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The Summer issue of American Affairs Journal is available; included is a review of Jonathan Haidt’s Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, published by Penguin this year. This review by Michael Toscano is titled “Scrolling Alone: Smartphones and Social Atomization.” If you cannot read the 400-page book, then click here to read this essay. Excerpted:
Haidt shows that Silicon Valley’s products are, by design, structurally at odds with the developmental needs of human children as members of the species. The only serious solution, then, is for government (and other responsible entities) to step in and restrict children’s access. ‘Even if the content on these sites could somehow be filtered effectively to remove obviously harmful material,’ Haidt says, it would not be enough.
But Haidt’s critique of Big Tech goes far deeper than concern for the mental health of Gen Z, as important as that is. His analysis reveals a more fundamental crisis of which the above is a mere symptom: that these devices and platforms sever the mental tissue that makes embodied relationships possible, dramatically weakening the possibility of collective action for the common good.
Yikes.
I do not believe government intervention will do anything except worsen the problem, but I’ll just mention a bill is percolating in the U.S. Senate that ostensibly would make it a little difficult for minors to access social media platforms. Introduced last month, the “Protecting Kids on Social Media Act” is intended to “require that social media platforms verify the age of their users, prohibit the use of algorithmic recommendation systems on individuals under age 18, require parental or guardian consent for social media users under age 18, and prohibit users who are under age 13 from accessing social media platforms.”
Toscano is executive director of the Institute for Family Studies.
Haidt is the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at NYU’s Stern School of Business. “My mission is to use research on moral psychology to help people understand each other and to help important social institutions work better,” he explains on his website.
1 comment:
I share many of the concerns expressed in the linked essay.
Ultimately, I grew up just prior to the overwhelming trend of 'safetyism' that has been inflicted, by parents on kids. I had, and used, tremendous freedom as a kid. Today my parents letting me disappear as I did most every day would be considered neglect. But, then, it was normal. All kids had that freedom.
So that changed. Parents decided that kids had to be monitored by adults 24/7. And that meant that adults had to entertain kids 24/7. Given that no one in their right mind can do that, they gave them smart phones, tablets, and all the rest.
And that has led to the issues outlined in the essay.
The evil may have been the social media companies, but not they alone. Parents bear equal responsibility.
Perhaps we, as a society should shoulder responsibility for the harms caused by social media, and just stop using it. Perhaps, Freemasons and Freemasonry should lead that charge. Would Lodges be better off removing themselves from it? Getting a little of the mystery back?
Since that will not happen, perhaps Freemasonry can use it more intentionally? Ask before each post, does this post serve Masons or the non-masonic public? If it serves the latter, should we make that post?
More broadly, new laws won't have any impact. Any technology that adults can figure out to restrict access to kids will be outsmarted by the kids. That's just the nature of living in a society filled with ever changing tech. The young ones will always be better at it than the old ones.
And besides, no laws about age have ever prevented kids from getting their hands on anything. Again, back to my own childhood, we had zero trouble buying tobacco and beer when we were kids. It's not rational to assume that we can somehow prevent kids from getting on social media.
But, all of this said, I do think that the problems discussed in the essay will be resolved to an extent. By the kids themselves.
According to the media, dumb phones without internet access are a thing again. Growing in popularity with young people. That trend shows that young people (the only ones who actually grew up with Social Media) recognize the dangers, and are taking steps to limit their own online interactions.
But, ultimately, it all comes down to our own decisions each day.
Do we spend hours scrolling through social media feeds for those little dopamine hits, or do we consume and create meaningful things online?
I think that society is moving towards the latter.
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