Mumsnet Zoomchat with Jonathan Haidt, author of 'The Anxious Generation' - ask your questions about kids, smartphones and social media here!

[RhiannonEMumsnet]

Hi all,

We’re delighted to announce a live Mumsnet Zoomchat next Tuesday, 2nd September at 3pm with Jonathan Haidt, social psychologist and author of The Anxious Generation.

Jonathan’s groundbreaking work explores how the rise of smartphone and social media use has fuelled a sharp increase in mental health issues amongst children, and how this “great rewiring” is affecting everything from sleep to friendships to resilience. He’s been a leading advocate for collective action to roll back the phone-based childhood.

We began our Rage Against the Screen campaign because of the countless conversations on this topic on site, and we know it’s a huge concern for many of you. So we’re really excited to hear more from Jonathan about his work and to have the chance to put your questions to him.

If you’ve got a question you’d like to ask then please post it below. As ever, one question per user and do keep them short and sharp so we can get through as many as possible. You’ll be able to watch the chat live by registering at this link but we’ll also be recording so you can catch up if you can’t make it.

Thanks,
MNHQ

Thanks for doing a Q+A! This is such a big issue among my parenting peers and it feels like on one hand people are really starting to recognise the negative effects but on the other hand there is such resistance - certainly it seems amongst politicians in this country - to really taking action, probably because of the influence of the big tech companies.

Would you say in the time since you've written the Anxious Generation that you've become more or less optimistic about our ability to roll back the phone based childhood?

A lot of the Gen-Z labelled 'Anxious Generation' themselves would have preferred not to have lived through a guinea-pig generation of growing up online in a digital world.

Many are actively campaigning and advocating for safer AI, social media, and online platforms, and want 'safety by design' for the next generation. See www.ForUs.org.uk

How important do you think it is to listen to their youth-voice, and learn from their lived-experience, if we are hoping that the next generation have better digital habits?

To what extent and how have you thought / do you think about:

a. The unintended consequences of your messaging, in terms of the impact on parent / carer mental health and its related impacts on CYP (Family Stress Model, etc)

b. How robust the evidence base for your hypotheses is, given the masses of other things and societal shifts and nadirs also going on, which may impact CYP's MH. Are you barking up the wrong tree, and what is your culpability if you are?

What are your views on Rapid onset gender dysphoria? Do you believe it’s a reflection of social contagion within the anxious generation who spend too much time in phones and not enough time with real life friends?

I understand that a lot of your book is concerned about the lack of real world freedom and independence for young people, as well as the concerns about screen time (volume and content). Do you feel that first part of your message has been picked up enough by the media and parents? How much are the two problems (or potential solutions) linked?

Hi Jonathan, hope you're well. My question is if you could change just ONE policy at a national or school level tomorrow to address this issue, what would it be?

Thanks for doing this, it's a huge issue for teachers (I work in primary). Schools are increasingly expected to manage the fallout from children’s online lives (and goodness knows we have enough to deal with) bullying, distraction, even sleep deprivation. From your research, what do you think schools should be doing differently, and how can the parents support or push for those changes?

Hi Jon, I think your work is really interesting, particularly the stuff around giving kids more responsibility, free play and independence in the real world. I don't know if this is the case in the States, but certainly here in the UK one of the issues in relation to that is a lack of places for kids to play, less spending from councils on playgrounds, less consideration about how our built environment works for kids and families (ie new build estates with proper pavements). How much do you think that feeds into the phone childhood and how can we tackle it? Thank you.

There is a school of thought that giving children MORE freedoms with technology, rather than restricting it, allows them to self-regulate better, and set their own boundaries.

Anecdotally, my children have always had unlimited screen time, with smartphones from the age of around 11, and they very much self-regulate wisely, and choose not to use social media apart from select WhatsApp chats with trusted groups etc. We have always home educated though, and so they have not had school-based peer pressure, which undoubtedly has helped this.

