By Gavin Boyle
Psychologist Jonathan Haidt shared 30 facts that reveal just how significant of a negative impact technology has on childhood and the youngest generations.
“The average child now plays outside for only 4-7 minutes per day…, reading skills among U.S. students is now at the lowest levels ever measured…, youngsters are struggling to remember almost anything…, mental health problems among children are skyrocketing. As early as age six, 16% of children have mental health issues that demand clinical care,” Haidt shared in an Instagram post.
Related: Is Social Media Really Causing the Youth Mental Health Crisis?
These four facts highlight the growing problem that Haidt has worked to reveal for over two years. Starting in 2023, scientists began to argue that the mental health problems people around the country face were a result of technology, specifically social media, rather than just being correlated with technology use. Then U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy even called for a surgeon general’s warning to be placed on social media to expose this reality.
“The mental health crisis among young people is an emergency — and social media has emerged as an important contributor,” Murthy wrote in a 2024 New York Times piece. “Adolescents who spend more than three hours a day on social media face double the risk of anxiety and depression symptoms, and the average daily use in this age group, as of the summer of 2023, was 4.8 hours. Additionally, nearly half of all adolescents say social media makes them feel worse about their bodies.”
“It is time to require a surgeon general’s warning label on social media platforms, stating that social media is associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents. A surgeon general’s warning label, which requires congressional action, would regularly remind parents and adolescents that social media has not been proven safe,” he continued.
Haidt goes a step further, arguing that children need to be kept off of technology for as long as possible, suggesting that the moment regulated technology use is introduced into a child’s life, their childhood is essentially over.
“Imagine there was suddenly a toy introduced which would cause children to get less sleep, less exercise, spend less time with other children. It would make them incredibly self-conscious, and it would lower their self-esteem and cause depression and anxiety. That would be horrible, right?” he said. “We’ve seen the loss of the play-based childhood, which kids have always had, in favor of a phone-based childhood.”
As studies continue to reveal just how harmful technology is for children, it is crucial for parents to make the hard decision to remove technology from their lives as much as possible and fight for them to learn the skills they will need in order to live a fulfilling life before they get sucked into the digital world.
Read Next: Just How Harmful is Social Media to Childhood?
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