Latest news with #TheAnxiousGeneration
Glasgow Times
4 days ago
- Politics
- Glasgow Times
Mobile phone use in East Renfrewshire schools could be restricted
Parents, carers and staff have raised concerns about the use of smartphones in schools, which can 'facilitate bullying', councillors have said. There are plans to hand out questionnaires from August, which will help to refresh guidance on how phones can be used while at school. Cllr Katie Pragnell, Labour, said she has been 'contacted by a number of parents, carers and staff who work within East Renfrewshire schools' and there are 'some concerns about the use of mobile phones in our schools'. She added: 'I think it's really important that we consider this issue fully as there is evidence emerging, particularly on the impact mobile phones have on young people's mental health, especially as they are going through a quite vulnerable stage of puberty and adolescence.' Cllr Kate Campbell, Conservative, added: 'I am very aware from what I've heard from parents and pupils, it's not just receiving and sending texts, smartphones facilitate bullying. READ MORE: 'Very sad': School announces death of 'loved & respected' teacher 'They are being used for bullying, so we must really look into how they are used.' At an education committee meeting earlier this month, councillors were updated on work around the use of mobile phones in schools. Consultation has already been carried out through pupil council and head pupil meetings, parent council chair meetings and staff forums. Education officials have also audited current practice in secondary schools. They reported: 'Our next step will be to design and implement a fuller consultation, which will involve designing a questionnaire which will be issued to parents/carers, pupils and staff in schools. 'The results of this consultation will inform how we update guidance for schools in East Renfrewshire.' READ MORE: Glasgow restaurant visited by Celtic & Rangers star to temporarily close An official told councillors that they would engage with stakeholders on the content of the questionnaires and aim to 'have it ready for launching early August when schools come back'. Cllr Gordon Wallace, Conservative, said one of four rules on smartphones suggested in the book 'The Anxious Generation' by Jonathan Haidt is phone-free schools. It proposes storing phones, smart-watches and other personal devices that can send or receive texts in phone-lock pouches during the school day, he said. Cllr Wallace added: 'I appreciate to suddenly fire that out to our youngsters who really spend an awful lot of their time on smartphones, that would be a big ask. 'I do appreciate the value of going out to consultation on this, but I don't think there's any question in anybody's mind, the impact that smartphones are having on our youngsters. 'That's not to say that we must do without them but we need to find a way through this for the benefit of our young people.'
New York Post
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Post
Michelle Obama tells parents they must get tougher on kids' social media
Former first lady Michelle Obama urged parents to get 'tougher' on their kids' social media use during the Wednesday episode of her podcast, 'IMO with Michelle Obama & Craig Robinson.' Obama spoke with social psychologist and author Jonathan Haidt about his 2024 book, 'The Anxious Generation,' in which Haidt argues that extensive social media and smartphone use have harmful effects on children's brains and well-being. Advertisement Kids who grew up with a 'phone-based childhood' are more likely to encounter anxiety, depression and other mental health issues, he says. During the hour-long discussion, Haidt talked about how social media rewires the brain by stimulating the release of the 'reward' brain chemical, dopamine, which fuels an addiction to social media. 4 Kids who grew up with a 'phone-based childhood' are more likely to encounter anxiety, depression and other mental health issues. AP Obama said that parents need to realize that making tough parenting decisions on things like social media will lead to long-term benefits for their child, even though giving in to their kids' wants, or their own social media fixation, may be tempting in the moment. Advertisement 'Parents suffer from this dopamine thing too when it comes to parenting. Because we want instant reward response from our children. We don't want to wait. We don't want to do the longer-haul thing. You know, a lot of times we have to ask ourselves, 'Are we doing this for our kids, or are we doing this for us?' Because we have the screen too,' she said. 'And we're being trained on that instant gratification. Maybe the 90-minute story is a problem for us, because we can't sit still. The bottom line is that we've got to get tougher. We've got to get more resilient for our kids. Because I know time and time again that a lot of parents do what's easy for them, you know, and not necessarily what's best for the kid,' she continued. 4 Obama said that parents need to realize that making tough parenting decisions on things like social media will lead to long-term benefits for their child. Michelle Obama / YouTube 4 'The bottom line is that we've got to get tougher' said Michelle. Brocreative – Advertisement Obama told parents there would be 'parental pain' that comes with this tough-love approach. 'We have to become a little more resilient as parents. We have to become tougher for the sake of our kids… It's not fun. All of it is going to be really, really hard, physically, emotionally, one of the toughest things you do,' she warned. 'You will be disappointing them, and scaring them and making them hurt and arguing with them and doing all the things that you don't want to do with your best friends. But in the end, as parents, we are responsible for securing the safety and the health of the children we bring into this world. And that means, once we know that something isn't good for them… we've got to do the hard thing, we've got to take the substance from the addict,' she said. Advertisement 4 bama told parents there would be 'parental pain' that comes with this tough-love approach. Getty Images 'And it's not going to be fun,' she added. Obama also told parents they shouldn't try to be 'friends' with their kids.
