually find ourselves more available. More present in our lives. More genuinely connected to the people and moments that matter. 

So no, I’m not always available. I’m out being active. Living life in the real world. Come find me there, if you want. But until then, I’ll get back to you when I’m ready. 

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Meanwhile, multiple U.S. states are implementing phone-free policies in schools. Australia is likely to raise the minimum age for social media use to 16, Greece is enforcing a nationwide phone ban in schools, and France has implemented a bell-to-bell phone-free policy across 180 middle schools. Additionally, one of England’s largest school academy trusts, with over 35,000 students, is phasing out phones in its schools.2 We are particularly excited about the phone-free school initiatives that are going bell-to-bell and beyond instructional time bans—the policy that most teachers want and that we have long recommended.

In response to these growing initiatives, Meta and other social media companies (along with their lobby groups and the digital rights groups that they subsidize) have intensified their marketing campaigns, attempting to downplay the harm their platforms cause to teens and resist regulatory efforts.

We have published two essays (one in The Atlantic and one in The New York Times) in the past week to expose these companies' disingenuous arguments, particularly those used to oppose KOSPA. These arguments include:

1. Social media is actually beneficial for teens.

2. It is especially beneficial for teens from historically marginalized communities.

3. Nearly any regulation of social media will harm teens from historically marginalized communities.

4. KOSPA is a “censorship bill” that will violate young users' free speech.

All of these claims are misleading and misrepresent the real-world impact of these products.

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In our first piece, for The Atlantic, we (Zach and Jon) and Lennon Torres (an LGBTQ+ advocate and campaign manager at The Heat Initiative) argue that social media harms teens in disadvantaged communities more than others and that KOSPA may, in fact, benefit these teens the most. We also show the hypocrisy of tech leaders who protect their own children from their products (by delaying their access to devices, sending them to Waldorf schools, and making their nannies sign screen time contracts), while publicly saying that their products are harmless. 

You can read the full article here, or here on After Babel.

Image. Mark Zuckerberg apologizing to those impacted by child sexual exploitation during a Senate hearing. You can see Lennon sitting just above and to the left of Zuckerberg's hands. Source: New York Times. Photo: Kenny Holston/The New York Times.

Read The Atlantic Essay

In our second piece, published in The New York Times, we present the findings of a nationally representative survey of 1,006 Gen Z adults (ages 18-27) that we conducted in partnership with The Harris Poll. We wrote the essay with Will Johnson, the CEO of the Harris Poll. The survey reveals that over half of Gen Z spends more than four hours a day on social media, with 23% spending more than seven hours daily. Most support child safety regulations, and nearly half wish that TikTok, X/Twitter, and Snapchat had never been invented. 

You can read our overview of the survey results in our New York Times essay, and you can find the full survey results at the Harris Poll website.

Read The New York Times Essay

The implication from these many developments is that the tide has turned. The tipping point is here. Collective action is happening at a speed beyond anything we could have imagined when we published The Anxious Generation back in March. It’s happening in schools around the country and around the world. It’s happening in state capitals and—finally, perhaps—in the U.S. Congress. And it's happening among groups of parents who are linking up and syncing up to say: No more. Not with my kids. Parents, teachers, and politicians everywhere have had enough and seen enough. They are taking action to roll back the phone-based childhood and restore a more play-based childhood. Join them, join us, by signing up at Anxiousgeneration.com and LetGrow.com.

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Last Thursday, we (Zach, Jon, and Lennon) published an essay in The Atlantic exposing the disingenuous arguments that many social media companies use to resist regulations aimed at enhancing the safety of their products for children. These misleading arguments are particularly prevalent regarding a bill currently before Congress, known as the Kids Online Safety and Privacy Act (KOSPA). KOSPA combines the Kids Online Safety Act (widely known as KOSA) and the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act .

KOSPA is currently under consideration in the House of Representatives and may advance as early as this week. It is set to receive a vote in the full committee, and if passed, it will be up to Republican leadership to schedule it for a floor vote.

We (Zach and Jon) have been tracking and responding to the numerous arguments that social media companies and their affiliated groups use to discourage policymakers from enacting even minimal protections for minors. Perhaps the most cynical claim is that any effort to regulate social media would particularly harm LGBTQ+ teens and other young people from disadvantaged groups. However, multiple data sources show that social media is actually harming teens in these groups the most, and that protections would likely benefit them most.

