I am addicted!<\/p>\n
To my phone.<\/p>\n
I check an email and before I realize it, I\u2019m watching TikTok videos: lions fight hyenas, military dads reunite with kids, athletes do amazing things \u2026<\/p>\n
I look up, and an hour has passed.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve wasted time, ignored my family and friends, and accomplished nothing.<\/p>\n
But who cares? I\u2019m old. I\u2019ve already achieved what I\u2019m likely to achieve.<\/p>\n
Still, what about kids?<\/p>\n
\u201cAttention spans are declining,\u201d says psychologist Jonathan Haidt. \u201cLevels of anxiety, depression, self-harm were pretty stable \u2026 all of a sudden, the rates go way up, especially for girls.\u201d<\/p>\n
His bestselling book (on bestseller lists for more than a year!) blames smartphones.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce they get a smartphone \u2026 time with friends plunges. One of the best things you can do as a kid is hang out with friends, joke around, have adventures. If your kids went through puberty on a smartphone with social media, they came out different than human beings before that.\u201d<\/p>\n
My son, Max, once worked for social media companies. Now he makes his living speaking to students about how phones hook them. He compares smartphones to casino slot machines: \u201cAll the things we love about social media, those are the reward in the slot machine \u2026 we get that \u2018hit\u2019 once in a while. \u2026 That\u2019s there to keep us scrolling for hours.\u201d<\/p>\n
Haidt agrees, calling smartphones a \u201cgambling machine.\u201d<\/p>\n
They say some apps are worse than others.<\/p>\n
\u201cInstagram, Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok. Those really shatter attention spans. In terms of exposure to things that are really dangerous, Snap is the worst,\u201d says Haidt. \u201cIn terms of destroying your ability to pay attention, TikTok is the worst. In terms of destroying a teenage girl\u2019s sense of confidence, self-esteem, body image, Instagram is the worst.\u201d<\/p>\n
He says social media affects boys and girls differently.<\/p>\n
\u201cCheck in on the kids at age 14, girls are doing worse. They\u2019re more depressed and anxious, more messed up.\u201d<\/p>\n
But a few years later, he says, \u201cGirls are more likely to have gone to college, gotten a job, and moved out of their parents\u2019 home. Boys are more likely to still be in their parents\u2019 basement playing video games. They never grew up. Real life is incredibly boring compared to a video game or porn.\u201d<\/p>\n
Teachers say phone addiction makes it harder to teach.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you and I were in school,\u201d says Haidt, \u201csuppose they let you take your TV into class. You couldn\u2019t possibly learn.\u201d<\/p>\n
These are big problems, but I\u2019m a skeptic. Do phones really wreck kids\u2019 lives?<\/p>\n
We don\u2019t know that, say researchers like psychologist Chris Ferguson. \u201cCorrelation does not equal causation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut teen depression is skyrocketing,\u201d I push back, \u201cup 145% for girls since 2010.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTeen suicide was actually very high in the early 1990s,\u201d he replies, \u201cthen it decreased \u2026 way before social media. \u2026 Dr. Haidt has cherry-picked a lot of data and presented only the data that support his narrative.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI am not cherry-picking!\u201d Haidt replies. \u201cI\u2019m the only one in this debate who has picked all of the cherries and laid them out on a blanket.\u201d<\/p>\n
He does lay out alternative possibilities, like teen marijuana use and the decline of marriage.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy theory is the only plausible one out there,\u201d he says. \u201cNo one\u2019s even proposed one that will work across so many countries. When you ask people to get off of social media for more than a week, their levels of depression, anxiety, go down.\u201d<\/p>\n
His book suggests that parents ban phones until high school.<\/p>\n
I push back. Kids will complain, \u201cAll my friends have one!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut what if it was only most of your friends?\u201d he replies. \u201cThen, it\u2019s much easier.\u201d<\/p>\n
He wants schools to ban phones, and many have.<\/p>\n
I ask Ferguson, \u201cWhat\u2019s the cost of banning it in schools?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cUnintended negative consequences,\u201d he replies. \u201cAre we suspending kids for cellphone use? A lot of schools are, and that can cause real harm to the kids.\u201d<\/p>\n
Haidt insists, \u201cWhen schools ban phones, the results are overwhelmingly positive. \u2026 Kids know that life would be better if they didn\u2019t spend five or six hours a day on social media. They know that, but they can\u2019t help it.\u201d<\/p>\n
COPYRIGHT 2025 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.<\/p>\n
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I am addicted! To my phone. I check an email and before I realize it, I\u2019m watching TikTok…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21255,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[257],"tags":[1056,18,19,17,279,1114,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-21254","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mobile","8":"tag-big-tech","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-mobile","13":"tag-social-media","14":"tag-technology"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21254\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}