I want either Dr. Becky or Jonathan Haidt speaking on this subject on Diary of a CEO podcast. It will be so impactful to that audience. Future parents and people who lived through this new childhood.
I am a parent, a teacher, a coach, and feel the public school curriculum is a disaster for K thru 12. Kids need to start their school experience by learning how to play together before anything else...period. Playtime, organized play time involving individual physical activities as well as team play/sports are essential to start before any academic growth. Actually the two systems can grow hand in hand but the physical aspects must come first.
I am grateful for this talk as I am an educator and I feel that this issue should be a concern, not just for parents but for educational institutions as well. I am slowly realizing, speaking from personal experience, that adults are having an extremely difficult time to be literally "away from their phones or devices" (work-related activities would the exception). I feel that it is so much harder to help the kids with gadget usage if we the adults do not fix the issue first regarding our own gadget usage. I hope this too would be addressed.
Social media is no longer social...it's hypnotical. The mindfulness workbook called 30 Days Without Social Media by Harper Daniels goes great with Haidt's book. Mindfulness mediation helped me take a long break from social media. It's scary how much time/life is spent on the phone.
A good insight from Jonathan Haidt: "The phone is an experience blocker. You spend a lot less time in the presence of other people. You're not with your friends. You're sleeping less, you're in nature less, you read fewer books, you don't have time for anything else, you have less of almost everything."
One of the keys to understand is that phones allow the messengers to whisper in the ears of your kids 24/7 with almost no possibility of filtering the junk. in the ol' days parents would have kicked out those bad messengers if what they said was stupid. Crackpots had limited access to kids.
I'm getting sick of Haidt. He's everywhere right now using fearmongering to get people to buy his book. So, yes this is an issue, but buyer beware. He's been trying to prove his hypothesis for years, and as he even admits, correlation is still not causation. He is not doing the differential required to rule out other variables for childhood anxiety and depression. And there are many. By making social media the boogie man, he is diverting attention away from the stress factors that lead kids to their phones in the first place. And those underlying issues need to be addressed. I see hundreds of kids a year as a psychologist diagnostician and I have only encountered a handful of kids who spend 9 hours a day on a device. But Haidt calls it an epidemic, blaming everything from suicide and the "collapse of mental health" on phones. Kids come to my practice when they aren't coping with life, and I survey their screen time. What I see are kids who are in sports, music, theater, debate, cheer, camps, clubs, STEM, art etc. Kids are busy with a lot of healthy activity (sometimes too much) and very few of the most anxious of them are ever on a device all day. I also see kids who are addicted to media, but there are so many variables impacting them, and the ones who are glued to their phones are seeking to numb themselves from other sources of stress. (If it wasn't a phone it would be something else.) The education systems are archaic (not teachers - but systems), they have fewer options to learn a trade, they have more obstacles to attending college, they see mass shootings, excessive cruelty in popular music, movies and books (don't get me started on YA lit), parents enduring economic stress, global warming threats, erosion of human rights and civil rights, they are absorbing plastic into their bodies at alarming rates... so many variables...Do you know what else happened in 2010? A cultural divide broke wide open in this country through a platform for open hate speech and poisonous grievance, the normalizing of bullying, and a wealth gap wider than ever in history. Kids aren't getting this from phones, but from us, the adults. If we want to know why kids are stressed, we need to take a look at ourselves as adults and ask what kind of world we are creating for our children. The problem is so much bigger than phones. And taking them away is not going to solve the problem. Teaching them media literacy will be a good start. But encouraging positive social platforms is another. I should just write my own damn book. And stop social psychologizing all over us Haidt, until you do your due dilligence.
Most of what you listed to be driving teen depression are fallacies you and they absorbed from social media. None of those societal issues didn't exist in the past, they were simply kept in the domain of adults who understood the relevance of histoircal cycles and trends. You think the world is about to end. Its not. You've been spending too much time watching negative youtube videos. My city is booming, everybody is always smiling. nobody is suffering finciancially, new stores and restos are openinig what seems like every day now...yet there are at least 10-15 losers who've uploaded videos complaining the city is dying lol..because THEIR life isn't going well here.
I want either Dr. Becky or Jonathan Haidt speaking on this subject on Diary of a CEO podcast. It will be so impactful to that audience. Future parents and people who lived through this new childhood.
