5 MORE Lessons From The Anxious Generation
Last month I shared an in-depth article where we looked at five critical lessons from Jonathan Haidt's book, The Anxious Generation. His book has sparked both acclaim and controversy. I wanted to take a closer look on its influence and impact on education—specifically around the four recommendation he lists in the book:
Not give kids smartphones before high school
No social media before 16
Phone free schools (the one I’m asked about the most)
More independence, free play, and responsibility in the real world
If you haven’t read the original article, please check it out to see the first five lessons:
Lesson #1: Research can go both ways
Lesson #2: Confirms what we’ve experienced. Phones and social media are impacting our youth.
Lesson #3: The World Changed from 2010-2015
Lesson #4: Don’t Blame the Kids—Social Media Trap
Lesson #5: What tech has replaced matters—More free play and independence
In this article, we explore five more lessons that should be discussed when looking at this book and it’s impact on learning, schools, and supporting our youth.
#6: The power and peril of potentiality
When I was growing up the only insight I had to the lifestyles of the rich and famous was an episode of Cribs (we all wanted to see what was in the fridge).
In my neighborhood, I had two friends that were “Rich”. One had a doctor parent and the other a lawyer parent (they had a pool).
So, when teachers and adults, in general, told me that paying attention in school for 7 hours, doing my homework, and following the path of school—college—job was the best course to take for my future…I believed them.
That’s NOT our kids' reality in today's world.
For most of human history, identity was ascribed at birth: pauper, peasant, preacher, princess. Of course, inequities could cause suffering. But social position was a period, not a question mark. Today, modern teenagers are more engaged in the process of trying to see who they are than any other generation that has come before. This is not about identity politics but ennui: Even minuscule choices, like what socks to wear, are part of a larger cultural self-definition and viral conversation. Getting dressed in this context is certainly preferable to fleeing a saber-toothed tiger—but it’s not without its edge.
Today’s teens face a yawning chasm of potentiality. “The natural limitations of human existence are the only limitations life imposes on contemporary Americans,” wrote Greenfeld. “In comparison to other societies, our sphere of freedom, and choice, is greatly extended.” It’s not just about the freedom to pick (or avoid) a religion, and whether or not to have kids. It’s the choice of where to live, what to buy (there are so many choices about what to buy), what to decorate your walls with—everything down to how to groom the hairs on your head. Teens today are taught they can be whatever they dream.
https://slate.com/technology/2024/08/anxious-generation-mindfulness-teens-phones-jonathan-haidt.html
My kids, and the millions of students in our schools, have access to thousands of people that they follow, watch, and interact with who are making hundreds of thousands of dollars from…putting on makeup…playing video games….doing dances to popular songs. Obviously, those thousands may be outliers, but they exist.
And instead of waiting for a new episode of Cribs to drop, our kids get to see this real-time access to “jobs” and “success” that we never could have imagined. So, when I talk to my own daughters and sons about this new reality, they often wonder what is the point of following that traditional path when so many have taken a different route and found success doing something they are truly interested in.
I’m not saying this is right or wrong.
In fact, I’m torn about all of it.
Instead, I’m pointing out how different our kids' reality is then the one we grew up in, and how the value of school has shifted.
Maybe, as this Slate article says, this “chasm of potentiality” is as big a factor as any when it comes to our students engagement in schools.
#7: New technology backlash is always a thing
We tend to get excited about new technology, and then have a severe cultural backlash once we see how it is impacting society. This has happened for centuries, and is nothing new with smartphones and social media:
Haidt’s work brings to mind something that many of us think of when the latest innovation is held up as evidence of the downfall of civilization: We’ve been through this before. In the 1800s, medical journals were concerned about “railway madness” and trains traveling so fast they would make people go crazy. In the 1920s people railed against the radio as a vapid deliverer of ads and indistinguishable jazz. And the rise of teen car culture in the 20th century led to rabid fears about promiscuity, delinquency, and moral decline.
https://slate.com/technology/2024/08/anxious-generation-mindfulness-teens-phones-jonathan-haidt.html
This happened just recently with the array of video game myths and backlash that followed around the impact on our youth. These myths have since been debunked, following myths around Television, and other new tech myths that have surfaced.
As with all technology there are good uses and bad uses. Sometimes we have control and other times it seems that we do not.