Business Insider
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Business Insider
Michelle Obama says good parenting involves knowing that your kids are 'not your friends'
Michelle Obama says parents shouldn't give in too easily to their kids' demands. On Wednesday's episode of the " IMO" podcast, which she cohosts with her brother, Craig Robinson, Obama spoke about how parents can enforce rules around screen time and social media use for their kids. The episode featured guest Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist and author of "The Anxious Generation." In response to a listener's question about the challenges she faced in managing her daughters' digital habits, Obama said that parents should "understand that your children are not your friends." She said it's important for parents to set clear boundaries that they believe in and that they stick to "all the time," since kids are always testing how far they can push before adults cave. "They're waiting for you to go back on your word. They're waiting to see how long it will take. How many times can I outlast you? Because, as I say, they've got time on their hands. Kids don't have jobs. They have no responsibility. They are not paying bills. All they have time for is to outlast you, to wear you down," the former first lady said. Reflecting on their upbringing, Robinson added that their mother believed saying no wasn't enough. "I was just thinking about how our parents parented and what my mom would say about saying 'No' is that it's not just saying 'No,' it's holding your 'No' accountable," Robinson said. "It is explaining why you're saying 'No,' and it's outlasting your kids." That's why parents need to be steadfast in their willingness to do the hard things needed to keep their kids safe, Obama said. "You will be disappointing them, and scaring them, and making them hurt, and arguing with them, and doing all the things that you don't wanna do with your best friends," Obama said. "But in the end, as parents, we are responsible for securing the safety and the health of the children we bring into this world." Drawing on his experience working with Gen Z, Haidt said that many of those in their 20s often say they're grateful their parents delayed giving them phones or social media access. "What you'll never hear is a 23-year-old Gen Z saying, 'I wish my parents had given me a smartphone and social media in middle school,'" Haidt said. Even though it may be difficult to keep kids off social media, it'll be worth it in the end, he said. Obama and Robinson aren't the only ones who have spoken up about the impact of social media and screen use on kids. In a January 2024 interview, Penélope Cruz called social media " a cruel experiment on children, on teenagers." "It's so easy to be manipulated, especially if you have a brain that is still forming," Cruz told Elle. In May, Kate Winslet's Gen Z daughter, Mia Threapleton, said she has "never had" social media and doesn't want it, adding that her mom encouraged her to make a list of pros and cons for joining Instagram when she was 14. "The cons completely outweighed the pros for me," Threapleton said. This comes as several countries around the world — including Australia and Norway — are exploring ways to implement stricter controls on social media use for kids.
