There has been a big uptick recently in public discussion and media scrutiny of and social media use.
Today鈥檚 guest post features commentary on the topic from a teacher and her students.
鈥極verly Simplistic鈥�
Mary Beth Hertz teaches high school students art and technology in the Philadelphia school district, is a published author, and can be found at :
I have been discussing social media, digital habits, digital wellness, and navigating digital spaces with young people for well over a decade. It is some of my most fascinating and rewarding work. Most of that work has been with 9th graders in my Intro to Tech class that every 9th grader takes as part of their introduction to high school. The course is divided into three major units鈥擠igital Literacy, Media Literacy, and Digital Citizenship. As part of the Media Literacy unit, we learn how to effectively use search terms, how to evaluate websites, gather information, summarize what we find, and come to our own conclusions.
I felt like I鈥檇 won the lottery this year. The topic I have students focus on for this work is 鈥淗ow has social media impacted teen mental health?鈥� Right in the middle of the process, Jonathan Haidt released his controversial book, .
I first learned of the book鈥檚 release through his interview on the Hidden Brain podcast. In the first part of the podcast, I was nodding along, but as the interview continued, I began to find some of his premises problematic and overly simplistic.
As his work exploded all over my social media feeds, I continued reading articles, and reviews, and listening to more of his interviews. I couldn鈥檛 help but notice that these were all missing a vital element鈥攖he voice of young people themselves. Yes, Haidt quotes research that involves surveys, and he refers to conversations he has had with teens, but the tone and cadence I get from these conversations exclude the complexity of young people鈥檚 digital lives and defer to finger-wagging and 鈥渂ad, bad, bad.鈥�
Yes, these distraction devices in the hands of young people whose brains are still developing are worrisome. For many, their phone becomes their crutch when things are hard or boring. They are often distracted by the tug of their social lives that now reside on their phones that give them instant access to their friends near and far. Yet, what I keep coming back to is that for many of my students, my class is the first place they have had space to dig into these conversations, explore their device use, and talk about how it makes them feel.
I decided to show my students the first 10 minutes of to see what they thought about his conclusions.
In response to the statement that kids have no hobbies anymore and that they don鈥檛 read anymore, my students shared:
鈥淵es but no, phones can take away from your productive time but it can replace it with other things that can be just as productive like reading articles online, watching documentary鈥檚 [sic], exercise videos, dance trends, etc.鈥�
鈥淚 mostly agree with this statement, but it isn鈥檛 entirely caused by phones. From my experience, now there are fewer things for kids to do instead of using phones than in the past.鈥�
On the topic of how boys are retreating from reality or social interactions:
鈥淣o I don鈥檛 because most boys go out and play sports鈥�
鈥淢any boys now are athletes.鈥�
My students connected with the way that their phones can feel addicting and how much time people can spend on a screen instead of doing other things. What I found fascinating in our conversations was how Haidt鈥檚 definition of being social differed from their own. They didn鈥檛 feel that phones made them anti-social鈥攖heir phones are a social tool鈥攁nd they felt that their phones gave them access to their interests.
The conversation around athletics was interesting. I couldn鈥檛 help but wonder if the push for athletics was tied to the 鈥渙verscheduling鈥� aspect of parenting and the rising costs of college pushing more parents to look to sports scholarships as a window of opportunity for their children. In general, most students felt that there were kernels of truth to what Haidt was saying, but that, in the words of one student, 鈥渉e鈥檚 being extremely dramatic.鈥�
I keep coming back to the (the AI conversation starts around 26:30). She compares barring young people from using smartphones and social media to the struggles she sees her peers have when they have not had an opportunity to experiment with freedom before they arrive at college. In a nutshell, they suck at it and make really poor decisions. This is why I find the premise of Haidt鈥檚 work to be too simplistic. At some point, young people will have access to these tools, and we have a responsibility to prepare them for that. This is not as simple as removing access to their phones.
Don鈥檛 get me wrong: The research is clear that young people are struggling. It is clear that social media is having a huge impact on their lived experiences. It is also clear that a big shift is needed for screenless interactions and face-to-face communication and rebuilding resilience in our young people.
However, vilifying video games, tablets, phones, and social media feels like the moral panic I experienced as a teen around heavy metal and violent video games. It鈥檚 easier to point our fingers at the technology than look in the mirror and interrogate the deeper societal issues (gun violence, widening wealth gap, climate crisis, divisive politics 鈥�) that are also contributing to these phenomena.
In the interview we watched, Haidt makes a point to clearly state that these are not part of the equation, but to truly make a shift in young people鈥檚 lived experiences, we can鈥檛 ignore the world they are living in and inheriting. We should be asking: 鈥淗ow can we build a society with structures in place to support the safety and resilience of young people while also preparing them for a highly technological society that values the ability to communicate across many different modalities to solve the complex and existential issues we face?鈥�
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