The author’s eight-year-old daughter Rosy has a ‘children’s’ license, indicating that she has her parents’ permission to ride her bike around her native Texas.
Michaeleen Doubleff
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Michaeleen Doubleff
The author’s eight-year-old daughter Rosy has a ‘children’s’ license, indicating that she has her parents’ permission to ride her bike around her native Texas.
Michaeleen Doubleff
American children are surrounded by a damaging combination, social psychologists say Jonathan Haidt: too much screen time and too little autonomy.
In his new book, Anxious generation, Haidt argues that these two key factors have combined to cause the mental health crisis that American teenagers are currently facing. ONE Research by health policy research organization KFF found that 1 in 5 adolescents have symptoms of anxiety and depression. Haidt’s book offers a series of recommendations to reverse both of these factors.
For example, Haidt offers this advice to parents of children ages 6 to 13: “Practice keeping your children out of your sight so they have no way to get to you. While you cook dinner for friends, take your kids out with them to the grocery store to buy more garlic — even if you don’t need it.”
But as many parents know, giving kids more autonomy while delaying access to smartphones can be more difficult than it seems.
Parents face resistance from many directions: school policies, neighbors, other parents, and even the law. Some parents even face it prosecute. So I wanted to talk to Haidt, a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, about the details of implementing some of his recommendations.
I started our conversation by telling him a story about my daughter, who was 7 years old at the time:
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Last summer, my husband and I taught our daughter to walk or bike to the local market. Within a few months, police stopped her not once but twice. The first time, they took her home in a police car, which made her quite scared.
How do you give kids more independence when our law enforcement, neighborhoods, and communities aren’t used to it?
Parents need to act together:
Step 1: We need to change the laws in the states to make it clear that giving your child independence cannot be considered evidence of neglect. We passed that law in eight states [Utah, Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Virginia, Connecticut, Illinois and Montana]. It is being considered in many others.
Step 2: We then have to change the norms at the group level. And we can do that with something called Develop experience. You encourage your elementary school administrators to download word documents Let’s grow [a nonprofit organization that Haidt co-founded to foster childhood independence]. That document gives teachers instructions on how to give children a specific type of homework. The teacher told the students: “Go home, talk to your parents and find something you think you can do.” Maybe do, but you’ve never been allowed to do it before. Something you think you can do on your own.”
Like going to the store by bike a few blocks away?
Exactly. Children agree with their parents on that task. And then the child does this type of exercise once a month for six months.
The great part about this challenge is that it changes the norms. Before you know it, seeing an 8-year-old carrying a gallon of milk is normal. It’s normal to see a 9 year old riding a bike – that’s how you change the norms.
So after the second police incident, we actually went to the Let Grow website and printed out the small print license that the kids can take with them, saying their parents have given them permission to walk around town. And our daughter loves it.
Fine! That’s my invention.
Well thank you. It works fine. We actually thought about going to the police with other parents and discussed how we wanted our kids to walk and bike around the neighborhood without any problems.
Oh, I should have put that in the book. So, yeah, once a school does a Let’s Grow Experience, you can convince 10 parents to go to the police station and say, “This is what we want to do with our kids. And we want to make sure said there would be no trouble with that.”
In your book, you also recommend waiting for kids to use smartphones at least until they finish high school. As a parent, I have heard many parents talk about giving their 9-year-old child a smartphone. How can you broach the subject of procrastination with other parents without appearing judgmental or angering them? I worry that I will hurt the friendship between our children.
Why not suggest that a 9-year-old boy have a flip phone that can only call and text? No access to the internet.
Parents think the only choice is to have a smartphone or not have a phone. That’s what I think. So I gave my son my old smartphone when he was in 4th grade and started walking to school. I didn’t think about giving him a more basic phone. So it was just a failure of imagination. And it’s funny because most parents today are Millennials who grew up with flip phones. Flip phones allow them to stay connected. It doesn’t harm them. I see no evidence that flip phones are harmful to Millennials. So just give your 9 year old a flip phone.
So, flip phones allow parents to contact their children when they are away from home without giving them access to the Internet and all the risks that come with it, such as the risk of bringing strangers into their lives. they.
Yes, it is actually internet-connected devices that enable companies [and strangers] to reach your child directly. And that’s a really bad thing.
Man, I hope it will be easy to convince many parents to agree and switch to using flip phones. I know I will try.
To change things, we need coordinated action, like this. Parents now feel hopeless. But they shouldn’t feel that way. Things will change very quickly because we all want them to change.
Last question: The Anxious generation focus on smartphones, especially in middle school. But for many young children, iPads and game consoles can consume almost all of their out-of-school time. Is there a developmental trajectory where children develop the habit of using screens from a very young age so that when they get a phone, it is difficult for them to adjust because long screen time has become a habit?
What you are describing is what I call a phone kid. It didn’t start with the first smartphone. It starts with the first screens. When I say phones in the book, I don’t just mean smartphones – I mean any device with an internet connection.
If we leave all of our kids home alone because we’re afraid of letting them explore the neighborhood on their own, they’ll get bored. But if we made an extra effort to get them to spend time with other kids without screens, guess what would happen? They will find a game to play. If you send them out, they will find something to do. You know, in the 60s and 70s, there was a crime wave but parents still let their children go outside to play. Today, many parts of the country are much safer, but we are afraid to let our children go out. If we are going to remove screens from children then we must also give them freedom outside.
This story was edited by Jane Greenhalgh.
