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From LeverNews.com — Lever Time is the flagship podcast from the investigative news outlet The Lever. Hosted by award-winning journalist, Oscar-nominated writer, and Bernie Sanders' 2020 speechwriter David Sirota, Lever Time features exclusive reporting from The Lever’s newsroom, high-profile guest interviews, and expert analysis from the sharpest minds in media and politics.
[00:00:00] Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Lever Time. I'm David Sirota. On today's show, we're going to be talking about how smartphones and other technology are negatively affecting our kids brains. According to brand new research, children in the United States are producing lower test scores, are more easily distracted, are less social, and are generally feeling more anxious than they were several years ago.
This is a full on mental health crisis. If, like me, you're a parent of young kids, I'm guessing smartphones and screen time are big issues in your household, too. And they are issues without easy answers or a tested roadmap to help navigate them. Today, I'm going to be speaking with a research scientist from NYU who's been [00:01:00] studying the connection between modern technology and child development.
He breaks down everything you need to know about this issue, including what we can do as parents to try to ensure that our kids are happy, healthy, and aren't having their brains melted. By the almighty algorithm for our paid subscribers. We're also always dropping bonus episodes into our lever premium podcast feed.
Last week, we published my conversation with media strategist, Jason Kent about Facebook's parent company meta, which is currently suing the federal trade commission in an attempt to prevent regulators from reinforcing a 2020 privacy settlement regarding the company's monetization. of user data. Yes, from Children.
If you want access to our premium content, head over to levernews. com and click the subscribe button in the top right to become a supporting subscriber. That gives you access to the Lever Premium podcast feed, exclusive live events, even more in [00:02:00] depth reporting, and you'll be directly supporting the investigative journalism that we do here at The Lever.
Okay, let's get into the main topic for today, which is all about how smartphones are negatively affecting our kids. Look, we all know that being a parent is hard work, and that's true for any generation. But I think it's fair to say that being a parent today, in some ways, is much more difficult than it was even 20 years ago. Sure, sure, we, we don't have to worry about diseases like tuberculosis or polio. Instead, Our unique challenges include the rising cost of childcare and education, political and social instability, and the dangers of living on an ever warming planet.
On top of all that, our kids generation are all walking around with tiny supercomputers in their pockets that have supplanted most traditional childhood functions from entertainment to social engagement. And if you're a parent who has ever wondered how that tiny supercomputer is affecting your kid's [00:03:00] brain, well, it turns out that it's probably doing more harm than good.
Now, look, I'm not a Luddite. I understand that being a kid in 2024 comes with its own unique challenges. Having a smartphone means you're able to communicate with your friends and participate in the modern social experience. And not having a smartphone Can leave a lot of kids feeling like outcasts or pariahs.
I've personally gone through this debate with my own kids, and I can tell you that there's no obviously clear correct answer to how to deal with all this, but After roughly 15 years of smartphones and social media becoming a ubiquitous part of American childhood, research is starting to show the detrimental effects these new technologies have had on our kids.
From declining mental health to declining test scores, it's starting to look like Like the cons outweigh the pros. So today [00:04:00] I'll be speaking with research scientist, Zach Roush, who has spent the past several years studying the connection between modern technology and child development. Zach is the lead researcher for social psychologist, Jonathan Haidt, who has a new book coming out this March entitled The Anxious Generation, How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.
Zach and I spoke about the modern trend of parents over protecting kids in the real world while potentially under protecting them online. Zach also explained the unique technological challenges facing young girls versus young boys and what schools and parents can do to mitigate some of this damage.
Hey, Zach. How you doing?
I'm good. Thank you for inviting me here today.
Sure. this is a topic that I am keenly interested in as the parent of two children. Uh, so I, I'm very interested in whether [00:05:00] smartphones are ruining or are going to ruin their, their brains. You've been studying this for a while. So first and foremost, why don't you tell us what you've lately been researching, how you've, Researched what you've been researching and what you think some of the big takeaways are about smartphones and kids.
Sure. So just a little context. I've been working with the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt at New York University and, uh, I've been working on trying to understand what has been happening to, adolescent girls and adolescent boys ages 10 to 19 or so, um, across the world. Um, my focus has been the U.
S., but I've also looked, uh, across many different countries. And, I myself don't conduct, my own studies, I'm more, uh, we are collating, you know, hundreds, thousands of studies that we can find, on these topics. Um, and we have, uh, John and I have just been, [00:06:00] uh, finished working on a book called The Anxious Generation, How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.