Yet the tired story of “this is bad because it is new” does not always stand the test of time.
#8: Tech Companies Need to Be Held Accountable and Take Action
One of Haidt’s most powerful arguments in the book is that National Governments and Technology Companies are doing a horrible job at safe-guarding our children.
This, to me, is something that should worry all of us as parents, educators, and citizens. Knowing that my 10-year old could easily bypass a “birthdate” check on the social media apps, makes me a bit angry that we are allowing this to slide.
What legal limits have we imposed on these tech companies so far? In the United States, which ended up setting the norms for most other countries, the main prohibition is the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), enacted in 1998. It requires children under 13 to get parental consent before they can sign a contract with a company (the terms of service) to give away their data and some of their rights when they open an account. That set the effective age of “internet adulthood” at 13, for reasons that had little to do with children’s safety or mental health.[5] But the wording of the law doesn’t require companies to verify ages; as long as a child checks a box to assert that she’s old enough (or puts in the right fake birthday), she can go almost anywhere on the internet without her parents’ knowledge or consent. In fact, 40% of American children under 13 have created Instagram accounts,[6] yet there has been no update of federal laws since 1998.
We don’t let preteens buy tobacco or alcohol, or enter casinos. The costs of using social media, in particular, are high for adolescents, compared with adults, while the benefits are minimal. (The Anxious Generation, Chap 1)
#9: Tech with purpose vs Tech for entertainment/distraction
As Seymour Papert once elegantly wrote:
One might say the computer is being used to program the child. In my vision, the child programs the computer, and in doing so, both acquires a sense of mastery over a piece of the most modern and powerful technology and establishes an intense contact with some of the deepest ideas from science, from mathematics, and from the art of intellectual model building.
The crazy thing about this quote, is that he said this 20+ years ago, just as computers were beginning to make their way into society and schools.
When we allow (yes, that is the word we have to use now that almost every kid has a device) for students to use devices in school, we open up a world of creative opportunities that did not exist prior. Computers aren’t meant to program our children and they are not meant to improve the recall on a standardized test. Computers are the vehicle that can take students across the bridge of opportunity that learning provides.
When we denounce using computers in the classroom because of their lack of help in taking notes and acing multiple choice tests, we completely miss the point. Computers infuse, support, and empower students to be creative, think critically, solve unique problems (often collaboratively), and communicate at a feverish pace with their peers and mentors in and out of the classroom.
In our book, LAUNCH (that I co-authored with John Spencer), we talk about this “creative chasm”. Many times technology is used for consuming, communicating, and entertainment.
Even though it is the most powerful creative device ever made, we often fail to use it for those purposes. Let’s focus on using technology with a true creative and learning purpose, and see how it impacts learning.
#10: Valuing Human connection: It matters more than ever
One of my favorite Haidt quotes from the book is: “Experience, not information, is the key to emotional development.”
We should focus as much (or more) on the research in the book that calls for real-world human and social interaction—than on merely banning technology.
Imagine a classroom that gets rid of phones, only to have students sit for hours doing worksheets, listening to lectures, and rarely doing what we need to do in order to develop: socialize and learn by doing.
I often talk with teachers who are giving their best every single day. In the midst of the daily practice of teaching and leading we see that the world is changing, our students are changing right along with it, and we have a responsibility to move our practice forward as well.
This doesn’t mean we abandon what has worked well in the past! It only means we need to think critically about how it can be adjusted to work well today.
If Socrates wanted to create an engaging learning experience for his pupils/students, he would probably focus on an experience that was human, social, meaning-centered, and experience-based (HT: PLN). And guess what, it would most likely be engaging if it had those basic principles of learning at its core.
Those principles of learning still work today.
When we replace human, social, meaning-centered, and experience-based with traditional, compliance, boring and standardized—we give students a lot of reasons to direct attention in other places.
Haidt offers this as as summation on his work:
“My central claim in this book is that these two trends—overprotection in the real world and underprotection in the virtual world—are the major reasons why children born after 1995 became the anxious generation.”
Let’s work to improve both in schools and environments where we have some control and influence. And, as always, let’s discuss the many gray areas that this book and research bring up, to get a clear picture of what works best for our kids and communities in this moment, and the future.
