My D’s town has a “bike bus” that my GD is looking forward to joining when she starts K next year. D gets the kids outside every day. They do a lot of biking scootering, playgrounds, gardening, etc. so hoping this sticks when they are older.
3 Likes
While I completely agree with the negative aspects of phone culture, it doesn’t stop there. Personally, I think our snowplow parenting culture has also had a lot to do with undermining our kids’ confidence and ability to problem solve. By doing “for them” (exhibit 1: the extent to which the college search is managed by parents) we’ve taken something away.
12 Likes
Smart Phones are a great tool for many things, but it takes effort to teach and manage a child’s usage. I credit my youngest’s phone with her love of history and how she has gone down many rabbit holes on youtube to learn things. So much so she is going to be a history teacher.
There is good and bad about most things our children grow up with. Sports can end up taking up too much time and affecting academics. Theatre & Band can do the same.
As far as kids playing outside organized sports and the public’s perception that crime has risen affected that long before phones got in their hands. When I grew up in the late 70s and 80s life was much more dangerous than it is now.
2 Likes
I believe (and believed at the time) that closing the schools was a mistake but I also know that it was done with good intentions based on the information we had at the time and that there is no need to “hold anyone accountable”. I do think some are romanticizing life before phones. As a child of the 60s and 70s I put myself in and was put in a lot of dangerous situations and did a lot of stupid things with no oversight and no way for anyone to find me if things went sideways. My kid had a fair amount of freedom starting in elementary school - she walked places and rode her bike places and later drove places -I tried hard not to be overprotective and limited both screen time and social media when she was younger but having a phone gave me some peace of mind when she was /is off wherever and it gave her a way to be in touch with friends during those terrible Covid isolation months (FaceTime, group chats and so on). She probably spends too much time in her phone - as do I! - but is certainly not glued to it and loves to walk in the woods and read actual books.
2 Likes
Agree. I also think the two feed each other. The phones help you monitor and constantly be in touch with your child and keep them occupied (and “safe” at home) when they could be outside or with friends somewhere.
I think the worst thing about social media in particular is that we all know it’s bad for our teens and we still allow them to have it.
1 Like
Many adults are glued to their phones and hooked on social media. These adults have school aged children and this is what their kids see.
Like mentioned upthread I also see plenty of kids outside, on their bikes, walking to/from school, playing football, soccer and basketball, etc.- just pick up games, nothing organized- just like my kids did( all in their 20’s).
1 Like
The article makes the point that outside time started diminishing decades ago with the perception of danger. But the decline steepened drastically around 2008. I wish folks would take a look at the evidence presented. It’s fascinating in a not good way.
1 Like
Well I’ll be the contrarian here; I read this opinion piece and think it is just as junky as Jonathan Haidt’s other work (perhaps you’ll remember him as the guy who claims that Liberals have an under-developed and simplistic sense of right and wrong due to being too hung up on “fairness” and too worried about hurting other people, while Conservatives have a nuanced and sophisticated morality that takes into account a wide variety of values.)
And then Haidt makes his argument in this piece using quotes from Freya India and Rikki Schlott who have made themselves internet famous by deriding “liberal women.”
But this sort of sensationalism is what he has to fall back on because the actual research on the effects of phone use on adolescents typically fails to find more than a small effect at best.
2 Likes
I don’t know Haidt’s other work. I also don’t know the quoted folk you refer to. I would not care for those takes, I’m sure. Nevertheless, I don’t see here in this comment an engagement with the actual argument, which definitely does seem well-supported and does align with my own observations and those of many educators I know. I’m about as liberal and pro-feminist as they come, but I find it hard to ignore the changes that are happening to all of us because of the online world and how those changes are magnified in those who grew up in it entirely as opposed as the previous generations who had a former perspective to compare to.
3 Likes
My engagement with the actual argument is that this opinion piece is weak because he doesn’t present any studies that support his point. And that is because there are few if any. There have been increases in some negative mental health outcomes, and he believes it is due to the phones, but the actual studies are weak and conflicting.
Could you share some research, or good popular articles that summarize research, supporting your point? That could be helpful.
Additional thoughts on this topic.
3 Likes
I grew up in a working-class suburb with some empty lots and abandoned buildings. Unfortunately, since kids were not taught about good/bad touching, I know of some pretty disgusting sexual abuse of both boys and girls. The very least of it: My parents were lifelong friends with a family whose older son exposed himself to me (the only girl in the group of four 10-11-12-yr-olds) at the playground in the schoolyard across the street from our house. I had no vocabulary to say anything to my parents. This boy became a reported child sex abuser in adulthood.
6 Likes
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2167702619859336?journalCode=cpxa
You can find many others by doing a lit search. But studies where they didn’t find much, or where what they found is mixed do not get much attention.
ETA: There may indeed be risks. Smart phones may indeed be bad for teens. But the article from the Atlantic is in the moral panic mode. I remember when the bogeyman was rap music with dirty lyrics, and before that video games, and before that it was television. And I have to laugh about all the hand-wringing over young people delaying sexual activity; the panic used to be that they were NOT delaying sexual activity!
2 Likes
Recommend After Babel on substack.
1 Like
I don’t think any parent with a child born after 2000 needs a study to validate what they see every day about the harmful effects of the phone.
11 Likes
I think when we, the Gen Xers, look at ourselves in the mirror, we must start with our own generation. I’ve seen a shocking number of parents, not only addicted to social media, but, going down huge “rabbit holes”. Parents need to adjust to the new reality. Social media isn’t going away. The challenge is to turn social media into a positive tool. And to be honest, social media has its positive sides. It enables kids who otherwise might feel alone, to find similar kids to connect with.
It is human nature to tend to think of things being better back then because we blot out the negatives. The world was equally scary 30 years ago. We just didn’t know it.
6 Likes
But this book.
The world might have been scary30 years ago but it sure seems like I knew far fewer UMC kids off-track, so to speak, than I do now-kids from intact families with no financial concerns or family drama in safe neighborhoods who now have mental illness, failure to launch, etc etc
5 Likes
No one knows what goes on behind closed doors in some households. Kids go online to search for something they are lacking elsewhere.
2 Likes