Uh, so my, uh, cards are on the table there. And, The bottom line, big picture story that We are trying to tell is that childhood, um, had been changing, um, for quite a long time as, you know, new technologies were emerging into our lives, but it reached a critical point in, uh, right around 2010 and between 2010 and 2015, uh, we argue that childhood has moved from one that was primarily not entirely play based into one that is primarily And it is this transformation of the way that childhood is being experienced by kids and by adolescents, that we believe has caused a real surge, in unhappiness, in depression and anxiety, and in more [00:07:00] extreme cases of, uh, actual episodes of self harm, suicide, and a variety of different, issues.
Thesis is that we have been overprotecting kids in the real world while underprotecting them online. So it's this dual ironic push pull, that we are hoping to, uh, bring light to through our work.
So one of the things that caught my eye was the relationship between the use of smartphones by kids and adolescents and test scores. and I don't think test scores are a problem. Perfect reflection of whether, Children are learning. Well, I don't think standardized tests. I'm I'm a skeptic of standardized chest tests generally.
But I also think that at a mass level, standardized tests do tell us some things. I guess what I'm trying to say is I [00:08:00] don't Standardized test tells you nearly everything or even most things about an individual student, but across populations It probably gives you some clues. So there's been this correlation between the rise of smartphone use and declines in Populations of kids standardized test results.
Tell us a little bit more about that, when it started, whether we can correlate these things. I mean, is it causation or is it just correlation? Tell us about that.
since the, I believe it was the 1970s, we have the, uh, National Report Card in the United States, which looks at, uh, general proficiency in a variety of different areas. So writing, I believe English as well. And, we see there as well that, kind of national base scores had been improving for both boys and girls, up until right around [00:09:00] 2012.
There's another study, a major study that's international called PISA. And this is something that, uh, a lot of people have been covering recently, which has shown a systematic decline across many nations among young people in scores of science, writing, uh, English, and. Again, right around 2010, 2012, suddenly, over a long period of inclines, things began not only to level off, but often started to go down.
and this is really quite shocking because this all happened before the COVID 19 pandemic. Now, there are many explanations for what could be happening, and I want to be here at the outset to be very clear that smartphones and social media cannot explain everything. We don't think it is because of all mental illness, all poor test scores.
There's so many factors involved. The way that we think about it is if we're trying [00:10:00] to solve a murder case, if there's a murder in one town, you know, there's 1000 explanations, you know, that you have to go in and study it. But if you see that the same. Murder kind of murder with the same tools being used happens, six cities over and then you find another one, another 10 cities over and then you find it across the world.
Um, you find it in six different countries. It all happened at the same time among the same people. the. Crop of possible explanation starts to really narrow in and that's what we're seeing here with the smartphone and social media story. And let me just paint really quick that story. So, in 2007, the smartphone.
Uh, was released, and, uh, at first it really was not, the kind of smartphone that we all have today. It was pretty simple, it had, you could call people, you could email, you can access the internet, um, but there was no actual, like, app store. on the smartphone. That didn't come till [00:11:00] 2008. And then you get thousands of companies starting to compete with each other to try to create the most engaging, um, and even addictive applications.
Um, and so then we start seeing things like push notifications where you start getting Text like a little Pavlov's dog in your in your pocket where every few minutes you get notified by by something and then social media starts to get more exciting, more viral with the like button in 2009. The retweet button.
We get the front facing camera in 2010 the first social media app designed for smartphones comes out in 2010 and that's Instagram, and so Instagram could not exist in the way that it does if it wasn't for smartphones. And so what's key about this is that the pairing of smartphones and social media is really important because it is right around 2010 is when you are able to carry around a virtual social [00:12:00] universe with you 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and nobody knew. What to do about this? Like, we were in a period of exceptional techno optimism at the time. but if you have this constant social vibrating thing in your pocket, constantly pulling your attention away, it's going to have an impact on your ability to, to think deeply, to focus, to concentrate. and there are a variety of studies on this.
documenting the impact on test scores, um, just by the presence of having, um, a smartphone with you, and it really is, uh, to me, a level of common sense around the impact if you have the phone, at least in your classroom and you're using the phone, it is extremely distracting for adults and especially, uh, for adolescents who, um, already don't have, You know, levels of impulse control and [00:13:00] regulation that that we have as we grow older.
So, I want to push on this a little bit more because I'm, I, I, We're talking about the phone, which is the most obvious example of a distraction machine. in your pocket, basically on your physical body. But I'm also concerned when it comes to kids that prior to the advent of the smartphone, schools across the country, across the world, made the decision to just put computers in the classroom.