As Zach compiled that data, we realized we had to bring this story out to the public. We wanted to supplement the quantitative data with the perspective of LGBTQ+ young people, and were fortunate to be connected to Lennon Torres. Lennon works at the Heat Initiative, which is a collective effort of concerned child safety experts and advocates encouraging leading technology companies to detect and eradicate child sexual abuse images and videos on their platforms. She brings a unique viewpoint as a trans person who has navigated life with social media. Her career is driven by a desire to be the supportive figure she needed during her own challenging times. This motivation has led her to focus on connecting LGBTQ+ advocacy with the need for accountability and regulation in the tech industry.

We hope that our essay will help legislators and the public see through the companies’ marketing campaigns and listen to the young people who have been telling them for years that social media needs to be fixed. 

— Zach, Jon, and Lennon

[The essay below was first published in The Atlantic on September 12th, 2024. You can read the original here. We are republishing the essay at After Babel with permission from The Atlantic] 

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Image. Mark Zuckerberg apologizing to those impacted by child sexual exploitation during a Senate hearing. You can see Lennon sitting just above and to the left of Zuckerberg's hands. Source: New York Times. Photo: Kenny Holston/The New York Times.

When the tobacco industry was accused of marketing harmful products to teens, its leaders denied the charge but knew it was true. Even worse, the industry had claimed that smoking made people healthier—by reducing anxiety, say, or slimming waistlines. 

The social-media industry is using a similar technique today. Instead of acknowledging the damage their products have done to teens, tech giants insist that they are blameless and that their products are mostly harmless. And at times, a more audacious claim is made: that social media helps teens, even as mounting evidence suggests that it’s harming many of them and playing a substantial role in the mental-health crisis afflicting young people in numerous countries around the world. 

When Mark Zuckerberg was asked in 2022 about Meta’s own finding that Instagram made many teen users feel worse about their body, for instance, he cleverly reframed the result. After noting other, more favorable findings in the same study, he proclaimed that his platform was “generally positive” for teens’ mental health, even though at least one in 10 teen girls reported that Instagram worsened each of the following: body image, sleep, eating habits, and anxiety. (Zuckerberg also failed to mention internal data demonstrating the other dangers that social media poses for teens.)

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Tech lobbyists have gone further, deploying the dual argument that social media is especially beneficial to teens from historically marginalized communities, and therefore nearly any regulation would harm them. Through their funding and, at times, their own statements, many leaders in Silicon Valley have used these claims as part of their efforts to oppose a pair of bills—now before Congress—aimed at strengthening online protections for minors, referred to collectively as the Kids Online Safety and Privacy Act. (KOSPA combines the Kids Online Safety Act, widely known as KOSA, and the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act.) 

The talking point plays into a long-running strand of progressive thought that sees digital technology as a means of empowering disadvantaged groups. The early internet did in fact help many Black, low-income, and LGBTQ+ Americans—among others—find resources and community. And even today, surveys from organizations like Hopelab and Common Sense Media find that LGBTQ+ teens report experiencing more benefits from social media than non-LGBTQ+ teens.

That’s a good reason to be careful about imposing new regulation. But the wholesale opposition to legislation ignores strong evidence that social media also disproportionately harms young people in those same communities. 

KOSPA could help. The legislation would require social-media companies to develop a version of their platforms that’s safe for children—eliminating advertising that targets minors, for example, and allowing users to scroll feeds that aren’t generated by personal-recommendation algorithms. It would demand that social-media companies take reasonable measures to mitigate potential harms such as sexual exploitation, mental-health disorders, and bullying. It would also hold companies responsible for ensuring that underage children obtain parental consent to use their platforms, without preventing teens from freely accessing social media. In July, the Senate passed the two bills 91–3; the House could take it up as soon as this month.

Even some tech companies support the legislation, but digital-rights groups––many of which are subsidized by the industry, including by Meta––have largely opposed it, arguing that KOSPA would take away the benefits that marginalized teens enjoy from social-media platforms. Some of these groups have released statements warning about the dangers that the legislation poses to LGBTQ+ youth, even after many LGBTQ+ advocates dropped their objections once they’d worked with legislators to revise KOSPA. 

