The Guardian has done another shoddy article about why smartphones are definitely bad. But what's really 'terrifying' is how many apparent experts are so keen to join in with them.
As someone who part of the 1st/2nd wave of people given smartphones in middle school (I’m now 23) I wish didn’t have one so young, and that the normal social thing was to wait. I think it really created an attention suck and focus on something that isn’t real. Deleted most social media off my phone in college and felt much better, since I didn’t have this background strain of checking, liking, or just watching. I was more free to think than consume.
Obviously I’m just a single person, but feel that its import to share that while the guardians piece may be poorly written, the sentiment may hold water for a good portion of the population
Without fail, every adolescent I see with MH issues gets better when they delete social media. Of course this is anecdotal in my experience, but it's enough for me to recommend limiting phone / social media use in young people experiencing problems , especially anxiety.
They appeal to the authority of their clinical experience. You appeal to your authority as a neuroscientist. They belong to a group that advocates for phone-free childhoods. You’re promoting a pro-phone book for kids.
I'm not appealing to the authority of a neuroscientist, I am flagging up the original 'appeal to authority' as a cynical tactic, and flagging up my own 'authority' as a counterpoint if anyone puts stock in such methods.
I'm appealing to the actual scientific evidence, of which there is a huge body and which represents samples that are for more indicative of the whole population than a handful of clinical cases in a single practice, which will by definition represent the absolute worst-case scenarios.
I am not promoting a 'pro phone' book, I'm promoting an evidence-based book, that is both for and against phones, depending on the context. My primary concern here is correcting bad science/misinformation in the mainstream, because that worsens everything for us all in the long run. If I can sell books as an aside, then my family gets to eat and we can keep our house.
I defer to published studies and sources for all my conclusions. If the studies and sources update and say something different, I'll change my conclusions.
I do not concoct spurious arguments from anecdotal evidence, vibes, and agenda-driven TV shows and present them for a mass audience in a major publication.
Nobody is 100% objective, because that's not how humans work. But tenuous 'whataboutism' is a diversionary tactic, not the gotcha you seem to think it is.
I agree the article you’re critiquing is poorly written and alarmist, and that we don’t have sufficient data to back up some of the claims that are being made.
That said, I can look at my personal experience as a parent and see that one of my children has been profoundly affected by social media, while the other has managed to navigate it without apparent negative effects. Some kids seem to be more vulnerable to its effects than others. I realize that this is only anecdotal, but there is no question in my mind that indoctrination via social media is responsible for my daughter’s current mental health issues. She went from a kid who had little screen time to suddenly obsessed with her phone almost overnight, and at the same time her mental health observably collapsed.
(For those who are wondering, they are both female so it’s not a sex difference that has caused the different effects - just a personality difference IMO.)
My younger one (now 17) seems to handle it ok. She uses TikTok but not excessively. My oldest (now 19) fell down a Tumblr rabbit hole when she was 14 and I don’t know if she’ll ever be ok. She had rarely ever been on her phone, so we never had a lot of time limits because they didn’t seem necessary, and then she started high school and it all happened so fast I didn’t even see it coming. That age group seems to have been hit the worst. My younger daughter’s age group seems to have healthier attitudes.
There is a tendency to conflate smart phone use and social media use. It's possible to use one without the other. I enjoyed reading this article on a smartphone.
I also enjoy reading many Substack articles on my phone, but I’ve also noted that Substack is a form of social media and isn’t immune to all of the problems that accompany social media use, especially when using the Notes feature (which is how I found this article).
Woah. I appreciate the point by point break down of bad rhetoric but there’s extremely good evidence that humans have a qualitatively different relationship with smart phones and tablets than with any other non-living or non-pharmacological object.
I've got a lot of thoughts but my main one is I think this article is not very good lol like are you going after a poorly written article or disagreeing with a poorly written articles premise?
Of course this is just my opinion and not saying you're a bad writer or anything of the sort, but I do feel that I did not benefit in any way from reading this
If you're doing the former then, more power to you, you can do what you want but seems like a waste of time and energy, though in today's topsy turvy world of misinformation end pseudoscience, it is important to call out examples of poor reasoning. If you're doing the latter, frankly I disagree, so I'm inherently biased, but placing a powerful device full of applications crafted by neuroscientists to be as addictive, and therefore, as profitable as possible in front of a human brain that responds to colors, familiarity and novelty in habit forming ways, seems reasonable to believe it would have some effect? And not far fetched to see how it would be negative since many of the most popular apps are for profit and not for health?
