Our Screenagers are the Anxious Generation
We’ve all seen that family at dinner, together physically, yet alone in their digital worlds, silently gazing at individual devices. Or teenagers, standing in line for a fair ride, glued to their phones, engrossed in TikTok videos or ‘doomscrolling’ social media instead of connecting with each other. This pervasive disconnect feels unnatural, even unsettling, and yet, so many of us—adults included—find ourselves hopelessly tethered to our screens.
As a County Office of Education administrator, I attended a symposium that featured a keynote address by Jonathan Haidt, author of the “The Anxious Generation.” In his book Haidt sought the cause of the clear and verifiable increase in mental health emergencies among teens and young adults since 2010, and the only visible and consistent correlation is to the introduction of smart phones, particularly those with front-facing cameras, and the rise of social networks with “likes” and infinite scroll capabilities.
Additionally, Haidt notes that whistleblowers from social media companies published documents confirming their company’s aim to keep people, including teens, on social media as long as possible each day, even when their own internal studies showed the serious negative impact of their product on the mental health of young people, especially girls.
The film, Screenagers, which has been shown in Calaveras County multiple times in the Vallecito School District and the Bret Harte Union High School District, features Dr. Haidt extensively and echoes the concerns raised in his book. Viewers are introduced to a medical doctor and mother of a young teenager who is about to get her first smartphone. She is clearly already addicted to her Wi-Fi-enabled tablet, as she struggles to pay attention during a brief conversation with her mother. We learn of a middle school girl mercilessly bullied on social media and vindictively tricked into sharing a compromising photo with a “boyfriend” that only pretended to like her so he could humiliate her. Finally, we hear the story of a young man who loses his full-ride scholarship to Gonzaga University because his video game addiction dominates nearly 24 hours of each day, requiring his family to place him into a rehab facility for technology addiction. After suffering literal withdrawal symptoms, the young man rediscovers his love for the piano and acknowledged that he was wasting his life by not diversifying his interests and activities.
This final case highlights an often overlooked, but far-reaching impact of our smartphone use, that of opportunity cost. The more time our kids spend scrolling on their phones like zombies, the more they miss out on pivotal developmental experiences. Haidt refers to this as the transition from play-based childhood to screen-based childhood. The problem is that children and adolescents learn through play, and most especially, through interactive play with others. Social play, and its inherent challenges, both social and physical, are what build a child’s social skills, grit and confidence. Facing low-stakes challenges with peers and the successes and failures that result, build resilience and emotional intelligence. Many of the anxieties and anti-social behaviors schools have seen in recent years may be attributed to the lack of real world experience our children have had in play with one another.
I would love for every parent, guardian, grandparent and everyone else, to attend a showing of “Screenagers” at a Calaveras school site during the 25-26 school year and read “The Anxious Generation”, but since I know not everyone will be able, I want to share a few ways we can help our young people escape the worst of the negative impact of digital media, some of which comes from Dr. Haidt: Limit screen time, get children active outside, don’t give your child a smart phone until at least age 14, don’t allow social media use until at least 16, don’t allow the cell phone to remain at the dinner table or in a child’s bedroom at night, and finally, teach and model responsible digital media use.
I firmly believe we were created to be social beings, meant to live in relationship with our creator and our neighbors, but digital media and online social networks are at best a shadow of real social interaction and at worst can become a corruption of it. Our young people need our help in developing a balance that embraces technology as a tool, without allowing it to become all-consuming and dehumanizing.