A think tank supported by tech companies, meanwhile, has argued that the bills’ ban on targeted advertising for minors might result in “fewer free online services designed for children, which would prove most detrimental to lower-income households.” While digital-rights groups appeal to the political left with unsubstantiated claims about marginalized groups, they tell the right that KOSPA amounts to censorship, even though it wouldn’t limit the kinds of content that teens could search for. 

Whatever he actually believes, Zuckerberg is wrong that social media is “generally positive” for teens’ mental health. The tech industry is wrong that social media is especially good for teens in historically disadvantaged communities. And its lobbyists are wrong that regulation would do more harm than good for these groups. The evidence—from the private lives of tech executives, a growing body of empirical research, and the testimony of young users—by now strongly supports each of these points.

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One technique for determining whether a product harms children is to ask the people who designed that product if they let their kids use it. 

Steve Jobs limited his children’s use of technology.1 TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew doesn’t let his children on TikTok. Bill Gates restricted his kids’ screen time and did not give them a phone until they were 14. Google CEO Sundar Pichai didn’t give his 11-year-old a phone. Mark Zuckerberg has carefully monitored his kids’ screen time and avoided sharing identifying photos of them on Instagram. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel limited his 7-year-old’s technology use to 90 minutes a week. (Compare that with the average American teen, who spends nearly nine hours a day on screens, not including for school or homework.) 

The examples continue: Some tech executives write up “nanny contracts,” compelling babysitters to keep their children away from screens. Many of them pay more than $35,000 a year to send their kids to the Waldorf School of the Peninsula—a few miles down the road from Meta’s and Google’s headquarters—which doesn’t allow children to use screens until seventh or eighth grade.

Of course, few people would call the children of tech elites marginalized. But it is curious that these elites publicly assert that digital technology helps children—especially the most vulnerable—while expunging it from their own kids’ lives. Those choices are particularly galling given how intensely social-media companies try to attract other people’s children to their products; how little they do to prevent underage use; and how hard many of them fight to block legislation that would protect young people on their platforms. 

The social-media platforms of today are not like the internet of the 1990s. The early internet helped isolated and disadvantaged teens find information and support, as do many modern platforms. But today’s social media is engineered in such a way that makes it more dangerous than much of the early internet. Do teens really need bottomless, algorithmically curated news feeds that prioritize emotional power and political extremity just to find information? Do they really benefit from being interrupted throughout the day with manipulative notifications designed to keep them looking and clicking? How much was gained when social-media platforms took over teens’ online lives? How much was lost? 

Researchers at Instagram didn’t have to ask that last question when they interviewed young users around 2019. Unprompted, teens across multiple focus groups blamed the platform for increasing rates of anxiety and depression. Other studies have found that a substantial share of young people believe that social media is bad for their mental health. An increasing amount of empirical evidence backs them up. On the Substack After Babel, written by two of this article’s authors, Jon and Zach, we have run numerous essays by young people testifying to these harms and have reported on organizations created by members of Gen Z to push back on social-media companies. Where are the Gen Z voices praising social media for the mental-health benefits it has conferred upon their generation? They are few and far between.

Of course, many teens do not feel that smartphones or social media have been a negative force in their lives; a majority tend to view the impacts of digital technology as neither positive nor negative. But that’s no reason to dismiss the harm experienced by so many young people. If evidence suggested that another product were hurting any significant number of the children and adolescents who used it, that product would be pulled from the shelves immediately and the manufacturer would be forced to fix it. Big Tech must be held to the same standard. 

As it turns out, the adolescents being harmed the most by social media are those from historically disadvantaged groups. Recent surveys have found that LGBTQ+ adolescents are much more likely than their peers to say that social media has a negative impact on their health and that using it less would improve their lives. Compared with non-LGBTQ+ teens, nearly twice as many LGBTQ+ teens reported that they would be better off without TikTok and Instagram. Nearly three times as many said the same for Snapchat. 

Youth from marginalized groups have good reason to feel this way. LGBTQ+ teens are significantly more likely to experience cyberbullying, online sexual predation, and a range of other online harms, including disrupted sleep and fragmented attention, compared with their peers. LGBTQ+ minors are also three times more likely to experience unwanted and risky online interactions.

