Opinion
As I’ve written before, social media companies are the Big Tobacco of the 2000s. Their own research shows that they know their products are extremely harmful to (mental) health, especially for impressionable children and teens, especially girls — but they continue to market to them anyway.
And if social media is Big Tobacco, then smartphones are the cigarettes. Just as in the heyday of smoking you rarely saw people without a fag hanging from their gobs, even lighting up at the table, nowadays you almost never see people without their phones — often checking them in the middle of conversations or while eating out.
Just like cigarettes, too, people know the dangers, but just can’t quit the addiction.
About 72% of American teenagers reported feeling peaceful “often or sometimes” when they were without their smartphones.
In a new report from the Pew Research Center, it was also revealed that out of 1,453 teenagers surveyed between the ages of 13 and 17 in the U.S., 44% experienced anxiety when they were separated from their smartphones.
There is a noticeable overlap of apparently contradictory statements, here. A possible explanation is that teens feel anxiety when their phones are misplaced or taken away, but then find their minds at rest without them. Anecdotally, I recall “grounding” our then-teen son by confiscating every electronic device for a week. For the first day, he sulked. By the end of the week, he was chatting and smiling in a way we hadn’t seen in a very long time.
It should be noted that Pew’s survey was conducted on teens in single parent families.
According to the survey, 95% of teens in the U.S. have a smartphone, and 69% of them say smartphones help them with hobbies and interests, while 45% think they make school easier.
Scripps News
The study also shows that 51% to 64% of teens think they spend the right amount of time on their phones and social media, but 38% feel they overdo it. Meanwhile, girls are more likely than boys to think they spend too much time on both […]
And according to the survey, most parents also agree that their teens spend too much time on their phones.
The survey lands in the middle of an increasingly charged political and social environment around smartphones.
Last fall, dozens of states, including California and New York, sued Instagram and Facebook owner Meta Platforms Inc. for harming young people and contributing to the youth mental health crisis by knowingly and deliberately designing features that addict children. In January, the CEOs of Meta, TikTok, X and other social media companies went before the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify about their platforms’ harms to young people […]
The international debate over technology and youth was jolted in early October by a surprising announcement: Schools in the United Kingdom will soon ban the use of cell phones.
But is banning the answer? Looking back to the campaign against smoking, while reducing smoking rates was an obvious public health success, that same success has undeniably encouraged a nanny mentality among some public health bureaucrats, with increasing overreach into everything from sugar, alcohol, and now schools sticky-nosing through kids’ home-packed lunches.
It may have the further effect of encouraging advocates, both at home and abroad, to pursue further-reaching policies limiting children’s access to tech and social media.
Still, we never allowed kids to smoke in school. So, is there indeed a place for a ban on smartphones in schools?
Doug Lemov is a well-known educator and expert on classroom practice whose book “Teach Like a Champion” has become an international bestseller and a highly influential text among both novice and veteran teachers. He has also come out strongly against the use of phones in school, arguing that they meaningfully hamper instruction and prevent children from forming real-world relationships.
In a study published in 2016, academics Louis-Phillipe Beland and Richard Murphy found that across the large English cities of Birmingham, Leicester, London, and Manchester, dozens of high schools that instituted bans on mobile phones saw significant improvement in scores on high-stakes tests. The increase was especially large for the lowest-performing pupils, who saw a jump in scores more than twice as large as the average student.
Overall, the authors argued, the greater effects on these students of banning mobile phones — roughly equivalent to adding an hour to each school week — suggested that their higher-achieving classmates were better able to ignore distractions and focus on their work. The lure of texts and apps, therefore, might be expected to increase achievement gaps over time […]
Play and exercise are also linked to the use of electronics. A Danish study published in 2021 showed that a four-week ban on phones during recess significantly increased both the frequency and intensity of physical activity of children aged 10-14. And the consequences of a lack of movement can be strongly negative: In a study of nearly 25,000 U.S. teenagers, about 20 percent used screened devices (smartphones, tablets, or video games) more than five hours per day; that group was 43 percent more likely to be obese than participants who experienced less screen time.
The research also points to yet another disastrous outcome of the Covid panic:
By most indicators, the migration online led to significant learning losses. But students also reported that during the worst stretches of isolation, social media helped them stay in touch with their friends and teachers — in cyberspace, if not real life. Many are reluctant to let go of their phones even with the return to in-person learning.
The Montana Standard
Of course, strict bans are not the only answer. Lemov’s own daughter’s school district uses Yondr pouches, which allow schools to collect and seal away phones during the day, but selectively offer students access to them if necessary.
It might behoove a great many adults to cut back on their own screen time, and lead by example.