Research Wednesday | June 5th, 2024
Dear Friends,
This week’s evidence comes from one of the most profoundly important books of the decade – Jonathan Haidt’s “The Anxious Generation.” Every parent, grandparent, teacher, school leader, and policy maker must read this. If you are on the fence about smartphones for adolescents and especially about smartphones in the classroom, the evidence in this book will settle any ambiguities that remain.
Some key findings among the vast array of evidence that Haidt brings to the table:
From 2011 to 2019 (important because these effects are pre-COVID), student anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation rose directly in proportion to exposure to smartphone use. The number of minutes students spent in contact with friends – playing, conflict resolution, and learning how to navigate adolescence have been cut in half - from 122 minutes per day to 60 minutes.
The impact of smartphones on mental health disproportionately affects girls. Boys spend time on games while girls spend time on impossible visual images, comparing themselves to the Instagram images of impossibly thin girls. This has led to a spike in eating disorders and self-loathing, which is unprecedented.
Interpersonal communication has declined dramatically. Haidt’s college classrooms, which were buzzing with conversation before the beginning of a lecture, are now silent, as students are more absorbed in their smartphones than their peers sitting next to them.
Academic performance, especially involving tasks that require focus, recall, and analysis, has declined.
We have all done classroom observations in which teachers have simply given up, not only permitting the distractions of cell phones but allowing earphones to blatantly ignore everything going on in the classroom.
Haidt acknowledges that there are exceptions where smartphones have value – adolescents for whom social media is their only safe connection, especially LGBTQ+ students, but even in these cases, human connection is vastly superior to dependence on the illusion of friends – who may or may not be other adolescents – who can provide unsafe connections. The only answer, at least during the school hours teachers and administrators can control, is phone lockers where, to assuage parent concerns for safety, students have access to their phones, but the smartphones are not a constant impediment to learning and classroom engagement. Some teachers are already doing this at both the K-12 and college levels, proving that it can be done. When teachers protested to me, “They just won’t give up their phones!” it made me wonder what teachers would do if the student insisted on bringing an emotional support python to class. The analogy is apt because, as Haidt demonstrates, a single smartphone not only adversely affects the learning of the student holding the phone but also hurts the learning and attention of students all around that phone.
This controversy is reminiscent of the arguments over high school start times. Despite years of evidence that a later start time – 8:30 or later – reduced student deaths in traffic accidents, improved attendance, and boosted academic performance – schools resolutely refused to change until legislative changes mandated later start times. That may be the solution needed for smartphones in the classroom. Meanwhile, we can do our jobs as advocates in schools and, as parents and grandparents, to allow smartphones where appropriate and disallow them at the dinner table and in the classroom. The health of our children, and especially our girls and young women, depends on it.
I can be reached at 781.710.9633 or douglas.reeves@creativeleadership.net, if you want to discuss this week’s research.
Best,
Doug