The Harms of Smartphones; Not So Smart! By Mrs. Vera West
Psychologist Jonathan Haidt has a new book, just released, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness (2024). Haidt has been researching for some time the connection between smartphone use, social media, and the teen mental health crisis. Teen mental health significantly declined after the introduction of iPhones, but he sees TikTok as even more dangerous, and supports the ban of it. The mental health of both young males and girls substantially declined during the Covid lockdowns, which had the unfortunate effect of making youth more dependent upon social media. This has created artificial worlds, increased alienation, and impacted severely upon socialisation skills.
Haidt fears that if this mental health crisis deepens even more, alienated youth will be open to strong authoritarian leaders who promise to put things right. And we certainly would not want that.
"It's hard to believe sometimes that smartphones and social media haven't been around forever — but for one generation, they have. Gen Z doesn't know a time when they weren't ubiquitous. This cohort also happens to be the generation with the worst mental health in America. Is that a coincidence?
The social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has reams of data to argue it's not. And in his new book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, he is launching a shot at what he hopes will become a full-scale war against social media and smartphone use by kids and teens.
Through his research, which he also highlights on his Substack, "After Babel," Haidt found that teen mental health has dramatically worsened after iPhone usage became widespread and Instagram was created. While he blames Instagram for causing the most initial damage of the new era — particularly in fueling declining mental health for girls — he now sees a new, graver threat. "TikTok is arguably the worst consumer product ever invented," says Haidt, who's a strong supporter of legislation targeting TikTok in Congress.
Without action — from parents, lawmakers, schools and tech companies — the youth mental health crisis will continue unabated, he warns. And there could be some unexpected political fallout. As Haidt puts it, with a growing sense of anxiety and dislocation, people may become more open to an authoritarian leader who promises to stop the chaos.
How COVID Lockdowns Hit Mental Health of Teenage Boys HardestTeenage boys were hit hardest by the COVID lockdowns, with their mental health failing to recover despite the return to normality, according to the most comprehensive academic study of its kind. Early research into how lockdowns affected children indicated that girls had suffered more significant mental health problems than boys.
However, a new study carried out by academics from three U.K. universities, published in the journal European Child + Adolescent Psychiatry, found that over the long term, teenage boys' mental health was more adversely affected.
The academics found that while both sexes had an immediate decline in their mental health, boys then did not experience the natural improvement in mental well-being that usually comes with maturation as they move through the teenage years.
For those who were moving between primary and secondary school during the pandemic years, lockdowns also disrupted integration into new social groups and the chance to form friendships. For older teenagers, universities and colleges switched to virtual lectures and seminars, leaving new students unable to form bonds with others."
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