Why One Social Psychologist Calls Big Tech ‘Drug Dealers’
By Movieguide® Contributor
Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt is drawing a parallel between the people pushing smartphones on kids and drug dealers.
“In case you needed any other reason to be suspicious, the people who make this technology don’t let their kids use it,” he said at a recent speaking engagement. “They send their kids to the Waldorf School. Are we stupid for not realizing what they’re doing to us? Drug dealers don’t give their drugs to their kids. They give their drugs to your kids.”
Haidt, the author of The Anxious Generation, is an outspoken advocate for getting kids away from screens and out into the real world.
READ MORE: SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGIST ISSUES DIRE WARNING TO TODAY’S PARENTS
In an interview with The New Yorker Radio Hour, Haidt spoke about what he calls “the great rewiring” — “the day that you change your flip phone for a smartphone and you have a front-facing camera, and you have Instagram, and you have high-speed data, which you didn’t have before, that’s the day that this device can become your master.”
“Social media before 2009 was just about connecting and it was about performance. It might make some kids anxious, but it was not particularly toxic,” he explained. “After 2009, now it’s much more about not who you know, it’s more about the things that people are putting out that went viral, that got a lot of likes. Once we get super viral social media in 2009, 2010, now a lot of things change.”
Haidt continued, “Now it’s not just, ‘Hey, I’m bored. Let me play a video game.’ It’s, ‘My phone is pinging me saying, “Someone cited you in a photo, or someone linked you in a photograph. Come check it out. Someone said something about you. Somebody just joined. Somebody liked your post.”‘ We’ve allowed companies to reach our children, to manipulate them, to send their notifications whenever they want and the kids don’t seem to turn off the notifications. They seem to leave them on.”
He shared his goal for his research in an interview on TODAY, saying, “My goal is from today on, no mother will have to hear her kid say ‘I’m the only one [without a phone].’”
“When kids are rooted in real relationships, they’re not washed away by social media,” he said, adding, “People say, ‘Phones are here to stay.’ Well, cars are here to stay, but we don’t let 11-year-olds drive them.”
READ MORE: COULD 4 ‘SIMPLE’ RULES SOLVE YOUR CHILD’S SCREEN PROBLEM? EXPERT SAYS YES
Questions or comments? Please write to us here.
- Content: +4Share:
- Content: +1