STV News
24-06-2025
- Politics
- STV News
Mobile phone use could be restricted in schools under new guidance
Mobile phone use in East Renfrewshire schools could be restricted, with guidance for pupils and teachers set to be updated following a consultation. Parents, carers and staff have raised concerns about the use of smartphones in schools, which can 'facilitate bullying', councillors have said. There are plans to hand out questionnaires from August, which will help to refresh guidance on how phones can be used while at school. Cllr Katie Pragnell, Labour, said she has been 'contacted by a number of parents, carers and staff who work within East Renfrewshire schools' and there are 'some concerns about the use of mobile phones'. She added: 'I think it's really important that we consider this issue fully as there is evidence emerging, particularly on the impact mobile phones have on young people's mental health, especially as they are going through a quite vulnerable stage of puberty and adolescence.' Cllr Kate Campbell, Conservative, added: 'I am very aware from what I've heard from parents and pupils, it's not just receiving and sending texts, smartphones facilitate bullying. 'They are being used for bullying, so we must really look into how they are used.' At an education committee meeting earlier this month, councillors were updated on work around the use of mobile phones in schools. Consultation has already been carried out through pupil council and head pupil meetings, parent council chair meetings and staff forums. Education officials have also audited current practice in secondary schools. They reported: 'Our next step will be to design and implement a fuller consultation, which will involve designing a questionnaire which will be issued to parents/carers, pupils and staff in schools. 'The results of this consultation will inform how we update guidance for schools in East Renfrewshire.' An official told councillors that they would engage with stakeholders on the content of the questionnaires and aim to 'have it ready for launching early August when schools come back'. Cllr Gordon Wallace, Conservative, said one of four rules on smartphones suggested in the book 'The Anxious Generation' by Jonathan Haidt is phone-free schools. It proposes storing phones, smart-watches and other personal devices that can send or receive texts in phone-lock pouches during the school day, he said. Cllr Wallace added: 'I appreciate suddenly firing that out to our youngsters who really spend an awful lot of their time on smartphones, that would be a big ask. 'I do appreciate the value of going out to consultation on this, but I don't think there's any question in anybody's mind, the impact that smartphones are having on our youngsters. 'That's not to say that we must do without them but we need to find a way through this for the benefit of our young people.' Get all the latest news from around the country Follow STV News Scan the QR code on your mobile device for all the latest news from around the country
Otago Daily Times
21-06-2025
- Health
- Otago Daily Times
Undoing ‘the Great Rewiring'
Smartphones are turning our young people into the anxious generation, Jonathan Haidt tells Tom Faber. The first thing Jonathan Haidt asks when we sit down is my age. I know what he's thinking: he wants to place me, technologically. Am I a member of the "anxious generation", the term he has coined for the young people who he believes have been psychologically harmed by social media and smartphone use at a tender age? Or am I more likely to be one of the concerned parents who are the primary audience for his book? At 33 (the oldest of his anxious generation are currently 28) and child-free, I don't quite fit into either camp. I also don't quite align with either of the two sides that have emerged in response to Haidt's argument. While his book, The Anxious Generation , has undoubtedly made a splash, sparking a heated public debate about adolescent technology use, the science underpinning his thesis has also met criticism from other researchers in his field. So is the book's popularity because Haidt has correctly diagnosed an urgent social ailment? Or because he's spinning parents a story that they desperately want to believe: that there is a simple solution to this complex problem? At 61, with neat grey hair and thick, dark eyebrows, Haidt perfectly embodies the role of affable, credible academic. He currently teaches social psychology at New York University's Stern School of Business. The starting point for The Anxious Generation is the crisis in young people's mental health — in his native US and across much of the West. The proportion of children and young people in the United Kingdom with mental disorders rose from 12% to 20% between 2017 and 2023. The question is: why, and what can we do about it? Haidt says the increase in anxiety and depression among young people is directly caused by their use of smartphones and social media. "Gen Z became 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 writes. He specifically identifies the period between 2010 and 2015 as a time when smartphones and social media were updated to include addictive and harmful features, corresponding with a marked increase in anxiety and depression for children coming of age during this period. Exposure to these technologies during puberty causes long-term effects on the brain, Haidt argues. He calls this "the Great Rewiring". Haidt outlines four ways in which young people are negatively affected