Dr. Vince Gutschick dives into the issues and potential answers surrounding social media and its impact on youth.
Social media, or, might we call them antisocial media, are under intense study as causing poor social outcomes for young people. The evidence is far beyond the anecdotes we encounter of young people on their phones ignoring each other in person.
In a recent book, The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt focused on the evidence for the link being causal, that increases in both social media use and social maladjustment are not just both happening together (like the simultaneous growth of TV sets and sheep number in New Zealand) but the first causes the second. A reviewer of Haidt’s book didn’t dig deep enough into what Haidt argues, says Michael Spikes from Northwestern University. A more complete version is that styles of parenting have changed markedly, just as expectations of society on parents have changed.
Children now have much less time for free play, unstructured by parents or other “watchers” compared to children decades earlier. Children get fewer chances to choose their play freely, structure their own groups, resolve conflicts on their own, and build trust with their peers. They are more likely to be harmed by social missteps. Haidt calls modern childhood in the US “phone-based.” Children’s peers are marketed avatars, not their neighbors. The remedy or remedies lie in strong studies, then actions.
This has been an outreach activity of the Las Cruces Academy, viewable at GreatSchools.org
Source: Nature, 23 May 2024, pp. 757.
