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My response to ātechnology is ruining teenagersā has always been and will likely always be: I Doubt It tech is often the catalyst, seldom the cause Now to read the link... https://t.co/yxCv1HPmp4
Ok so there are 4 studies cited to make this case The first is that thereās a correlation between mental health issues and screen time, causation unclear The next three are all about Facebook - and I think yeah Iām pretty comfortable inferring that FB use has -ve costs https://t.co/sFIK3dMSkm
I think Iād wanna talk about this in an oblique way. Letās take cigarettes. The widespread narrative is that cigarettes are, obviously, bad for your health. No sensible person would dispute the core fact. But the question to ask is, what job is the cigarette doing?
There are a bunch of possible answers to that, often overlapping. For the rebellious teen, itās an act of exercising sovereignty. For those who get addicted, itās often addressing some other issue(s): anxiety, poor appetite, wonky blood sugar levels...
So my question I guess is: if teenagers are self-harming with technology- and Iām willing to consider that itās a possibility- why? What are the underlying issues there? My guesses from conversations with dozens of kids: lack of autonomy, sense of control, desire for connection
And I will acknowledge that yeah maybe regulating kidsā tech use might alleviate the bad symptoms of tech use - although then you have to ask, what are the costs of that regulation? Is the parent going to use coercion to do it? How do you study the costs of *that*?
And my general worry with these things is that a simple-sounding problem with a simple-sounding solution might distract people from looking upstream at the harder & IMO more consequential problems: which is that our world itself is not very teenager-friendly (or people-friendly!)
Iām not saying āsmartphones are great, hand them to babies and let them do whatever with no oversightā - of course not! I think the important thing to do as adults is to have honest, open conversations with young people in a way that isnāt dismissive https://t.co/AUNWXaF1sF
I feel like this is a contemporary form of an age-old tension. Kids used to go to the mall, which parents (legitimately) worried was a degenerate activity. But the kids do it bc they need to develop social skills and status amongst their peers. And those are very important skills https://t.co/XaFKcCfwDY
And also to sympathise with parents I think teens entering an autonomy-seeking phase might not be very interested in having those conversations with them. Which is why it takes a village: older brothers and sisters, uncles and aunties, a good public commons...