Savannah Guthrie Advocates for a Phone-Safe Generation
By Movieguide® Contributor
TODAY host Savannah Guthrie recently joined “The Anxious Generation” author Jonathan Haidt in advocating for phone-safe standards to protect kids and teens.
“We can do it if we stick together ?,” Guthrie said on Instagram, sharing Haidt’s graphic photo listing phone usage safeguards.
The photo shares “4 new norms: No smartphones before high school, no social media before 16, phone free schools; and more independence, free play, and responsibility in the real world,” with the hashtag “#freetheanxiousgeneration.”
Last year, Guthrie temporarily gave up social media for Lent.
She said, “I’m giving up Instagram for lent. I’m not catholic, and I’ve never given up anything for lent before. I’m doing it to challenge myself: to be more reflective, to not just reflexively scroll instagram and instead use that time for something more productive and life-giving to myself and others.”
“I’m telling you this so that I will have accountability!! And maybe you would like to join me?? See you back here after Easter! (Any work related posts you see will be posted by my assistant!!!)” she said.
Haidt is a social psychologist who shares how smartphone use and social media make people anxious, especially vulnerable teens and kids. His movement, Free the Anxious Generation, seeks to counter this decline in mental health.
“Gen Z is the first generation in history to go through puberty with a portal in their pockets that called them away from the people nearby and into an alternative universe that was exciting, addictive, unstable and unsuitable for children and adolescents.,” he said last week.
Movieguide® reported how Haidt believes social media companies, like Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, are responsible for the downfall of teens’ mental health:
“The reason I think Zuckerberg does bear some personal responsibility is there were many internal warnings, many… said, ‘We are causing problems, we are addicting kids,’” NYU social psychologist Jonathan Haidt told the “Brave New World” podcast.
“They suggested features that would help Facebook, Meta, Instagram, they never did any of them unless they were trivial,” he continued. “They never did anything that reduced their user base, like actually kicking off kids who were under 13.”
Haidt believes that Zuckerberg has turned a blind eye to the effects his platforms have had on younger kids, guiding his company to create products that place profit above user safety. The psychologist cites the company’s lack of protection against suicidal content as just one example of this moral failing.
- Content: +3Share:
- Content: +2