And kids using phone screens aka alternate realities they do not have physical access to, in order to self regulate, that's not a big red flag? Wouldn't you prefer they learn to use their breath? Or some other technique based on their somatic experience, rather then just turning to a phone screen?
Never thought I'd read an angry old man "get off my lawn" article in defense of smartphones lol
I’m giving you a solitary standing ovation!👏 I just recently released a podcast episode along the very same lines about smart phones and social media (correlation not causation).
Kids with mental disorders have gravitated towards the very thing that parents of each generation have blamed for their problems. Tipper Gore was the Jonathan Haidt of the 80s.
I argue that the better approach is parental (and perhaps school) involvement in teaching digital literacy skills, etc.
But I’m just an attorney who studies a lot of science with no other expertise or letters behind my name, so…
Indeed. And in my experience, those who are most keen to refer to 'immature' brains are also the ones most likely to say "Back in MY day..." before describing some ridiculously exaggerated feat of personal independence as a 7 year old
Great article. I'm always surprised there aren't more "news is killing our children" headlines. "Children's mental health is being trashed by the crazy dissonance of their parents going about their days doing nothing in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence demanding immediate change."
It just feels like scaremongering (or as you point out in this case, a link to some moneymaking scheme): phones are evil, technological drugs warping young people's minds. Obviously there is going to be good and bad in everything, that feels common sense. And like all other 'scary' things in society, bans or abstinence are rarely the answer, but knowledge and education is. Phones give young people access to a wealth of knowledge, tools and support, access to community and sometimes safety. To dismiss this all because the potential dangers is as ridiculous as all sliding scale arguments.
Said as a counsellor of young adults and author of soon to be published book A Guide to Working Therapeuticcally with Young Adults 🤣
Appealing to Authority in the headline is a smart editorial strategy to get readers interested. I would take your criticism more seriously if you showed any understanding of the genre of writing you are commenting on.
I am fully aware of the rationale for this tactic, having published hundreds of of articles in this very genre, many in the exact same publication, a number of which have racked up multiple millions of readers.
The thing that strikes me as most problematic about this whole anti-smartphone thing is that we're looking for simple, blanket solutions to a complex issue. I agree with the idea that a lot of children would benefit from not having smartphones so young, and I also agree with the idea that a lot of children will benefit from them having them from an early age. The key is that parents and other responsible adults need to make reasonable evaluations based on each individual's needs and temperament before introducing smartphones and then continue evaluating as the children use them.
Your point about vaguely grouping everything together as screen time is extremely important. I grew up on the cusp of smartphone use (I had one in my late teens), but I grew up with unrestricted computer access. Did this harm me in some ways? Yes. I remember being concerned that I had an addiction to the internet because of how much I used it. But I also spent a lot my screen time writing, recording and composing music, learning about philosophy and music, etc.
I would also say that even when kids are "just" spending time on video games, I don't think that's necessarily a problem. I had a balanced childhood, in which I spent a lot of time in person with my friends, and I also spent a lot of time playing games online with them. Those times spent online with my friends are genuinely some of my fondest memories and were some of the best times in my life. Most of these anti-smartphone parents wouldn't be upset if their kids spent the same amount of time playing baseball outside, which indicates it's really just a traditionalism argument (assuming the child is getting enough exercise already). This new online paradigm isn't inherently worse, it's just different, and it can be worse *for some people* — maybe most people! But we should always strive for an individualized approach that appreciates and respects everyone's unique needs while also staying cognizant of the average — don't throw out the average entirely, but don't rely on it entirely either.
I would say the integration of AI, which is a whole host of unregulated safety issues, warrants the issue as critical and in need of more research and policy safeguards.
As someone who part of the 1st/2nd wave of people given smartphones in middle school (I’m now 23) I wish didn’t have one so young, and that the normal social thing was to wait. I think it really created an attention suck and focus on something that isn’t real. Deleted most social media off my phone in college and felt much better, since I didn’t have this background strain of checking, liking, or just watching. I was more free to think than consume.