by social media and smartphones: sleep deprivation, social deprivation, attention fragmentation and addiction. Since The Anxious Generation was published, he has come to believe the threat to attention is the biggest concern, both for children and adults. "My argument is that these platforms are clearly, demonstrably, harming children at an industrial scale, by their millions," he says. He offers four simple rules to reverse the course of what he calls the "phone-based childhood". These are: no smartphones before 14; no social media before 16; phone-free schools; and more unsupervised play and childhood independence. The suggestions seem reasonable enough. Even some of his critics agree with them. They all require group mobilisation to avoid the "collective action problem" — it's much harder to enforce a change unless other parents are doing it too. If just one child has no smartphone or social media, they will feel excluded from their peers. As Haidt writes: "Few parents want their preteens to disappear into a phone, but a vision of their child being a social outcast is even more distressing." In the year since the book was published, Haidt says, parental, school and legislative action has taken place at a pace that he describes as "stunning". In the US, Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders sent a copy of the book to every other US state governor as a rallying cry. Haidt is keeping track of each state's actions on his website. There are pushes in various countries to ban phones from schools. In Australia, the wife of a state premier read Haidt's book and told her husband he had to do something about the crisis the author described. Months later: the country passed a bill that will raise the minimum age for opening a social media account to 16. In the UK, there was already momentum to this discussion before Haidt's book. The 2023 Online Safety Act puts more responsibility on tech platforms to ensure they are safe for users, especially children. It is one reason that Haidt calls the UK "the leading country on protecting kids online". Some critics claim Haidt is exacerbating a moral panic. Just as previous generations of adults claimed television, hip-hop, video games and comic books were corrupting the youth, they say Haidt is the latest avatar of the old guard inventing horror stories around new culture and technology they don't understand. Despite his avuncular demeanour and his pleasant habit of murmuring agreement with me while I speak, Haidt has arrived ready to prove every point in his book. "There certainly have been moral panics," he says, "and whatever technology the kids are using, the adults are going to be sceptical of. It's a valid criticism as a starting hypothesis. The obligation is on me to show this time is different. And I can very easily do that." His response to the moral panic accusation is twofold. One: he argues there has never historically been an introduction of new technology followed so directly by a precipitous global decline in youth mental health. Two: in previous generations, if you asked children how they felt about their comic books or video games, they would say they loved them, please don't take them away. But when young people today are surveyed about social media, significant numbers regret how much they use it, find them harmful, and in some cases wish they'd never been invented. So what is the controversy around the data? It boils down to a single, difficult question. Experts agree that mental health problems among teenagers are rising at the same time as smartphones and social media are playing increasingly ubiquitous roles in their lives. But is this mere correlation? Or is the technology causing the mental illness? Several prominent academics have argued that Haidt's claim of causation is an oversimplification; that there is no one simple answer to such a complex sociological problem. A particularly searing review in the academic journal Nature argued that Haidt's central thesis "is not supported by science" and that "the bold proposal that social media is to blame might distract us from effectively responding to the real causes of the current mental-health crisis in young people". Others have argued that the research around this topic is unreliable and ambiguous, or even conducted studies that contradict Haidt's claims. Sonia Livingstone, a social psychologist at the London School of Economics who researches children's lives in the digital age, says we don't know which way the data points: are smartphones causing poor mental health in children? Or are children with poor mental health turning to smartphones for entertainment and escape? Academics have also offered alternative reasons why young people might be struggling, from the state of global politics to the economy, to the environment. Haidt raises a couple of these in his book and claims they don't fit his timeline, but other experts are not so quick to dismiss the other theories. On his blog, Haidt has posted a series of detailed responses to his critics. Ultimately, there's enough doubt to concede that there is no scientific consensus around the topic. So how much public policy and parenting advice do we want to generate from unsettled science? Haidt argues it's better to act before it's too late. He writes: "At a certain point, we need to take action based on the most plausible theory, even if we can't be 100% certain that we have the correct causal theory. I think that point is now." Perhaps part of the reason that Haidt