Send kids out in the "yard" with no phone and leave them there.
Don't give your kid a smartphone before high school, and don't let them use social media before age 16, argues Jonathan Haidt, a professor at NYU's school of business.
Axios News
Jennifer Kingson
Mar 25, 2024
Why it matters: Haidt says the shift from "play-based" to "phone-based" childhood is making our kids sick and miserable, Axios' Jennifer A. Kingson writes.
The big picture: "The primary thing that we are trying to understand is why adolescent mental health fell off the cliff right around 2010," Zach Rausch, Haidt's research partner, tells Axios.
"The core thesis ... is that we started overprotecting kids long before 2010 — it really began in the 1980s."
"We started pulling kids indoors, giving them much more supervision in highly structured activities and much less independence, free play and responsibility."
By 2010, "social life for adolescents in particular moved almost entirely onto smartphones and social media platforms, and completely away from this in-person, real-world childhood and adolescence."
The book offers four controversial suggestions:
No smartphones for kids before high school — give them only flip phones in middle school.
No social media before age 16.
Make schools phone-free.
Give kids far more free play and independence, including more and better recess.
🥊 Reality check: Putting the cellphones-and-social-media genie back in the bottle is going to be a tough sell.
Parents are often the ones demanding to be able to reach their kids during the school day.
They're also the ones pleading with their kids to put the phones down — without success.
BTW, what a bunch of f-cking pansies. If today's kids engaged in a little more drugs, sex and rock/roll they'd ...well not have time to be depressed. Particularly the sex part!
I know you're wondering the source of the graphs you stuck up nit picking pencil pusher. We'll it's the CDC. Ok, you happy?
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