I notice that some of the young people I have met who have had strict screen limits cannot control themselves if they get an opportunity to use screens. They seem to forego all other options, perhaps because they have built a scarcity mindset and feel they need to seize the moment. There seems to be a similar parallel around food, especially 'unhealthy' food.

I wonder what you think the mid- and long- term impacts of strict screen time restrictions might be on the ability to self-regulate screen use?

Edited to say, I see a paradox around freedom and restrictions in this work, which I find interesting. The current state of affairs is of course a paradox of its own, and the social factors involved, particularly around schooling, make this a very difficult line to balance!

Thanks so much for doing this. I love everything about it but I keep wondering, is it too late to undo the damage for this generation?

Hi Jonathon; thanks so much for all your amazing work on this. My question is about how we best discuss the issue of the impact of smartphones and social media among friends and acquaintances? I feel passionate about the issue and want to raise awareness, but also don’t want to pontificate or make people feel judged.

Question: Your work often presents young people as passive victims of digital harm and relies on selective anecdotes and interpretations of data that confuse correlation with causation. At the same time, your work largely overlooks children's rights to agency, autonomy, and participation, particularly in the context of digital spaces. While safety is, of course, a key right, how do you respond to concerns that your framing overemphasises protection in a way that silences young people’s voices, ignores their evolving capacities, and reduces their digital lives to something adults must control, rather than navigate with them?

Hi, Jonathan! I'm a member of Gen Z who luckily did not grow up on social media. Only now that I'm 20 I installed Instagram for networking reasons, but I had to put in a time limit for the app, because the short-form reels were very addictive, even for an adult.
This got me thinking about how similar this stimulus-reward cycle is to gambling machines. In some European countries, the government demanded that slot machines would have to have a longer delay between stimulus and reward, in order for people to be able to break the streak and go home. I believe the biggest imposed delay is in Germany, where a 10-second delay is the legal limit, but most other countries have a lower delay, of about 5 seconds. Do you think it is realistic to hope that governments around the world would treat reels in the same way, and impose a short delay between them? I think that could work wonders for screen time when it comes to Instagram reels and Tik Tok, and it would be useful for everyone, not just children. Do you see it as a viable solution?

Hi Professor Haidt, this is Yui from Flourishing ‘23. Hope you are well!

I’ve been putting your teachings to work for the past 2 years, and it has made a significant positive impact on my mental and physical health.

Having just returned to the US from a trip in China, I’d like to ask you a question about censorship:

Facial recognition, smartIDs, age verification etc., are powerful technologies that have been instrumental in preventing teen SM/phone addiction. How do we ensure that an “authoritarian creep” does not occur as we create regulations for teen SM use? My fear is that overbearing PTA boards start using the “ban phones” slogan to regulate everything from student posture to the length of recess. Having experienced the Asian education system first hand, it would be a shame to see students jaded in middle school.

Thanks!

You've talked about "the coddling of the American mind" - do you see the same problem in the UK?

Quite simply; why won’t ALL schools go phone free during the day? Why hasn’t this become actual obligated, enforceable, policy?

Second question- do you agree with primary schools using screen based learning systems like Purple Maths? What are your thoughts on these types of programs which parents cannot opt out of.

I feel they normalise screens and set a very poor example. I can’t help but feel they are used only as a convenience for teachers. The time for screens as a tool for learning should be much later surely based on your research. What are your thoughts on this?

Hiya Jonathan. Something that is a problem in our house is that we are much stricter with social media and devices than many of our DC's friends. Our DCs are 10 and 13 and it's a bigger issue with older DD who feels she's missing out. So right now I feel caught in a bind because banning phones completely can socially isolate children, but unrestricted use clearly harms their wellbeing. What practical guidance do you give parents who want to strike the right balance and avoid becoming the ‘only parent’ setting stricter rules? Our younger DC's school was among the first to implement a complete smartphone ban and this has made it so much easier.

