How To Counter A Tech Culture Damaging Our Children

Jonathan Haidt’s call to action for Jewish parents to buck the trend of smartphone addiction is prompting a response.

No smartphones before high school, says Haidt. But is it too late to change the culture?

A tough-love talk by one of the country’s most influential social psychologists to a large group of concerned Jewish day school parents and educators about what he calls “an epidemic of mental illness” among our youth has sparked interest in a national Jewish initiative to respond to the crisis. 

In a recent talk to the Jewish Parents Forum of the Tikvah Fund, with a combined participation (live audience at a New York synagogue and those on Zoom) of more than 2,000 people, Jonathan Haidt, the co-author of “The Coddling of the American Mind,” offered  some strong advice on child-rearing that most parents today don’t want to hear. Like encouraging children to be more independent at a younger age, participating in unsupervised activities on playgrounds with no adults around to settle differences among the kids. Or holding off on letting your son or daughter have a smart phone until high school even if they’ll be out of the social loop and you’ll be out of touch with your child during the day. 

“We’re pulling our kids out of the real world and letting them grow up in networks when they should be in community,” Haidt asserted.

He said he has spent the last eight years “trying to solve the mystery” of the alarming rates of depression, anxiety and self-harm among teens in the U.S. His research led him to write a new book entitled “The Anxious Generation,” due out early next year, asserting that one-third of Gen Z may suffer from mental health issues. 

The chief culprit, Haidt found, is the smartphone, designed ingeniously to be behaviorally addictive. It takes up a major chunk of youngsters’ (and our) waking hours: 7 hours a day for pre-teens, on average, and 9 hours a day for high school students.

“This is insane, hurting our kids in 15 different ways,” Haidt said, referring to what he calls “The Great Rewiring” of the next generation, with young people busy texting in class, fragmenting their attention, and leaving them with little time outside of school for developing in-person relationships, the most important element of mental health. The result is damage to young people’s social and sexual development.

He explained how smartphones – “the high-speed internet in your pocket” – impact negatively, but in different ways, for boys and girls. Girls, who tend to be more emotional than boys, Haidt said, are heavier users of social media and focus on their looks, feeling vulnerable, depressed and anxious. 

Boys, who benefit from active play, instead are withdrawing deeper into the virtual world of video games – and often, porn – depriving them of the kinds of human interaction that prepare them for maturity. 

Among the results of this new form of childhood for both genders is a lack of independence and a sense of fragility, viewing the world as dangerous. (In his other writings, Haidt has asserted that these characteristics of being “coddled” result in college students more concerned about being protected from, rather than exploring, new ideas.)

But he had some comforting words for his audience, noting that the pillars of Jewish life help offset the dangers he described. Key is the emphasis on community, through synagogue life, rituals and rules that bring people together in person, singing, sharing Shabbat and holiday meals, etc. 

A self-described Jewish atheist, Haidt said he came to realize what he missed in the power of “religious traditions that elevate and uplift spirituality, all of which is blocked by a phone-based childhood” that can be “spiritually deadening.”

Is ‘Collective Action’ By Parents Do-able?

Following his presentation, Haidt engaged In a Q and A session with Caroline Bryk, executive director of the Jewish Parent Forum, which holds monthly meetings in person and online for more than 6,000 Jewish parents across the U.S. “committed to raising morally courageous and proud Jewish, Zionist and American citizens” while dealing with “the moral hazards” of today’s culture. 

The two discussed how best to deal with what Haidt called “the collective action problem” of parents going against the tide in seeking to limit the use of smartphones and social media for their children in school and at home. 

In a call to action, he urged parents to engage in a coordinated effort to address the problem in four ways: 

. No smartphones before high school. (“Starting kids early is insane,” Haidt said, noting that parents don’t permit other addictions like cigarettes or drugs at an early age. Flip phones are acceptable, he added, if parents need to reach their child during the day.)

. No Instagram or Tik Tok account before the age of 16.

. Phone-free schools. (Educators hate smartphones, Haidt said, but fear parental pressure if the devices are banned. If the school leadership knew parents were on their side, bans could work.) 

. Far more free-play and independence, including longer recesses for unsupervised play at school. (“Maximum security prisoners get more free time than kids in school,” Haidt said.)

He encouraged parents to seek more information from letgo.org, a movement for childhood independence he co-founded whose motto is “when we let go we … Let Grow.”  

“We’re pulling our kids out of the real world,” says Jonathan Haidt.

Are Haidt’s recommendations realistic?

While it’s common for parents to bemoan social media and the seeming addiction their children have to smartphones and the Internet, many would say that the tech culture is so ingrained into the younger generation that there’s no going back. And some say that, like training wheels, having chidren learn to use social media when they are young enough to have to rely on parental guidance/control is a good thing. Others might well point out that neighborhood unsupervised play may have been more prevalent in simpler times, but crime rates and other urban problems have increased to the degree that it would be irresponsible to let their children play outside without adults present.

But Haidt and other advocates of the “let grow” movement, while recognizing the social pressure on parents to be more protective, maintain that parents today are transferring their anxieties to their children and making them over-dependent, lacking in self-confidence and resilience.

Bryk, the Jewish Parents Forum exec, says the evening with Haidt “sparked serious reflection – and action – in schools across the country,” with several Jewish organizations now in discussion on holding a summit in the spring to bring together leaders from as many as 50 Jewish day schools and “reassess their approach in a collaborative way.”

In addition, “parents have convened focus groups to brainstorm ways to implement recommendations” Haidt made, including pledges to delay the use of smartphones and forming book clubs to discuss the professor’s new book, “The Anxious Generation.”

“We do recognize that social media is deeply entrenched in the culture and that change takes time,” Bryk noted. “What I have seen, though, is an openness on the part of families and schools to a new kind of partnership and a willingness to make adjustments – in schools and homes – in light of the alarming data.”

Time will tell whether such efforts make a dent in the prevailing culture and possibly even bring “helicopter parents” back down to earth.