I received the email this week–my child’s high school’s PTA was having an event: Advocating for a Cell-phone-free Environment in Schools. It promised to address four topics pressing to parents:
📌 The move to remove cell phones from schools in New York City and State – with the latest updates on legislative efforts.
📌 The potential impacts of social-media use and cell-phone dependency, along with emerging research suggesting possible links between digital technologies and educational challenges.
📌 How this debate ties into broader political and legislative battles over regulating Big Tech.
📌 The growing nationwide movement to hold digital platforms accountable.
Note that only the first two have anything to do with schools. This spring I have started conversations about work on two youth-focused digital literacy projects, both of which have to consider the public policy implications of new anti-phone bans around the country.
I needed to get more informed.
I started with the author of the book driving much of this agenda: social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. His best selling book The Anxious Generation argues that, well, it’s right in the subtitle: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. Full stop.
To hear from him directly I listened to his recent appearance on Ezra Klein’s podcast. You can listen it in full here. And I was glad I did. Haidt is a compelling and engaging speaker. He tells a clear story, that is gripping, of parents losing control of their ability to parent and children losing their childhoods to corporate tech giants.
But the story is just that – a story. It’s too clear. Too tight. Too sensational. And, in fact, too familiar.
I, myself, was once a scholar of a time period when parents and communities rallied to protect their children from the obviously damaging impact of a new form of corporate media that was invading the lives of their children and destroying their moral framework.
The time period was the late 1930s and early 1940s. The medium were comic books.
The impact of the public hearings and book burnings and industry self-regulations led not to either better comic books nor the end of juvenile delinquency. Instead, it stunted for generations the growth of comic books from growing into a mature medium (changing when, in part, Maus won a Pulitzer Prize).
It was clear listening to Haidt that he had a moral agenda (much of which I could support) but seemed to be cherry picking stats to support it. And, worse, his solutions seemed, to me, to have little chance of bringing about the changes he sought.
After being introduced to Haidt, I needed to hear from his critics. Top of list seemed to be Candice Odgers, Professor of Psychological Science and Informatics at the University of California Irvine. I listened to her speak on the topic in a different podcast (below).
She confirmed what I was suspected, about the cherry picking, and went further, accusing this movement of using youth as the tip of the spear attacking social media giants. (Note the 3rd and 4th bullets above from my school’s PTA–all about attacking industry, which certainly deserves the criticism, but nothing about the needs of young people).
Finally, I NEEDED this gem: Making Sense of the Research on Social Media & Youth Mental Health. In it, Dr. Jonathan Haidt and Dr. Candice Odgers go head-to-head: discussing the topic, each other’s approach, and then take questions from young people. I found it riveting! I welcome you to listen to it yourself below.
My recent deep dive into this public debate highlights for me that any conversation that is only focused on what digital media is doing to young people removes their agency, ignores the roles they play navigating these challenges, and prevents us from applying their lessons to any future solution. More crucially, they refuse to consider what young people are doing with these tools and how bans would prevent youth from accessing the many many ways they use social media to better their lives.
My PTA invited parents to submit questions in advance. This is what I sent in:
The current push for a cell-phone ban looks little different from past moral panics about corporate media influence on youth (pulp novels, comic books, hip hop, video games, etc.) which, historically, have offered overly simplified solutions to pressing social issues. This hysteria is dangerous, sucking time, energy, and resources from addressing root causes of, in this case, mental health concerns about adolescents and, separately, the increased role of social media platforms in our lives. The vast majority of social science researchers, such as Candice Odgers, do not see in the evidence the same causal factors claimed by those supporting cellphone bans. Instead of taking control away from educators, parents, and youth, why don’t we focus on developing crucial digital literacies, pressuring tech giants to build safer spaces, and working directly with young people to design solutions that work?
