Evidence shows Florida, others, should keep cracking down on social media for kids | Opinion

One of the hottest books in America right now is telling parents to hold off on handling smart phones to their children until age 14, and barring them from using social media until 16. Sounds far-fetched? Well, Florida and several other states are, in different ways, embracing these ideas.

The book is called “The Anxious Generation,” and it’s author is Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at New York University. I interviewed him a few days ago, and I found some of his proposals not only interesting, but doable.

Haidt noted that, since the arrival of the iPhone in 2007, there is a growing epidemic of anxiety, depression, mental illness, self harm and even suicide among young people. This trend has gotten worse since in 2009, when “like” buttons were introduced, and many young people — especially girls — got depressed when they didn’t get as many “likes” as their friends, he added.

About 57% of girls in high school report persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, up from 36% a decade ago, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“I argue that children need to develop first in the real world before we let them move their lives into the virtual world,” Haidt told me. “We don’t want them to grow up on TikTok. We want them to grow up playing with each other.”

Haidt proposes that, instead of smart phones, parents give their children under 14 flip-phones with text messaging and GPS, but with no cameras nor access to internet. That would help keep them away from social media and pornography, among other things.

In addition, he proposes laws to ban young people aged under 16 from opening accounts on social media. Right now, social media companies are dragging their feet to enforce age or parental controls, and children can easily circumvent them.

A collective decision

When I asked Haidt whether it’s not unrealistic to ask parents to deprive their kids of smart phones when virtually all of their classmates have them, he responded that it can be done “collectively.”

What if half of the parents of children of a class decide to prohibit their kids from using smart phones? “You can tell you child, ‘I have spoken with the parents of Maria and Julia, your best friends, and we’re all doing this together,” he said.

Haidt also calls for laws establishing “phone-free schools.” He proposes that all schools store students’ cell phones and smart watches in lockers during the entire school day, among other things to force children to pay attention in class.

“The phone must be locked up,” Haidt told me. “If a school enforces this, your kid will not be the only one who isn’t texting during class time: nobody is texting during class time, or during recess, or during lunch.”

Florida takes action

Several states are already moving in that direction.

Florida in March passed a law with bipartisan support that forbids kids under 13 from creating social media accounts, and requires parental consent for children under 15 to become social media account holders.

Other states such as Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Utah have passed laws requiring parental consent for children to use social media. Like Florida’s law, most are subject to court challenges arguing that they violate constitutional rights.

Haidt’s book has been criticized among others by a reviewer in the respected Nature magazine, who argued that there’s no solid evidence to conclude that smart phones are the cause of the mental illness crisis. There may be other factors, such as economic hardship, that explain it, the article says.

But I find it hard to imagine that smart phones and social media are not among the main reasons behind the current rise of juvenile anxiety and depression. If I had to point to one shortcoming in Haidt’s excellent new book, it’s that it doesn’t make a stronger case for the need of “mental education” classes in schools.

In my recent book on what countries, companies and schools around the world are doing to improve happiness, I wrote about how impressed I was by the mandatory one-hour-a-day “happiness” classes in all public schools in New Delhi, India. There, I witnessed how children are taught meditation techniques, and given classes on how to learn to cope with failure, and how to fight against technological addiction.

As Vibeke J. Koushede, dean of the Psychology Department of the University of Copenhagen, told me in a reporting trip to Denmark, given the world’s mental health crisis, “it doesn’t make sense that we have physical education classes, but not mental education classes in our schools.”

Indeed, there is an epidemic of depression, which is only likely to get worse with artificial intelligence applications that will further isolate our children — and ourselves — from one another. As Haidt proposes, it’s time for countries to act, and for parents to take collective actions.

Don’t miss the “Oppenheimer Presenta” TV show on Sundays at 9 pm E.T. on CNN en Español. Blog: andresoppenheimer.com