Over the past couple months, a handful of friends have sent me links for articles and podcasts interviewing Jonathan Haidt. Haidt is a social psychologist whose new book, “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness,”(published in March 2024), recently reached the No. 1 spot on the New York Times’ best-seller list.
Haidt argues that the teen mental health crisis is directly linked to the use of smartphones and social media, and he encourages parents to limit their children’s phone and app use before high school. Critics of Haidt say that his data is lacking, but he counters that the correlation between the rise in social media and the rise in mental health issues among teens is indisputable. Furthermore, he notes that it is near impossible to conduct research on minors, and that results from social science experiments are inherently faulty.
Personally, I think Haidt is not wrong in naming this an “epidemic of mental illness,” but for me, as a parent and a human that uses social media, I am actually more concerned by the “rewiring” of all of our brains, parents/adults included. This is not to sweep aside the widespread mental health issues that youth seem to be facing, but I am troubled by the changing way we interact with each other and the world around us.
In an interview with the New Yorker, Haidt describes how he encourages his students (at Stern School of Business) to refocus:
“Try to convince them that your attention is the most precious thing you have. You could make huge amounts of money; there’s no limit to how much money you could make. But there’s a very severe limit on how much attention you have. You can’t get more of it. So who are you going to give it away to? Tell me which companies you’re going to allow to take your attention every day…Once you phrase it like that, they turn off almost all their notifications, and we get remarkable results. They say that for the first time, they can think clearly. They’re able to do their homework. They’re less anxious. Modern life is fragmenting all of us, and it’s really doing a number on young people. If we reverse that, we improve their mental health.”
Even if all of your push notifications are off, think about all of the ways in which your attention is divided. For me, I am a mom of two young kids, I am married, my immediate family lives on the opposite side of the country, I am running my own business, and (oh, almost forgot) I am trying to take care of my physical and mental health! I really don’t need any more things vying for my attention! Do you?
As I wrote in my last blog post, I am not ready to eliminate my smartphone or all apps, BUT there is a strong case for greatly limiting use. Whether you start practicing “no phone Sundays” or make your bedroom a no-phone zone, I challenge you to do something! Make more art and scroll less. Life is too short to be wasted, staring into a screen.