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It is hard to miss the discussion and anxiety (moral panic, perhaps?) about kids and screens. Jonathan Haidt’s new book, The Anxious Generation, is at the top of the bestseller list, arguing that phones are driving all manner of ills. The U.S. Surgeon General wants warning labels on social media. California governor Gavin Newsom wants phones out of schools. And on and on.
I believe this conversation is becoming confused and, in some ways, unproductive. We’re conflating academic disagreements with policy questions in a way that doesn’t make sense. Media coverage links the debate over the quality of the evidence in Haidt’s book with Newsom’s phone policy. They are related, of course, but there isn’t a direct through line.
We can make more progress on this if we separate the discussion into four distinct questions:
- What is the quality of the evidence on social media and mental health in teens?
- Should social media come with a warning?
- Should phones be allowed in school?
- Should parents set boundaries on phones?
Each of these has distinct data we want to look at to answer them. And by separating them out, we can actually think about what to do, as parents and as policymakers.
Does social media affect teen mental health?
There is an active, ongoing, somewhat contentious debate about this question. The most prominent disagreement is between Haidt, whose book argues that the answer is “yes, social media is bad for teen mental health,” and Candice Odgers, who wrote a response (based on much of her own work) in Nature arguing that the evidence is much less clear.
This is an interesting academic debate. However, as I’ll say more about below, it’s not clear how many actual policy decisions should hinge on it.
The reason there is so much disagreement here is that we do not have the evidence we might want to conclusively prove the position of either side. The problem is not a shortage of published papers. In her Nature piece, Dr. Odgers cites this article, which itself is a review of meta-analyses, including dozens of papers with many thousands of people studied. Haidt has a (long) collaborative review, also including dozens of studies, with detailed notes. Estimates in these papers vary — some show very negative impacts, some are more neutral, some things look more positive. It’s all over the map.
The problem is that the vast majority of this evidence does not have any credible claim to causality. It shows correlations that have many interpretations (mental health could drive social media usage, for example). Although there are huge numbers of these studies, they aren’t convincing — individually or together — about anything.
There is a small amount of evidence that makes stronger claims to causality. One element is time trends: Haidt and his colleagues argue that the decline in mental health for girls lines up with the rollout of social media. Others dispute this, and the evidence on the timing in trends in mental health depends to some extent on which data source one uses.
The two strongest cases for negative effects come from two papers by economists. The first is this paper, which used variation in the timing of Facebook rollout on college campuses, and argues that the arrival of Facebook lowered mental health. The second is this paper, in which researchers randomly discouraged Facebook use (among adults) over a four-week period prior to the 2018 elections. They found that happiness increased among the non-users, with an effect size similar to increasing income by $30,000 a year.
I think these papers make a strong case that some kinds of social media usage can negatively affect mental health, although these are specific settings, they are generally not with teens, and Facebook (especially during the rollout in 2007) is quite different from Instagram, TikTok, or even Facebook today. Reasonable people could argue that these conclusions do not generalize.
If you would like, you can read hundreds and hundreds of pages about this academic debate, and I would venture to say you would find yourself unsatisfied. There are clearly tradeoffs. Some kids do benefit, and others clearly lose. I think the evidence does suggest that, on average, it is probably a negative. But how large? And does that outweigh some of the positive impacts? This isn’t obvious.
Bottom line: We are not settling this debate today, or tomorrow. But — and this is important — we do not need to settle it in order to make some crucial policy decisions.
Should social media come with a warning?
Recently, the Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, suggested that social media should come with a warning label, like tobacco. The gist of the warning would be that it hasn’t been proven safe.
The reaction has been mixed. In suggesting this, Dr. Murthy focused on some of the evidence on social media harms. One reaction was to revisit the debate above — what do we really know about those harms? What about the kids who might benefit? A second concern was practical — what would the warning say? Which social media would it be on?