riles up members of the scientific establishment is because of how he positions himself publicly — as part scientist, part crusader. He is adept at self-promotion and has turned his book launch into a global campaign, telling me his goal is to "roll back the phone-based childhood in three years". This campaigning approach has precedent in his career: he has launched a series of non-profits over the years. He has also written books and taught classes that lean into the idea of self-improvement, casting him as something of a lifestyle guru. He tells me he wrote a personal mission statement in 2011: "To use my research in moral psychology and the research of others to help people better understand each other and to help important social institutions work better. That's my mission on this Earth." While this crusading image may work for getting attention and building Haidt's personal brand, it also flattens how his argument enters the public sphere. Critiques of his work often mischaracterise his thesis as a neo-Luddite assault on all screen time, when in fact his book is quite specific about which technology is harmful to whom, even making some — if not abundant — space to discuss where the argument gets tricky or the science unclear. There is also some blurriness around Haidt's politics, which is tricky considering how easily children's issues become politicised. He grew up in a secular Jewish family in Scarsdale, New York, and once identified as a Democrat. But Haidt now calls himself a centrist and uses conservative-coded language — for example describing himself on Joe Rogan's podcast as "an extremely alarmed patriotic American citizen who sees my country going to hell", and later comparing the revolution he's leading in the digital environment to the fall of communism in 1989. The fact that his book does not mention the threat to boys of far-right radicalisation from "manosphere" influencers, as chillingly depicted in the TV show Adolescence , could be because of a reluctance to alienate his engaged conservative fanbase. When I put this to him, he bats away the question, saying: "that didn't occur to me". Reading Haidt's book, I couldn't help reflecting on my own teenage years online. I had many positive experiences and made significant friends on forums and online video games at a time when I felt I didn't fit in at school. When I was coming to terms with my sexuality aged 14, I found vital resources and community on the internet. The Anxious Generation argues that digitally-mediated relationships are inherently less meaningful than their real-life counterparts. This is not true in my experience. Where the book does bring up the benefits that can come from virtual communities, they are briefly raised and then tossed aside. In our conversation, Haidt points out that I grew up on a different, less harmful version of the web, before social media companies deliberately employed addictive design features such as algorithmic feeds, conversation streaks and auto-playing videos to juice users for maximum engagement, and therefore maximum profit. This is true — the internet of my formative years was a simpler one. But does that really mean young people can't have positive experiences on today's social media? Haidt concedes that the internet can still be a valuable resource for marginalised groups such as queer people, but he also says that these groups are disproportionately the target of online harassment and abuse. In his view, the cons outweigh the pros. Livingstone disagrees. "Haidt puts these two sides on the scales and says the bullying outweighs the expression and finding your community, but there are some really good things here. We need to work out how to regulate big tech so that the bullying stops and the hate is not amplified." We should try to curtail tech companies' addictive, data-driven business models to make social media platforms better, safer places before resorting to an outright ban, she says, while noting it is very hard to mobilise politicians about children's wellbeing when there are major dollars on the table from big tech lobbying. There are benefits to social media too, she says. "Children are absolutely clear that they love being in touch with their friends. They love that when something bad happens, they can get social support. When they're stuck at home and their parents are fighting, they can go somewhere and say: 'Bloody hell, dad's shouting at mum again'." Livingstone believes that we need to look at the question with a wider lens. "What do we think a good childhood looks like?" she asks. "If we don't let children go on social media till they're 16, what is our plan for them being in touch with their friends? Are we going to let them out after school and let them walk home by themselves and hang out at the bus stop, or are we going to report them as hoodlums and menaces?" We live in a world where we have welcomed technology into every crevice of our work, social and leisure time. Countless services force us to create digital accounts to access them; educational technology is being rolled out across schools; AI is being inserted everywhere. "We have invested in tech across the board," Livingstone says. "It's becoming our infrastructure. And in that context, to say 'kids shouldn't be anywhere near it' — what's the vision in terms of restricting them, and what is the vision in terms of providing something better for them?" "We can ban smartphones," she says, "but we're not going to make kids happy overnight." — The Observer