Obviously I’m just a single person, but feel that its import to share that while the guardians piece may be poorly written, the sentiment may hold water for a good portion of the population
Yes, exactly.
Did you go to conventional school?
Without fail, every adolescent I see with MH issues gets better when they delete social media. Of course this is anecdotal in my experience, but it's enough for me to recommend limiting phone / social media use in young people experiencing problems , especially anxiety.
They would probably get better if we stopped putting them in schools that treat them like prisoners, too.
Yep.
They appeal to the authority of their clinical experience. You appeal to your authority as a neuroscientist. They belong to a group that advocates for phone-free childhoods. You’re promoting a pro-phone book for kids.
No one’s really objective here, are they?
I'm not appealing to the authority of a neuroscientist, I am flagging up the original 'appeal to authority' as a cynical tactic, and flagging up my own 'authority' as a counterpoint if anyone puts stock in such methods.
I'm appealing to the actual scientific evidence, of which there is a huge body and which represents samples that are for more indicative of the whole population than a handful of clinical cases in a single practice, which will by definition represent the absolute worst-case scenarios.
I am not promoting a 'pro phone' book, I'm promoting an evidence-based book, that is both for and against phones, depending on the context. My primary concern here is correcting bad science/misinformation in the mainstream, because that worsens everything for us all in the long run. If I can sell books as an aside, then my family gets to eat and we can keep our house.
I defer to published studies and sources for all my conclusions. If the studies and sources update and say something different, I'll change my conclusions.
I do not concoct spurious arguments from anecdotal evidence, vibes, and agenda-driven TV shows and present them for a mass audience in a major publication.
Nobody is 100% objective, because that's not how humans work. But tenuous 'whataboutism' is a diversionary tactic, not the gotcha you seem to think it is.
"Yet you participate in society..."
Keeping a secret possibly because it is making companies a lot of money. Without Social Media, nobody will really be using a Smartphone.
Maybe it isn't the Smartphone itself, but the applications that are easily accessible and highly addictive.
I agree the article you’re critiquing is poorly written and alarmist, and that we don’t have sufficient data to back up some of the claims that are being made.
That said, I can look at my personal experience as a parent and see that one of my children has been profoundly affected by social media, while the other has managed to navigate it without apparent negative effects. Some kids seem to be more vulnerable to its effects than others. I realize that this is only anecdotal, but there is no question in my mind that indoctrination via social media is responsible for my daughter’s current mental health issues. She went from a kid who had little screen time to suddenly obsessed with her phone almost overnight, and at the same time her mental health observably collapsed.
(For those who are wondering, they are both female so it’s not a sex difference that has caused the different effects - just a personality difference IMO.)
My younger one (now 17) seems to handle it ok. She uses TikTok but not excessively. My oldest (now 19) fell down a Tumblr rabbit hole when she was 14 and I don’t know if she’ll ever be ok. She had rarely ever been on her phone, so we never had a lot of time limits because they didn’t seem necessary, and then she started high school and it all happened so fast I didn’t even see it coming. That age group seems to have been hit the worst. My younger daughter’s age group seems to have healthier attitudes.
There is a tendency to conflate smart phone use and social media use. It's possible to use one without the other. I enjoyed reading this article on a smartphone.
I also enjoy reading many Substack articles on my phone, but I’ve also noted that Substack is a form of social media and isn’t immune to all of the problems that accompany social media use, especially when using the Notes feature (which is how I found this article).
Woah. I appreciate the point by point break down of bad rhetoric but there’s extremely good evidence that humans have a qualitatively different relationship with smart phones and tablets than with any other non-living or non-pharmacological object.
I've got a lot of thoughts but my main one is I think this article is not very good lol like are you going after a poorly written article or disagreeing with a poorly written articles premise?
Of course this is just my opinion and not saying you're a bad writer or anything of the sort, but I do feel that I did not benefit in any way from reading this
If you're doing the former then, more power to you, you can do what you want but seems like a waste of time and energy, though in today's topsy turvy world of misinformation end pseudoscience, it is important to call out examples of poor reasoning. If you're doing the latter, frankly I disagree, so I'm inherently biased, but placing a powerful device full of applications crafted by neuroscientists to be as addictive, and therefore, as profitable as possible in front of a human brain that responds to colors, familiarity and novelty in habit forming ways, seems reasonable to believe it would have some effect? And not far fetched to see how it would be negative since many of the most popular apps are for profit and not for health?