Both of these seem completely beside the point. Surgeon General warnings have a long history; the most storied and successful one was the 1964 tobacco report (read about that here). The 1964 report mattered not because it definitely closed the door on the science or because it fixed everything or even introduced new policy.
What the tobacco report did was provide attention. It galvanized a movement, which meant more research, more attention to the problem, and, ultimately, a lot of taxes and regulations. It also led to warning labels, but taxes and lack of advertising and restrictions on where smoking can happen were likely a lot more important.
By making his statement about social media, Dr. Murthy is generating discussion. People — parents, policymakers, researchers, ParentData! — are talking about this. The problem of a lack of data on social media and mental health — maybe this added attention will help us learn more there. I doubt actual warning labels will happen, and it’s questionable whether they would matter. But the attention does.
Should phones be allowed in schools?
A number of states, most notably California, have moved to ban phones in schools, either in classrooms or during the school day altogether. The conversation about whether this is a good policy is sometimes wrapped up with the questions of social media and mental health.
They should not be wrapped up.
Imagine that, in fact, social media is totally neutral for mental health for teens. Even if this were true, it is still a terrible idea to have phones at school.
Common Sense Media reported in 2023 that teens get an average of 237 notifications on their smartphone per day. That’s 10 an hour. In a classroom of 30 students, that is five pings per minute. Maybe half the kids remember to silence their phones. That still means that about every 30 seconds, there is a ping, or a buzz, or a beep, or a ringtone. No one would tell you these noises are good for concentration. And that’s just the noises! It ignores the fact that when it’s your phone beeping, you want to look at it.
Phones are distracting. They just are. (I’m writing right now, and I forgot to put on “Do Not Disturb.” Literally, as I am writing this sentence, I got a notification in Slack about a perimenopause comic. I must look at it.) There is plenty of evidence of this, like this study of college students showing they lost their focus on a lecture after 10 to 15 minutes if they had their phones with them. When we think about school phone policies, it’s the distraction, the loss of focus, that is the problem, not the social media. Even in a world without social media, we wouldn’t want kids to be multitasking to this degree.
I’ve had many conversations about phones with experts, some of whom like them better than others. But I have yet to find an expert who thinks phones should be allowed in schools, and especially not in classrooms.
The harder question here is how to implement this policy. There are two barriers. First: For very good reason, many teachers do not want their job to be phone police. This means that to implement this, schools will need resources beyond teachers saying, “Put your phones away.” There are good approaches — collecting and locking up phones at the start of the school day — but they often cost money. There is a need for innovation and resources here.
The second barrier is parents. A lot of parents want to call or text their kids at school. They worry about them — what if something bad happened? This is a real fear. I definitely like the idea of being able to check in on my kid every day. But: as parents, we would do well to remember that no option is completely safe. Our kids having phones in school is harming them and their learning.
(There is also the barrier that is kids themselves. Kids like phones! But it is our job to set boundaries.)
No phones in schools! Get me a soapbox.
Should parents set phone boundaries?
Yes, we as parents should set boundaries around phone use. No, there is no shorthand answer to what they should be, because it depends on your child. I’d give you a few principles for thinking about this:
- Sleep is extremely important, and most kids do not sleep enough. There is some debate about whether the light from phones interferes with sleep directly, but we definitely know that being on the phone means they are not sleeping. Phones should be out of the room at bedtime — and by bedtime, I mean when the kids are supposed to go to bed, not when they do.
- Phones are distracting. It’s not a good idea for kids to have access to them while they are trying to focus.
- Everyone in the social media debate seems to agree that the impacts of social media vary across kids. Whatever you as a parent decide about that, it’s worth keeping tabs on how your kid is doing.
- You can set boundaries. If you think your kid is using their phone too much, limit their time with it. It is not too late to set boundaries, even if you have not done so before. Yes, your kid will be mad. That is okay! Parenting is a long game about raising healthy adults.
None of these thoughts about parenting have anything to do with the two big newsy questions at the top. As parents, we have to make these choices under some uncertainty, and in line with what works for our families.
