I grew up in the small town of Okanogan in northeastern Washington during the 1970s. The winters were cold and the summers were hot. But regardless of the season or the weather, my friends and I spent most of our time outside. In summer, we cruised all over town on our bikes like Hells Angels on training wheels. We climbed trees and fell out of trees to break bones and bruise egos. We ventured up into the sagebrush covered hills above town in search of rattlesnakes. In winter, we squared off for snowball fights and raced sleds down the steepest snow-packed street we could find. We were released into the wild and unsupervised by adults. The only rules from our parents were to 鈥渟tay out of trouble鈥� and 鈥渂e home before dinner time鈥�.
I recall all of this not to be nostalgic nor brag about my mostly idyllic childhood, but to make the observation that my neighborhood friends and I spent most of our time playing outside in the physical world. We were the last generation to fully do that. We grew up before the development of the Internet, social media, online video games, and smartphones began beckoning subsequent generations to stay inside, glued to a screen and interacting with others online rather than face-to-face.
According to social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, this shift from what he terms a 鈥減lay-based childhood鈥� to a 鈥減hone-based childhood鈥� has had catastrophic consequences.
鈥淕en Z [those born between 1997-2012] became the first generation in history go through puberty with a portal in their pockets that called them away from the people nearby and into an alternative universe that was exciting, addictive, unstable鈥nd unsuitable for children and adolescents,鈥� Haidt writes in his new book The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.
鈥淐hildren need a great deal of free play to thrive,鈥� Haidt writes. 鈥淚t鈥檚 an imperative that鈥檚 evident across all mammal species. The small-scale challenges and setbacks that happen during play are like an inoculation that prepares children to face much larger challenges later.鈥�
The children of Gen Z, many of them in their teens and early to mid 20s now, are not doing well. Rates of teenage mental illness took a sharp turn upward beginning in 2010 and have been rising ever since. Clinical diagnoses of anxiety and depression among college students in the U.S. more than doubled between 2010 and 2018. Adolescent suicide rates have also more than doubled during that same time period.
Haidt makes a compelling argument that this growing mental health crisis has been driven primarily by the mass adoption of smartphones combined with increased engagement with social media and playing of online video games.
鈥淲ith so many new and exciting virtual activities, many adolescents (and adults) lost the ability to be fully present with the people around them, which changed social life for everyone, even for the small minority that did not use these platforms,鈥� writes Haidt. 鈥淭hat is why I refer to the period from 2010 to 2015 as the Great Rewiring of Childhood. Social patterns, role models, emotions, physical activity, and even sleep patterns were fundamentally recast, for adolescents, over the course of just five years.鈥�
Haidt outlines four resulting 鈥渇oundational harms鈥� that have emerged from the proliferation of smartphones, social media, and online video gaming: social deprivation, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation, and addiction.
How do we address this crisis? Haidt recommends four 鈥渇oundational reforms鈥� that parents, schools, and governments can implement to significantly improve the mental health of our young people:
1) No smartphones before high school.
2) No social media before 16.
3) No phones in schools.
4) Increased childhood independence and unsupervised play.
While I agree with all those, I fear it鈥檚 鈥渢oo little, too late鈥�. The damage has been done by these new insidious technologies that were released and adopted without much thought given to possible long-term consequences and much needed oversight and regulation of the big tech companies that have profited from them.
We鈥檙e currently following that same path with the development of artificial intelligence (AI). Big tech companies are pouring billions of dollars into A.I. research and initiatives in hopes of becoming the dominant player in that emerging market. Google alone invested $30 billion in AI with Facebook following at $22 billion and Amazon and Microsoft each with a respective $10 billion.
As AI increasingly permeates all facets of modern life, we will be bombarded with new challenges at the same time we鈥檙e reeling from the challenges that have resulted from widespread adoption of smartphones and the proliferation of social media and online gaming that have, collectively, handicapped our youth.
鈥淭here鈥檚 a God-shaped hole in every human heart,鈥� Haidt writes, paraphrasing the French philosopher Blaise Pascal. 鈥淚f it doesn鈥檛 get filled with something noble and elevated, modern society will quickly pump it full of garbage.鈥�
