Teens

Journalist Simone Ellin, editor of Baltimore Jewish Living magazine Jmore, endured relentless bullying in high school, resulting in “low-grade depression, anxiety and feelings of inadequacy and underachievement that have persisted despite years of therapy.” Decades later, she decided to reconnect with her former classmates—bullies, bystanders, and fellow victims alike.

Through social media, Ellin easily found many of these women, who were surprisingly willing to share their stories. One former bully, reached via Facebook, called and tearfully confessed: “I’m so sorry. I swear I’m not a bad person. I think about what I did to you all the time. I don’t know why I chose you. I had a miserable home life.” Hearing her classmate’s trauma firsthand, Ellin was finally able to forgive her, and hoped the woman could forgive herself, too.

Ellin discovered that even the “popular” girls suffered. “I was surprised to learn that many of the 'popular' girls paid a steep price for maintaining their social standing,” she wrote. One former cheerleader admitted, “The girls in her clique were so mean to each other that she grew up distrusting other women. 'I didn’t have a real female friend until I was 43.'”

Another woman, once bullied, became a bully herself: “I had no way to stand up for myself... I became a bully, and I would kick them with my clogs. I got suspended and I remember thinking, Now I’m the strong one.”

Ellin also reflected on her own actions, regretting times she gossiped or shunned others. “This was crystallized for me when a couple of women I interviewed mentioned that they felt 'invisible' in school.”

Ultimately, Ellin’s project offered healing and perspective: “We can never really know what’s going on in other people’s lives... After decades of hurt and resentment, I now see them as they were—young girls experiencing their own trials and tribulations.”

Many years of partisan politics, increasingly divisive language, finger-pointing, and inflammatory speech have contributed to an environment of fear and uncertainty, affecting the priorities and perceptions of young people.

This was brought into sharp relief through the results of a survey with 1,644 young people across the U.S., ages 10 to 24. The study was a window into what truly matters to adolescents. They were asked to rate the importance of a list of personal goals. These included classic teenage desires such as “being popular,” “having fun,” and “being kind.”

None of these ranked as the top priority. Instead, the No. 1 answer was “to be safe.” (The rest of the top 6 goals were: 2) To be kind; 3) To have a lot of fun; 4) To accept myself; 5) To be in great shape; 6) To change the world and achieve great things.)

Whereas previous generations may have taken safety for granted, today’s youth are growing up in an era of compounded crises — school shootings, a worsening climate crisis, financial uncertainty, and the lingering trauma of a global pandemic. The constant exposure to crises, amplified by social media, likely plays a significant role in fostering a pervasive sense of worry.

For instance, the rise in school-based safety drills, while intended to provide a sense of preparedness, may unintentionally reinforce feelings of insecurity. Similarly, the apocalyptic narrative around climate change may create a sense of powerlessness that could further compound their fears and leave them wanting to bury their heads in the sand.

Growing up amid a series of compounded global crises, today’s adolescents will likely carry the imprint of this period of heightened fear and uncertainty well into adulthood. This formative experience could shape their mental health, decision-making, and even their collective identity and values for decades to come.

In a relatively short period of time, smartphones have grown to a near-ubiquitous status. With each passing new release, smartphones are becoming more powerful and all-encompassing. Understandably, this is leading to increased user adoption and a surge in daily screen time.

Here are some highlights (2024 Statistics):

• On average, Americans spend 3 hours and 15 minutes on their phones each day.
• People check their phones an average of 58 times each day. And almost 52% of phone checks occur during work hours.
• Worldwide statistics show that the top 5 nations in cell phone use were the Philippines, Brazil, South Africa, Thailand, and Ghana, averaging just over 5 hours a day on their smartphones.
• Around 1 in 3 (36%) Americans believe they spend too much time on their smartphones each day.

There is a correlation between generations and phone screen time per day:

Gen Z - 6 hours and 5 minutes, with 56% feeling addicted Millennials - 4 hours and 36 minutes, with 48% feeling addicted Gen X - 4 hours and 9 minutes, with 44% feeling addicted Baby Boomers - 3 hours and 31 minutes, with 29% feeling addicted

One study found that, on average, children get their first phone at age 12. That means that the average American is expected to spend approximately 12 years of their life looking at their phone.

More than half of Americans believe they are too dependent on their phones (52%). As many as 3 in 5 (59%) use their phones in the bathroom, while 27% will text when at stoplights.

By 2027, there are expected to be 7.69 billion smartphone subscriptions.

A new study reveals the alarming impact of TikTok on young adults’ body image, showing that just 7 to 8 minutes of exposure to certain content can significantly damage one’s body image.

Researchers studied female TikTok users aged 18 to 28. Participants were split into two groups: one watched what the authors deemed “pro-anorexia” and “fitspiration” content, while the other viewed neutral videos like nature and cooking clips. Interestingly enough, both groups reported a decrease in their self-esteem after watching the videos. But those exposed to fitspiration content had the greatest decrease in body image satisfaction.

This isn’t an isolated finding. Other studies have shown that prolonged social media use is linked to increased anxiety, depression, and disordered eating behaviors.

One of the most concerning aspects is how widespread this content is. 64% of participants reported seeing disordered eating videos on their For You page without searching for it. Even seeking out positive content on TikTok can lead to inadvertent exposure to harmful material.

The study’s findings add to the ongoing discussion of the negative impact of social media on the mental and physical health of young adults. Earlier in 2024 at a U.S. Senate hearing that included TikTok CEO Shou Chew, senators made one thing clear: tech companies need to be held responsible for not protecting young users from harm.

“You have blood on your hands,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham in his opening remarks. “You have a product that’s killing people … You can’t be sued, you should be!”

The study shows that it only takes a few minutes on TikTok to cause serious damage. In order to protect one’s body image, it might be time for young adults to rethink how they use social media.

Pornography consumption has skyrocketed in recent years, especially among young people. Despite this, many Americans, including Christians, remain unconcerned about its societal effects.

A new report by Barna and Pure Desire reveals that 61% of Americans now view porn at least occasionally, up from 55% in 2015. Even within the church, pastors are more likely to report personal histories of porn use, with nearly 1 in 5 currently struggling.

The report underscores pornography's widespread accessibility, noting that it "touches all segments of society" regardless of age, gender, or religious beliefs. The increased availability of online porn, coupled with factors like social isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic, has contributed to this surge. One recent study suggested 2.5 million people view online pornography every minute, and online porn consumption has increased by 91 percent since 2000.

While some faith-based efforts advocate for legal restrictions on the porn industry, others focus on helping individuals overcome pornography habits. However, the report highlights a significant hurdle: many people, including Christians, simply don't see a problem with it.

Research suggests that frequent porn use can lead to negative mental, emotional, and relational health outcomes. Despite this, many Christians remain comfortable with their own porn consumption. The reports states, “Over three in five Christians (62%) tell Barna they agree a person can regularly view pornography and live a sexually healthy life.” That’s only four percentage points behind the share of all US adults (66%) who don’t consider viewing pornography harmful.

The report also explores the impact of pornography on relationships, particularly between men and women. Women are more likely to report negative effects, including feeling less attractive to their partners. Additionally, the study reveals that young people are increasingly exposed to pornography at younger ages, with the average age of first exposure now 12.

Possible Preaching Angle:

While there are efforts to address the issue, the report emphasizes the need for churches to offer support and resources for those struggling with pornography. By fostering a community where people can find help and healing, churches can play a crucial role in combating the pervasive influence of pornography.

Internal documents from Tik Tok executives and employees reveal that the social media platform is driven to capture the attention of users. Here were some of their own internal statements:

• An internal presentation on the 2021 strategy for TikTok describes the company as being in an “arms race for attention.”
• “It’s better to have young people as an early adopter, especially the teenagers in the U.S. Why? They’ve got a lot of time.”
• “Teenagers in the U.S. are a golden audience.
• “The product in itself has baked into it compulsive use.”
• “The reason kids watch TikTok is because the algorithm is really good... But I think we need to be cognizant of what it might mean for other opportunities. And when I say other opportunities, I literally mean sleep, and eating, and moving around the room, and looking at somebody in the eyes.”
• As an internal guide on push notifications explained, a key goal of TikTok’s push notifications is to “Activate & Engage users with the right content at the right time, to encourage users to open the App more and stay longer.”
• In a chat message a TikTok employee confirmed that the company’s “goal is not to reduce the time spent” on the TikTok app, but rather to ultimately “contribute to DAU [daily active users] and retention” of users.

A young woman writer in England named Freya India (see her Substack called “Girls”) writes:

Since I was teenager, it seems like everyone has been selling a solution to Gen Z’s loneliness problem. One app after another to find new friends! Constant hashtags and campaigns to bring us together… But I’ve noticed that, recently, the latest “solutions” … aren’t encouraging face-to-face friendships.

[Instead], there are the imaginary boyfriends and girlfriends. There are imaginary therapists, a “mental health ally” or “happiness buddy” we can chat with about our problems… There are even entirely imaginary worlds now. Metaverse platforms might “solve the loneliness epidemic,” apparently. VR headsets could end loneliness for seniors. But by far the most depressing invention I’ve seen lately is a new app called SocialAI, a “private social network where you receive millions of AI-generated comments offering feedback, advice & reflections on each post you make.”

I remember me and my friends spending hours after school writing our own songs, coming up with lyrics and drawing album covers—now we would just generate it with an AI song maker. Children are playing together less, replacing free play with screen time, and creativity scores among American children have been dropping since the 1990s. Part of that may be because children now depend on companies to be creative for them. Their imaginary worlds are designed by software engineers. Their imaginary friends are trying to sell them something. My imaginary world wasn’t trying to drag me anywhere, while algorithms now transport kids to darker and ever more extreme places.

Yet another study shows what should be obvious: teenagers need to spend time with dad. The study tracked over 200 families and found that time with both parents starts to decrease when kids reach the age of 15. But the University of Pennsylvania study also found that the time teens spend with their dads has critical benefits.

A CNN article stated, "The more time spent alone with their fathers, the higher their self-esteem; the more time with their dads in a group setting, the better their social skills." The article also said that time with mom helps too, but there's just something special about time with dad.

The researchers conjectured that one-on-one time with dad "may develop higher general self-worth [in teenagers] because their fathers go beyond social expectations to devote undivided attention to them."

The message is clear: dads can make a huge difference in their kids' lives.

Michael Hoffen is a new author, and like him, the central character of his book is a teenager. But there’s quite an age gap between them—about 4,000 years. That’s because Hoffen translated an ancient papyrus from Egypt’s Middle Kingdom and brought to life the true story of a young Egyptian from ancient times named Pepi. In the papyrus, Pepi’s father, Khety, is intent on getting his son a job in the royal court.

Young Pepi wonders what career path he should choose, an important matter still contemplated today by millions of teenagers forty centuries later. His father Khety takes him on a long journey up the Nile to enroll him in a school far away from home. Along the way, Khety explains 18 other terrible jobs Pepi could end up having to work at if he is not hired as a scribe.

Hoffen, who has been translating ancient texts since middle school, became fascinated by a 4,000-year-old or so piece of literature from ancient Egypt’s Middle Kingdom known as The Instruction of Khety.

Under the guidance and collaboration of his two co-authors, Egyptologists Christian Casey and Jen Thum, Hoffen spent three-and-a-half years translating hieroglyphics into modern-day prose and gathering images to tell the story of Kheti and Pepi.

He then published a book called “Be A Scribe! Working for a Better Life in Ancient Egypt.” In the book he describes just how little the human condition has changed in thousands of years and shows readers that working for a living has never been easy!

Possible Preaching Angle:

Parents still want the best for their children, and teenagers face important decisions as they set out on their career paths. This story shows how little parenting has changed across thousands of years. The record of an Egyptian father giving life advice to his son mirrors the same instructions that Solomon gave to his sons in Proverbs, “Listen, my sons, to a father’s instruction; pay attention and gain understanding. For I give you sound teaching…” (Prov. 4:1)

In a New York Times piece “Gen Z Has Regrets,” Jonathan Haidt and co-writer Will Johnson ask if young people wish social media had never existed. Between a third and a half say they do!

Nearly all American teenagers use social media regularly, and they spend an average of nearly five hours a day just on these platforms. 52 percent say social media has benefited their lives, and 29 percent say it has hurt them personally. We have found this pattern…in a wide array of surveys.

We’re not just talking about sad feelings from FOMO or social comparison. We’re talking about a range of documented risks that affect heavy users, including sleep deprivation, body image distortion, depression, anxiety, exposure to content promoting suicide and eating disorders, sexual predation and sextortion, and “problematic use,” which is the term used to describe compulsive overuse that interferes with success in other areas of life.

If any other consumer product was causing serious harm to more than one out of every 10 of its young users, there would be a tidal wave of state and federal legislation to ban or regulate it. In 2020 Sarah Condon said, “We are in the 1920s of cigarettes when it comes to social media.” In 2024, the prognosis seems clear!

Gen Z does not heavily regret the basic communication, storytelling, and information-seeking functions of the internet. If smartphones merely let people text each other, watch movies and search for helpful information, or interesting videos (without algorithms intended to hook users), there would be far less regret and resentment.

Respondents wished these products had never been invented:

Instagram (34 percent)

Facebook (37 percent)

Snapchat (43 percent)

TikTok (47 percent)

X/Twitter (50 percent)

Jonathan Haidt, author of a bestseller, "The Anxious Generation," challenged church leaders to address an important issue. He writes:

As long as children have a phone-based childhood there is very little hope for their spiritual education. An essential precondition is to delay the phone-based life until the age of 18, I would say. Don't let them fall off into cyberspace, because once they do, it's going to be so spiritually degrading for the rest of their lives. There's not much you can do in church if they are spending 10 hours a day outside of church on their phones.

Believers also need to know that researchers have found evidence that religious communities and families play a crucial role in raising healthy children. Haidt continued, “The kids who made it through are especially those who are locked into binding communities and religious communities.” Meanwhile, it is the "secular kids and the kids in progressive families" who tend to be "the ones who got washed out to sea."

Haidt stressed that lives built on smartphones, tablets, and computers will change their minds and hearts:

Half of American teen-agers say that they are online 'almost all the time.' That means that they are never fully present – never, ever. They are always partly living in terms of what is happening with their posts, what's happening online….

There is a degradation effect that is overwhelming, but most people haven't noticed…. I am hoping that religious communities will both notice it and be able to counteract it. But you can't counteract it if the kid still has the phone in a pocket. The phone is that powerful.

A study of YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook revealed that American Teens—by a large margin—use YouTube (71%) more than TikTok (58%). But they're more likely to scroll through the TikTok app "almost constantly," according to Pew Research Center polling.

The stat points to how addictive and unhealthy TikTok's endless feed of videos can be for teens.

A study from the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that new TikTok accounts were shown self-harm and eating disorder content within minutes of scrolling.

• Suicide-related videos popped up within 2.6 minutes.
• Eating disorder content popped up in 8 minutes.

Because of this, there's suddenly a roaring national debate over fears about teens' privacy, their data security—and all the misinformation going straight to their phones. Citing national security concerns, Congress is pushing to force the platform's Chinese parent company to sell TikTok or face a ban.

Psychologist Jean Twenge says. "It's of course possible that people will replace TikTok time with YouTube time or Instagram time. However, TikTok's algorithm is particularly effective at getting you to spend more time on it."

Fifteen-year-old Aaron was going through a dark time at school. He’d fallen out with his friends, leaving him feeling isolated and alone.

At the time, it seemed like the end of the world. “I used to cry every night,” said Aaron. Eventually, Aaron turned to his computer for comfort. Through it, he found someone that was available around the clock to respond to his messages, listen to his problems, and help him move past the loss of his friend group. That “someone” was an AI chatbot named Psychologist.

The chatbot’s description says that it’s “Someone who helps with life difficulties.” Its profile picture is a woman in a blue shirt with a blonde bob, perched on the end of a couch with a clipboard clasped in her hands and leaning forward, as if listening intently.

A single click on the picture opens up an anonymous chat box, which allows people like Aaron to “interact” with the bot by exchanging DMs. Its first message is always the same. “Hello, I’m a psychologist. What brings you here today?”

“It’s not like a journal, where you’re talking to a brick wall,” Aaron said. “It really responds.”

Character.AI is an AI chatbot service launched in 2022. Character.AI’s website attracts 3.5 million daily users who spend an average of two hours a day using the platform’s AI-powered chatbots. Some of its most popular bots include characters from books, films, and video games, like Raiden Shogun from Genshin Impact or a teenaged version of Voldemort from Harry Potter.

Aaron is one of millions of young people, many of whom are teenagers, who make up the bulk of Character.AI’s user base. More than a million of them gather regularly online on platforms like Reddit to discuss their interactions with the chatbots. The competitions over who has racked up the most screen time are just as popular as posts about hating reality, finding it easier to speak to bots than to speak to real people, and even preferring chatbots over other human beings. Some users say they’ve logged 12 hours a day on Character.AI, and posts about addiction to the platform are common.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Since young people describe feeling addicted to chatbots, they might find themselves sitting in their rooms talking to computers more often than communicating with real people. It raises questions about how the AI boom and what the future could hold if teenagers—and society at large—become more emotionally reliant on bots.

A Florida mother has sued artificial intelligence chatbot startup Character.AI accusing it of causing her 14-year-old son's suicide in February of 2024. She said he became addicted to the company's service and deeply attached to a chatbot it created.

Megan Garcia is on a mission to raise awareness about the dangers of AI. Garcia maintains that the site’s protocols to protect children are woefully inadequate, and wants to spare other parents from the pain she’s had to endure.

In an interview, Garcia said, “I want them to understand that this is a platform that the designers chose to put out without proper guardrails, safety measures or testing, and it is a product that is designed to keep our kids addicted and to manipulate them.”

Garcia maintains that her son, Sewell Setzer III, had been chatting with an AI chatbot on the platform for months, and that as a result, he’d become more withdrawn and sullen. Sewell eventually quit the JV basketball team during this time.

It was only after confiscating his phone as punishment for misbehavior that Garcia discovered that many of the chatbot’s conversations with her son were sexually explicit. “I don’t think any parent would approve of that,” said Garcia, adding that the discovery was “gut wrenching.”

In the lawsuit, Garcia says that her son had been specifically chatting with it in the moments before he died. In the exchange, Sewell had mentioned considering self-harm, and the chatbot seemed to encourage that desire. Sewell then shot himself with his stepfather's pistol "seconds" later, the lawsuit said.

Garcia said, “There were no suicide pop-up boxes that said, ‘If you need help, please call the suicide crisis hotline.’ None of that. I don’t understand how a product could allow that, where a bot is not only continuing a conversation about self-harm but also prompting it and kind of directing it.”

After the lawsuit was announced, Character.AI announced a sweeping set of changes designed to protect its younger users, a move that Garcia derided as “too little, too late.”

As the village speeches dragged on, eyes drifted to screens. Teenagers scrolled Instagram. One man texted his girlfriend. And men crowded around a phone streaming a soccer match. Just about anywhere, a scene like this would be mundane. But this was happening in a remote Indigenous village in one of the most isolated places of the planet.

The Marubo people have long lived in communal huts scattered hundreds of miles along the Ituí River deep in the Amazon rainforest. They speak their own language, hunt, fish, and trap spider monkeys to make soup or keep as pets.

They have preserved this way of life for hundreds of years through isolation—some villages can take a week to reach. But since September (of 2023), the Marubo have had high-speed internet thanks to Elon Musk.

The 2,000-member tribe is one of hundreds across Brazil that are suddenly logging on with Starlink, the satellite-internet service from Space X. Since its entry into Brazil in 2022, Starlink has swept across the world’s largest rainforest, bringing the web to one of the last offline places on Earth. The results have been less than utopian:

“When it arrived, everyone was happy,” said 73-year-old Tsainama Marubo sitting on the dirt floor of her village’s maloca, a 50-foot-tall hut where they sleep, cook, and eat together. The internet brought clear benefits, like video chats with faraway loved ones and calls for help in emergencies. “But now, things have gotten worse,” she said. […] “Young people have gotten lazy because of the internet.”

After only nine months with Starlink, the Marubo are already grappling with the same challenges that have racked American households for years: teenagers glued to phones; group chats full of gossip; addictive social networks; online strangers; violent video games; scams; misinformation; and minors watching pornography.

Leaders realized they needed limits. The internet would be switched on for only two hours in the morning, five hours in the evening, and all day Sunday.

Decades ago, the most respected Marubo shaman had visions of a hand-held device that could connect with the entire world. “It would be for the good of the people,” he said. “But in the end, it wouldn’t be.” “In the end,” he added, “there would be war.”

His son sat on the log across from him, listening. “I think the internet will bring us much more benefit than harm,” he said, “at least for now.” Regardless, he added, going back was no longer an option. “The leaders have been clear,” he said. “We can’t live without the internet.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Two things here stand out: The first, that exposing a remote tribe to this modern tool created many of the same problems experienced within modernity: Use of the internet changes the user. Secondly, the categorization of the internet as simultaneously harmful and essential is perhaps unsurprising, but it’s fascinating that putting limitations on use of the internet seems to be the best way to deal with this ambiguity.

A Snapchat feature lets paying users see their position in their friends’ digital orbits. For some teens, whose friends are everything, it’s adding to their anxiety.

Snapchat+ subscribers can check where they rank with a particular friend based on how often that friend communicates with them. The result is automatically rendered in a solar-system metaphor: Are you Mercury, the planet closest to your friend? Great! Uranus? Bad sign.

“A lot of kids my age have trouble differentiating best friends on Snapchat from actual best friends in real life,” says 15-year-old Callie Schietinger. She said she had her own problems when a boyfriend noticed that he was Neptune in her solar system. He asked who held the Mercury position and when she told him it was a guy friend, he got mad.

More than 20 million U.S. teens use the app, though most don’t pay for Snapchat+. Young adults with those paid accounts have seen friendships splinter and young love wither due to the knowledge that someone else ranks higher on the app. Now, lawmakers, doctors, and parents are giving fuller attention to these apps and how they broadly affect kids’ mental health.

Callie and her boyfriend have since broken up, for other reasons. But that stress and the misunderstandings she has seen other friends experience have soured her on the feature. “It’s everyone’s biggest fear put onto an app,” Callie says. “Ranking is never good for anyone’s head.”

Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist who believes that your child’s smartphone is a threat to mental well-being. His book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, hit the No. 1 spot on the New York Times’ best-seller list. This book has struck a chord with parents who have watched their kids sit slack-jawed and stock still for hours, lost in a welter of TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitch, Facebook, and more. He says:

I do a little demonstration. I ask people, suppose a demon came to us in the nineties with three magical boxes. And he said, “You can open as many as you want, but if you open a box, it’s going to take fifteen hours a week from you.”

The first box is the Internet. You get this amazing thing, but it’s going to take fifteen hours a week from you. Would you open it? Are you glad we have the Internet? Everyone is glad we opened that box. We think that time is worth it.

The next box is the smartphone. You open it up. It’s this incredible digital Swiss Army knife (of apps and functions). It’s going to take another fifteen hours a week. So now you’re up to thirty hours a week on this. Do you want it? Are you glad we have smartphones? At that point, most hands go up. The great majority of adults say, “Yeah, I’m glad we opened that box.” Now you’re at thirty hours a week.

Next there’s a third box: social media – Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, TikTok. It’s going to be another fifteen hours a week. So now you’re up to forty-five hours a week. What do you think? Are you glad we opened that?

The great majority of people say, “I wish we hadn’t opened that one.” I’m not talking about keeping kids off the Internet. I’m talking about not allowing them … to give away their data, and some rights, to a company that does not have their interests at heart. That is using them as the product to sell to their customers who are the advertisers. That’s what I don’t want done to eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen-year-old kids.

In his book The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing An Epidemic of Mental Illness, Jonathan Haidt tells the story of what happened to Gen Z (born 1995). They became “the first generation in history to go through puberty with a portal in their pockets that called them away from the people nearby and into an alternative universe that was exciting, addictive, unstable and . . . unsuitable for children and adolescents.”