A final note
My family’s pets are six snails — one big one, and five babies. The big one is named Clourtney Social Media (not a typo — it’s Clourtney with an “l”) and the smaller ones are named after platforms: TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, and X. (Sadly, BeReal recently died.)
Somehow, living with the social-media-platform snails feels like a metaphor. We aren’t going back to 1995, or 2010. Phones and social media in some form are here to stay, and the question is how to live with it.
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[I followed the comment link from the 7/15 article on understanding risk, which took me here.]
I completely agree with the overall logic. But I don’t understand what tradeoffs anyone sees in bringing a carseat on the plane. The only one I can think of is that you have a carseat available for your use at your destination (not from a rental car company, which will give you sketchy options) and your normal seat doesn’t fit on the plane, and you don’t want to pay extra to buy one for the plane (though that is much less than the cost of a ticket), and you can’t borrow one. Other than that…I truly can’t think of a tradeoff. I took carseats on planes for years and am glad I did. Increased safety on the plane, increased safety of controlling the carseat vs letting them damage it in the hold, helps my kid nap and relax on the plane, harder for them to take off their seatbelt when they’re not supposed to…vs the relatively minor potential cost of a carseat? It seemed like an easy choice to me.
Some people’s children will not sit in a car seat for many hours and would tantrum the whole way. For some people they cannot afford to buy an extra seat for their child when their child is this age. For some, it just doesn’t seem worth it to lug a car seat through the airport especially if you are landing in a destination where you can easily borrow a car seat from someone who is picking you up. So having the child in their arms for the flight feels like an easy trade off in contemplating the risk of 1 in 250,000 (or whatever the actual number she mentioned was).
Wow, the judgement is strong with this comment. Here are a few reasons: Kids under 2 fly free as a lap infant, so that’s the cost of an extra ticket. Many babies or kids are squirmy and uncomfortable in car seats and prefer a carrier, being held, or climbing up and down the seats. Lugging several car seats through the airport sucks. At your destination, you may not be driving (eg traveling to NYC, most European cities), you may borrow a car seat, or you can rent along with your car. (We always do this and the model of car seat they have is from a reputable brand like Chico, Evenflow, or most often Cosco Senera which is literally the make and model of car seat that is widely recommended as a good travel/plane car seat.) But honestly, I think the primary reason is financial for most people, including my family.
I really don’t agree that phones should be banned from schools. For 2 reasons:
Phones are inescapable tools, and technology is only going to become more challenging to deal with. Learning how to use it is always better than forbidding.
I would recommend you read Haidt’s book to address both of your questions. It contains 60+ pages of notes and references to substantiate the argument that 1) Yes, smartphone in schools and with children at all times is harmful, for many reasons and far-reaching beyond just academic performance. Plus, 72% of U.S. high school teachers say cellphone distraction is a major problem in the classroom (Pew Research Center, 2023). 2) While phones and social media are here to stay, there is ample research to suggest parents should wait until high school to introduce smartphones. Haidt argues that ages 9-13 are extremely critical and shows evidence that holding off will benefit. Think of it this way: Cars are here to stay, but we don’t let children drive them until they are 16. Alcohol is here to stay, but we don’t let people legally purchase until they are a legal adult (or even older here in the U.S.). Increasingly the evidence shows that smartphone addiction is real and very detrimental to children.
Is there an answer/what is the answer to concerns about school shootings or safety where there are 20 people in a room, they are in danger, and only 1-2 have a phone to call for help (and potentially others don’t know where those phones are?)
Is there/what is the answer for kids that are struggling socially in school and use their phone during breaks / lunch (not in classrooms or during class) to chat with their parents or friends to help?
It feels like banning them is extreme brute force (similar to banning social media!). It feels like there is a better way, helping kids at the right age (thinking high school but maybe not middle school) learn to manage distractions rather than just removing all distractions for them. But perhaps there is not.