And kids using phone screens aka alternate realities they do not have physical access to, in order to self regulate, that's not a big red flag? Wouldn't you prefer they learn to use their breath? Or some other technique based on their somatic experience, rather then just turning to a phone screen?
Never thought I'd read an angry old man "get off my lawn" article in defense of smartphones lol
I’m giving you a solitary standing ovation!👏 I just recently released a podcast episode along the very same lines about smart phones and social media (correlation not causation).
Kids with mental disorders have gravitated towards the very thing that parents of each generation have blamed for their problems. Tipper Gore was the Jonathan Haidt of the 80s.
I argue that the better approach is parental (and perhaps school) involvement in teaching digital literacy skills, etc.
But I’m just an attorney who studies a lot of science with no other expertise or letters behind my name, so…
I laughed at the idea that until 25 our ability to think rationally, plan or exibit self-control is limited.
Think of Pitt the Younger. MP at 21, Chancellor at 23 and PM at 24, after being offerred the position 3 times previously and declining.
Which seems to me to show an element of planning and self-control many current older politicians lack!
Indeed. And in my experience, those who are most keen to refer to 'immature' brains are also the ones most likely to say "Back in MY day..." before describing some ridiculously exaggerated feat of personal independence as a 7 year old
Great article. I'm always surprised there aren't more "news is killing our children" headlines. "Children's mental health is being trashed by the crazy dissonance of their parents going about their days doing nothing in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence demanding immediate change."
It just feels like scaremongering (or as you point out in this case, a link to some moneymaking scheme): phones are evil, technological drugs warping young people's minds. Obviously there is going to be good and bad in everything, that feels common sense. And like all other 'scary' things in society, bans or abstinence are rarely the answer, but knowledge and education is. Phones give young people access to a wealth of knowledge, tools and support, access to community and sometimes safety. To dismiss this all because the potential dangers is as ridiculous as all sliding scale arguments.
Said as a counsellor of young adults and author of soon to be published book A Guide to Working Therapeuticcally with Young Adults 🤣
Appealing to Authority in the headline is a smart editorial strategy to get readers interested. I would take your criticism more seriously if you showed any understanding of the genre of writing you are commenting on.
I am fully aware of the rationale for this tactic, having published hundreds of of articles in this very genre, many in the exact same publication, a number of which have racked up multiple millions of readers.
https://www.theguardian.com/profile/dean-burnett
If you're aware you should demonstrate it! Not simply show your credentials (or appeal to authority).
The thing that strikes me as most problematic about this whole anti-smartphone thing is that we're looking for simple, blanket solutions to a complex issue. I agree with the idea that a lot of children would benefit from not having smartphones so young, and I also agree with the idea that a lot of children will benefit from them having them from an early age. The key is that parents and other responsible adults need to make reasonable evaluations based on each individual's needs and temperament before introducing smartphones and then continue evaluating as the children use them.
Your point about vaguely grouping everything together as screen time is extremely important. I grew up on the cusp of smartphone use (I had one in my late teens), but I grew up with unrestricted computer access. Did this harm me in some ways? Yes. I remember being concerned that I had an addiction to the internet because of how much I used it. But I also spent a lot my screen time writing, recording and composing music, learning about philosophy and music, etc.
I would also say that even when kids are "just" spending time on video games, I don't think that's necessarily a problem. I had a balanced childhood, in which I spent a lot of time in person with my friends, and I also spent a lot of time playing games online with them. Those times spent online with my friends are genuinely some of my fondest memories and were some of the best times in my life. Most of these anti-smartphone parents wouldn't be upset if their kids spent the same amount of time playing baseball outside, which indicates it's really just a traditionalism argument (assuming the child is getting enough exercise already). This new online paradigm isn't inherently worse, it's just different, and it can be worse *for some people* — maybe most people! But we should always strive for an individualized approach that appreciates and respects everyone's unique needs while also staying cognizant of the average — don't throw out the average entirely, but don't rely on it entirely either.
I would say the integration of AI, which is a whole host of unregulated safety issues, warrants the issue as critical and in need of more research and policy safeguards.
now do the Covid response!