What a beautiful aim!! Let our kids get through their childhood in the most powerful way possible 😊
This is my favorite episode! I loved how you both bounced off of each other with your experiences in your field. Please bring up this topic more!
I am a parent, a teacher, a coach, and feel the public school curriculum is a disaster for K thru 12. Kids need to start their school experience by learning how to play together before anything else...period. Playtime, organized play time involving individual physical activities as well as team play/sports are essential to start before any academic growth. Actually the two systems can grow hand in hand but the physical aspects must come first.
I am grateful for this talk as I am an educator and I feel that this issue should be a concern, not just for parents but for educational institutions as well. I am slowly realizing, speaking from personal experience, that adults are having an extremely difficult time to be literally "away from their phones or devices" (work-related activities would the exception). I feel that it is so much harder to help the kids with gadget usage if we the adults do not fix the issue first regarding our own gadget usage. I hope this too would be addressed.
Social media is no longer social...it's hypnotical. The mindfulness workbook called 30 Days Without Social Media by Harper Daniels goes great with Haidt's book. Mindfulness mediation helped me take a long break from social media. It's scary how much time/life is spent on the phone.
A good insight from Jonathan Haidt:
"The phone is an experience blocker.
You spend a lot less time in the presence of other people.
You're not with your friends.
You're sleeping less, you're in nature less, you read fewer books, you don't have time for anything else, you have less of almost everything."
Great Video
One of the keys to understand is that phones allow the messengers to whisper in the ears of your kids 24/7 with almost no possibility of filtering the junk. in the ol' days parents would have kicked out those bad messengers if what they said was stupid. Crackpots had limited access to kids.
I'm getting sick of Haidt. He's everywhere right now using fearmongering to get people to buy his book. So, yes this is an issue, but buyer beware. He's been trying to prove his hypothesis for years, and as he even admits, correlation is still not causation. He is not doing the differential required to rule out other variables for childhood anxiety and depression. And there are many. By making social media the boogie man, he is diverting attention away from the stress factors that lead kids to their phones in the first place. And those underlying issues need to be addressed. I see hundreds of kids a year as a psychologist diagnostician and I have only encountered a handful of kids who spend 9 hours a day on a device. But Haidt calls it an epidemic, blaming everything from suicide and the "collapse of mental health" on phones. Kids come to my practice when they aren't coping with life, and I survey their screen time. What I see are kids who are in sports, music, theater, debate, cheer, camps, clubs, STEM, art etc. Kids are busy with a lot of healthy activity (sometimes too much) and very few of the most anxious of them are ever on a device all day. I also see kids who are addicted to media, but there are so many variables impacting them, and the ones who are glued to their phones are seeking to numb themselves from other sources of stress. (If it wasn't a phone it would be something else.) The education systems are archaic (not teachers - but systems), they have fewer options to learn a trade, they have more obstacles to attending college, they see mass shootings, excessive cruelty in popular music, movies and books (don't get me started on YA lit), parents enduring economic stress, global warming threats, erosion of human rights and civil rights, they are absorbing plastic into their bodies at alarming rates... so many variables...Do you know what else happened in 2010? A cultural divide broke wide open in this country through a platform for open hate speech and poisonous grievance, the normalizing of bullying, and a wealth gap wider than ever in history. Kids aren't getting this from phones, but from us, the adults. If we want to know why kids are stressed, we need to take a look at ourselves as adults and ask what kind of world we are creating for our children. The problem is so much bigger than phones. And taking them away is not going to solve the problem. Teaching them media literacy will be a good start. But encouraging positive social platforms is another. I should just write my own damn book. And stop social psychologizing all over us Haidt, until you do your due dilligence.
Most of what you listed to be driving teen depression are fallacies you and they absorbed from social media. None of those societal issues didn't exist in the past, they were simply kept in the domain of adults who understood the relevance of histoircal cycles and trends. You think the world is about to end. Its not. You've been spending too much time watching negative youtube videos. My city is booming, everybody is always smiling. nobody is suffering finciancially, new stores and restos are openinig what seems like every day now...yet there are at least 10-15 losers who've uploaded videos complaining the city is dying lol..because THEIR life isn't going well here.
I seriously would love to read your book. You are touching on some things that I agree with and I think there is a lot of truth in your words.