I would love to read more analysis from you on this topic – would 110% buy this book if you wrote it! It seems to me we’re conflating three kinds of risks from phone use, which is part of why it’s hard to study: 1) opportunity cost – sleep, physical, social, academic, ‘addiction’ etc; 2) cyberbullying or other harmful social media interactions with peers; and 3) access to dangerous people or inappropriate content. I think these three should be researched and discussed separately, even if the solutions – no phones during school – are similar.
I’m curious about banning phones in particular- I know most kids need laptops for school these days and most kids have texting and social media easily available there. Not sure how to separate this, maybe school provides computers for school? It’s complicated!
Schools can block certain websites on their network, so shouldn’t be as hard to keep kids off forbidden websites from a laptop.
Speaking as a middle school teacher who taught in a school with free Chromebooks: we have found out it’s impossible to block chat because our kids have started using collaborative Google Docs for chatting — as in, they all edit one document together sequentially as a way of chatting. Obviously no one will ban Google Docs.
I always think of all that reporting about Silicon Valley parents, the very same ones who work for the Googles and the Facebooks and the like, sending their kids to private schools that use close to zero technology until the end of middle school. That’s like finding out that all employees at Tyson Foods raise their kids as strict vegans — you might wonder what it is that they know about that the rest of us might also benefit from knowing.
Fair enough for chatting, but I think there is a big difference between classmates chatting/having social interaction (you’ve always had kids talking to each other and passing notes during class when they shouldn’t be) and social media sites like Instagram and TikTok where an algorithm is influencing things, etc.
Great question. I think part of the answer involves NOT using laptops or screens for most of school. Certainly I think it’s outrageous that my elementary school kids have ipads. They are not useful for their learning, and the programs cost money and go to sleazy for profit companies. I see no reason kids couldn’t use laptops in the high school computer lab as needed. And I don’t think they are needed all that much even in high school.
I would not be pleased with an education that was entirely screenless through high school. Screens are undoubtedly helpful in adult life, and part of living a good life (what I would say the goal for school is) is learning how to access, understand, and ingest information using all tools available.
AE, I understand your perspective. But I think high school is plenty of time for internet literacy. I barely used a computer until college and I don’t think I needed to learn about them any earlier. I’ll note that the internet titans (Zuck, etc.) send their own kids to fancy private schools with low access to tech. I think they know the most about this and there’s a reason for their decisions.
I can’t help but think about the anecdotes from the book I just finished (“All In Her Head” by Elizabeth Comen – I can’t recommend this book enough) about the actual scientific papers that came out when women started riding bikes saying they would turn into hunched trolls without working reproductive systems, due to the rubbing of the bike seats on their groins. I’m not saying let’s just let all the kids have all the access to everything all the time, but fear mongering about new technologies is an age-old tradition. I may be a hunched troll from biking but my reproductive system definitely still works.
Question- you mention a few times, about kids benefiting from social media “Some kids do benefit, and others clearly lose.”, “And does that outweigh some of the positive impacts?”. What are the positive impacts you’re referring to? I feel like whenever I see these types of discussions it’s more just like “well we don’t really know how bad it is, and everyone’s doing it so you’ll have fomo if you unplug”, but have researchers actually found any true benefits to social media use?
I’m not an academic expert, but I’d argue that social media can allow anyone (but especially students) to find an in-crowd online if they feel ostracized IRL. When I was in elementary school, my best friend moved away, and it was pretty hard to keep in touch. Now, social media would allow (older) kids to keep up with friends who share their interests.
The common example that’s given is LGBTQ kids in, say, deep rural South finding a community online when they are severely ostracized in real life.
Should phones be “allowed” in school – should have included all the data and caveats on how selective enforcement may do irreparable harm to some populations, particularly low income and particularly that skew black and brown. This Newsom proposal represents yet another reason to suspend a student of color. ParentData should always consider disparate impact before blanket statements.
Legally, you can’t suspend a kid for bringing a phone or defiance in California. Suspension is only allowed in extreme circumstances (i.e. bringing a gun to school).