Abandoning children to the internet had dire consequences

What have we done? First, we abandoned children to television, then to video games, and now to the internet and social media.

If anyone doubts the harm done to children by the internet and social media, then Jonathan Haidt’s must-read book, “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness,” will convince you otherwise. Haidt presents powerful data about the emerging epidemic of anxiety and depression since 2010, when smartphones became easily available and soon were in the hands of most adults and many children. And while children were being over-protected in the real world by parents afraid to let them outdoors, they were under-protected in a virtual world, which was consuming them and rewiring their brains.

As a child psychiatrist, I became concerned about the impact of media on children and adolescents years ago. The sheer amount of time spent consuming media and the violent content were warning signs. Yet technology moved ahead at a rapid pace, and the research could not keep up. The generation of kids born in the late 1990s, identified as Gen Z, became a naturalistic experiment as they went through puberty with smartphones in their hands, providing largely unfettered access to the internet and social media.

Dr. Haidt’s book is compelling for a number of reasons. First, it is extremely well-researched with notes and references. The case for the rise in mental illness is described using data from the “Anglosphere” — Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. The data is presented in text and easy-to-read graphs that show alarming increases in anxiety, depression and self-harm in teenagers beginning in 2012. Each section of the book also has a concisely written summary of the take-away messages.

While online media use was rising, parents were over-protecting their children by restricting play and real-world learning. Haidt educates the reader about the importance of play, which involves risk, fear and excitement that becomes gradually mastered, so that one is better equipped to enter adulthood. If one arrives at young adulthood without this mastery, then fear and anxiety emerge. Time spent on media displaces time that otherwise would have gone into interacting with the natural world with peers and adults.

The third section of the book describes the re-wiring process that occurs in the adolescent brain through constant exposure to social media, designed as it is using algorithms that increase dopamine, the model for addiction. Social media companies are aware of this and knowingly exploit children, a point backed up by the testimony in 2021 of congressional whistleblower Francis Haugen, a former Facebook employee. The constant use of smartphones during childhood thus results in four fundamental harms: social deprivation, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation and addiction.

Haidt also describes the different impact social media has on girls versus boys while simultaneously acknowledging the fluidity of gender during adolescence. While girls are being shamed about their bodies with algorithms that are designed to link them to websites about dieting and self-harm, boys are watching pornography and playing endless hours of online, violent multi-player video games.

The last section of the book calls for collective action from government, tech companies, schools and parents. Haidt acknowledges the difficulty of the recommendations by reflecting on his own phone use. He makes the point that parents have to change how they interact with their phones if they are going to have a chance at success with their children. He advises parents to seek out other like-minded parents so that their child will not be shunned and scorned.

Regarding schools, he is adamant that they become phone-free to allow both education and social-emotional growth to take place. This recommendation is one that does not require legislation and could be adopted, school district by school district.

As I read the recommendations for government action, the need for real age verification and sanctions on tech company executives who prey on the young, much like cigarette company leaders did in the past, my heart sank with déjà vu. I thought back to my sad conclusion years ago that ours is a culture that sees childhood as just another market to be acquired— more eyeballs to own, more young customers who become addicted and use throughout their lives.

We are a long way from protecting children while their brains grow and mature. We need to move quickly or, as is warned, the next generation will be unprepared for the challenges of adulthood. Dire consequences await if we do not act now.

Dr. V. Susan Villani ([email protected]) is a board-certified child and adolescent psychiatrist in Baltimore.