One of us—Lennon, an LGBTQ+ advocate—has experienced many of these harms firsthand. At age 13, while navigating adolescence as a young transgender person, she got her first iPhone and immediately downloaded Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. Her Instagram following grew from less than 100 to nearly 50,000 in just one month as she began to achieve national recognition as a competitive dancer. Soon she was receiving insulting messages about her queer identity—even death threats. Seeking a friendlier place to explore her identity, she took the advice of some online users and began corresponding on gay chat sites, often with middle-aged men. Some offered her the support that she had been looking for, but others were malicious. 

Several men asked Lennon to perform sexual acts on camera, threatening to publicize revealing screenshots they had taken of her if she tried to refuse. The shame, fear, and regret that she felt motivated her to devote her career to protecting children online, ultimately joining the Heat Initiative, which pushes the tech industry to make safer products and platforms for children.

What about youth from other historically disadvantaged communities? Black and Hispanic teens are slightly less likely than white teens to report cyberbullying, but they are much more likely to say that online harassment is “a major problem for people their age.” Evidence suggests that teens with depression may be at higher risk of harm from social media, and studies show that reducing social-media use is most beneficial for young people with preexisting mental-health problems. 

Although social media can certainly provide benefits to vulnerable teens, the industry has regularly dismissed the fact that its platforms are consistently, and disproportionately, hurting them. 

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For the past three decades, the term digital divide has been used to refer to a seemingly immutable law: Kids in wealthy households have ample access to digital technologies; kids in other households, not so much. Policy makers and philanthropists put up large sums of money to close the gap. Although it persists in some parts of the world, the digital divide is starting to reverse in many developed nations, where kids from low-income families are now spending more time on screens and social media—and suffering more harm from them—than their economically privileged peers. 

“Entertainment screen use” occupies about two additional hours a day for teens from low-income families compared with those from high-income families. A 2020 Pew Research Center report found that young children whose parents have no more than a high-school education are about three times likelier to use TikTok than children whose parents have a postgraduate degree. The same trend holds for Snapchat and Facebook. Part of the reason is that college-educated parents are more likely than parents without a college degree to believe that smartphones might adversely affect their children—and therefore more inclined to limit screen time.

The discrepancy isn’t just a matter of class. LGBTQ+ teens report spending more time on social media than non-LGBTQ+ teens. And according to a 2022 Pew survey, “Black and Hispanic teens are roughly five times more likely than White teens to say they are on Instagram almost constantly.” 

In other words, expanding access to smartphones and social media seems to be increasing social disparities, not decreasing them. As Jim Steyer, the CEO of Common Sense Media, told The New York Times:

[Greater use of social media by Black and Hispanic young people] can help perpetuate inequality in society because higher levels of social media use among kids have been demonstrably linked to adverse effects such as depression and anxiety, inadequate sleep, eating disorders, poor self-esteem, and greater exposure to online harassment.

Meanwhile, tech leaders are choosing to delay their children’s access to digital devices, sending their kids to tech-free Waldorf schools and making their nannies sign screen-time contracts.

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The tech industry and others who oppose regulations such as KOSPA often argue that more education and parental controls are the best ways to address social media’s harms. These approaches are certainly important, but they will do nothing to deter tech companies from continuing to develop products that are, by design, difficult to quit. That’s why calling for “consumer education” is an approach that other companies with harmful products (including alcohol and tobacco) have relied on to generate public sympathy and defer regulation. 

The approach would do little to change the underlying reality that social-media platforms, as currently engineered, create environments that are unsafe for children and adolescents. They disseminate harmful content through personalized recommendation algorithms, they foster behavioral addiction, and they enable adult strangers from around the world to communicate directly and privately with children. 

Social-media companies have shown over and over again that they will not solve these problems on their own. They need to be forced to change. Young people agree. A recent Harris Poll found that 69 percent of 18-to-27-year-olds support “a law requiring social media companies to develop a ‘child safe’ account option for users under 18.” Seventy-two percent of LGBTQ+ members of Gen Z do too.

Legislators must reject the flawed arguments that social-media companies and tech lobbyists promote in their efforts to block regulation, just as legislators rejected the arguments of tobacco companies in the 20th century. It’s time to listen to the young people—and the thousands of kids with stories like Lennon’s—who have been telling us for years that social media has to be fixed.

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