Hi Jonathan, thank you for doing this chat. My middle son (born 2004) spent far more time on Instagram than his siblings, in part because I was stretched thin with work and caring for the other two who were a bit more demanding of my time and although I knew it wasn’t ideal, honestly I was oblivious to the extent of the dangers. He now has inattentive ADHD, is socially anxious and as the ADHD meds made him more anxious, he takes antidepressants. He knows phones make things worse and tries to set limits, but it’s hard to function today without a smartphone. Do you think his heavy social media use in childhood may have contributed, and is there anything constructive we can do for him now?

I love your book and try to put things into practice by reducing screen time and making my children more independent.

Here in the UK, while we definitely have a huge problem with excessive screen time, it is still a lot more common for kids to play out but in some cases this means that unsupervised screen access coincides with unsupervised play outside - and my observation is that it's the families who know less about how to control screen time also allow their children more freedom to roam, leading to things like bullying behaviour being filmed and shared. What's your take on this 80s-playing-out-meets-2020s-social media clash and how can we allow our children outdoor freedom in these circumstances?

Hi Jonathan, thank you for doing this!

My eldest is 10 and we do not plan on getting her a smartphone for when she starts high school. I am comfortable with this decision but I know one downside is she will be excluded from some forms of socialising within her peer group.

Is there evidence for any harms to the mental health of CYP who do not have smartphones due to social isolation?

Thanks!

Hi Jonathan, thank you for this opportunity- I really enjoyed your book and try to put some of the principles into practice, particularly around giving our children more opportunities to be a bit more free-range.

My question is around smart phones and how to manage use when secondary schools actively use them in their teaching. Our 12 year old son has an iPhone we've effectively 'bricked' (ie. he can only call or text from it, and has internet and apps removed). For the time being this seems to work (and keeps him from being the odd one out, which is always a worry at a tricky age).

But in truth, I find it such a divisive topic and- as with many issues of parenting- people become defensive and entrenched in their views when they feel their choices are criticised. Is there a middle-ground to be found where it's not all or nothing so that we can have some nuanced, realistic conversations about how to support our children in navigating this?

Sorry I haven't seen this before and am just negotiating sending twin DDs to high school - waited as long as poss to get the dreaded smart phones but over the hols have seen they are both addicted.
What can we do?

No question - just feedback to say that your book is changing the world before our eyes!

My 11yo daughter starts secondary school this week (Year 7) and most of her friends have 'brick phones', only one girl has an iPhone, and two girls don't have a phone at all yet, they don't seem to care.

These are all normal bright bubbly girls at a London independent school. The change is astonishing, thank you!!

Topic: Screens in Schools

From: Anna Grant, Sophie Winkleman and Arlene Carruthers - all Mums - and found at closescreens.openminds on instagram.

Question: Hi Jon! What advice would you offer to create movement like The Anxious Generation but for screens in schools?

Background: We are hugely concerned about the roll out of 1:1 devices for all classes and online homework. Teaching using a device has worse learning outcomes, they are hugely distracting and there are major privacy concerns around them.

So why are schools rolling them out? How can we press pause? How do we galvanise parents? Please can you write a book on EdTech/screens in schools! And, otherwise, huge thanks for your advocacy and solution based approach to smartphones - the 4 norms. You are our hero!

Hi Jon,
thank you for doing this. I would also like to ask about screens and app use in schools. My son is going into Year 2 (aged 6) and they put all homework and updates through an app. When he started school 2 years ago they wanted me to record him talking about particular things and upload it as part of his homework, but he hated doing it so I did not push him to do it. However, this does mean that when teachers are talking about homework and showing other children's videos, he is left out. I am angry about this, to be honest, and did not expect this in primary schools or for there to be an exclusion formed by the teaching as to who and who does not use the tech. What can I do to help change the situation?
Also thank you for everything you have done and the awareness you have raised!