In 2011, 23% of teens had a smartphone. By 2016, 79% of teens owned a smartphone, as did 28% of children eight to 12. Soon teens were reporting they spent an average of almost seven hours a day on screens. “One out of every four teens said that they were online ‘almost constantly,’” Mr. Haidt writes.

Girls moved their social lives onto social media. Boys burrowed into immersive video games, Reddit, YouTube, and pornography.

Suddenly children “spent far less time playing with, talking to, touching, or even making eye contact with their friends and families.” They withdrew from “embodied social behaviors” essential for successful human development. It left them not noticing the world.

Signs of a mental-health crisis quickly emerged. Rates of mental illness among the young went up dramatically in many Western countries between 2010 and 2015. Between 2010 and 2024 major depression among teens went up 145% among girls, 161% among boys. There was a rise in disorders related to anxiety as well. Mr. Haidt looked at changes that weren’t self-reported—studies charting emergency psychiatric care and admissions. They too were up. “The rate of self-harm for . . . young adolescent girls nearly tripled from 2010 to 2020.”

Columnist Peggy Noonan wrote a sobering article based on the work of researcher Jonathan Haidt’s new book The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing An Epidemic of Mental Illness. Noonan mentions a dark irony raised by Haidt: (Noonan’s words here) “Parents are often physically overprotective of their children out of fear of sexual predators. But those predators have moved online, where it’s easy to find and contact children.”

Then she quotes a section in the book where Haidt includes an essay from a 14-year-old girl:

I was ten years old when I watched porn for the first time. I found myself on Pornhub, which I stumbled across by accident and returned to out of curiosity. The website has no age verification, no ID requirement, not even a prompt asking me if I was over 18. The site is easy to find, impossible to avoid, and has become a frequent rite of passage for kids my age. Where was my mother? In the next room, making sure I was eating nine differently colored fruits and vegetables on the daily.

Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist who believes that your child’s smartphone is a threat to mental well-being. His new book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, hit the No. 1 spot on the New York Times’ best-seller list.

This book has struck a chord with parents who have watched their kids sit slack-jawed and stock still for hours, lost in a welter of TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitch, Facebook, and more. Haidt blames the spike in teen-age depression and anxiety on the rise of smartphones and social media, and he offers a set of prescriptions: no smartphones before high school, no social media before age sixteen.

His concern is with a lack of protection for the young in the virtual world. Tech companies and social-media platforms have been “designing a firehose of addictive content.” This is causing kids to forgo the social for the solitary and have “rewired childhood and changed human development on an almost unimaginable scale.” He continues:

In 2008 the original iPhone was an amazing Swiss Army knife. It was one of the greatest inventions of humankind. So, if I wanted to get from point A to point B, hey, there’s a mapping function. If I want to listen to music, hey, there’s an iPod, and it was not harmful to anyone’s mental health.

But then a couple things changed in rapid succession, and the smartphone changed from being our servant to being our master, for many people. In 2008, the App Store comes out. In 2009, push notifications come out. So now you have this thing in your pocket in which thousands or millions of companies are trying to get your attention and trying to keep you on their app. In 2010, the front-facing camera comes out; in 2010, Instagram comes out, which was the first social-media app designed to be exclusively used on the smartphone.

So, the environment that we were in suddenly changes. Now the smartphone isn’t just a tool; it is actually a tool of mass distraction. What I mean by “the great rewiring” is this … once we get super-viral social media in 2010, a lot of things change. Now it’s not just “Hey, I’m bored, let me play a video game.” It’s “My phone is pinging me saying, ‘Someone cited you in a photo. Someone said something about you. Somebody liked your post.’” We’ve given these companies a portal to our children. They can control and manipulate them, send them notifications whenever they want.

I’ve heard stories from Gen Z. They go over to their friends’ houses sometimes—not that much—and they’re on their phones separately. One might be watching her shows on Netflix. One might be checking her social. ... There’s a wonderful phrase from the sociologist Sherry Turkle: “Because of our phones, we are forever elsewhere. We’re never fully present.”