I mean, I know I sound naive here, but I'll just tell a personal story here. I mean, when I had my son start at public school, at a certain point, there were, it wasn't just that they gave them a laptop, a Chromebook, to do their homework at home, or to do their work in study hall. It was that the Chromebook is literally, In the classroom as they [00:14:00] are being taught, and at one point, one of the teachers said, Oh, you know, sometimes, um, your son gets a little bit distracted, at the computer.
And I'm thinking you put a goddamn distraction machine. In the classroom, like what are you doing, right? Like, of course, he's going to get sometimes distracted. You've put at the center of the classroom a personal distraction machine for him and every other student. So I guess my question that comes out of this is How much of this that you're talking about, do you think is smartphones or is it just every screen that we've somehow centered in every experience of a child's life?
okay, David. I think you hit it like right on the money there. and what's so, um, you know, it's, it's very frustrating and ironic about this is, you know, there are a variety of news stories that have come out in the New York Times and other [00:15:00] places that every Tech giant, every person who has built these kinds of products, they send their kids to Waldorf schools, where they don't have any technology at all.
There is a deep understanding that these products are not suitable to Learning and deep thinking. and so I think you're right when we have the one to one tech policy that everybody gets a laptop, everyone gets a tablet. it's going to drive a lot of distraction. The smartphone itself is particularly unique because the ease of access and the constant notification and connection with other kids.
It enables a kind of, I think it's a true qualitative, even just difference from moving from the tablet, the computer to the phone. I do think that we need to move away from this constant. Use of [00:16:00] technology more broadly in the classroom. There's always use cases to we're going as a class to go use the computers to do some kind of assignment program.
There's some kids who need, It might help them for whatever reason, but there are always ways to deal with that. But the average student, especially in elementary school, early middle school, we don't need that. Kids learn things very quickly, and it's not going to put them behind by delaying using these things in the classroom.
It's going to set them up for success to be able to better manage using these devices as they get older.
Yeah. And I think the, I mean, I've heard that argument. Oh, well, you know, kids are going to have to use computers and later in life, et cetera, et cetera. And I'm like the idea that a kid can't learn how to use a smartphone or a computer. later on in their education or later on in their early adult, adulthood is, is absurd, right?
These things are designed to be, uh, to be used pretty easily. [00:17:00] So I don't buy that argument. And I remember, I remember asking, you know, what happened to paper? What happened to like handouts? What happened to, you know, the Xerox machine? I mean, I understand there's an environmental impact of extra paper here, but, but I just couldn't believe.
In a sense uh, it wasn't some huge decision. It's just all of a sudden computers and screens are central in, uh, the classroom. So I think then the question becomes, does America stand out from the crowd here or not? Are we particularly, uh, worse when looking at populations?
If so, what would that be attributed to? What are other countries, other societies doing? bit differently. Although I know you said that the test scores as an example kind of were a global worldwide phenomenon. But I just want to know for here in the United States, are we, are we a particularly bad case?
in terms of test scores, you [00:18:00] know, I, I am less, uh, well versed in the cross cultural differences there and cross country differences. I can speak to mental health though, and how we compare towards other countries if that, is okay. So the United States is kind of the center point of this problem.
And there are. A variety of reasons why I think this is the case, but there are two things that I think I want to say first. So I think we need to step into the just the space of what our relationship with technology has been since the early 1990s. The US is the hub for a lot of modern digital technology that came out in the 1990s with the rise of the Internet.
and then you get the. Silicon Valley tech boom in the United States. This was like a core pride and joy of our country in many ways. We saw [00:19:00] it as a, as a dictatorship, like demolition by using Facebook, using social media in the early 2010s, we hit the lowest point of autocracies around the world in 2012, this seemed like.
Why not help give children give young people the head start that us adults didn't have at these technologies because they seem to be a net positive for most things. And I just don't think there was a full understanding of what was going to happen at all. And that these products. are designed in ways that make us more distracted, often more unhappy, and are just not suitable for Children.
So as a sense of just the scale of problems here in the U. S. Uh, we have, you know, our rates of adolescent suicide are threefold. Higher than in the UK or in Canada, [00:20:00] there are rises across the board in different countries, but the U. S. is particularly problematic. Now, that is not likely due to phones.
What our base rate is, is a function of a lot of other variables relating to mental health care, uh, access to lethal means and our, uh, rates of, of guns and Um, but the. You know, the, the extent of the rise has been particularly, uh, strong here in the U. S.
So I want to ask about, uh, specifics beyond just, just the phone. Are there specific apps, social media platforms and the like, that have a uniquely negative effect on kids? I guess what I'm asking is, can we go one level deeper? There's the phone that's distracting you, fine. there specific things on the phone?
Anything from social media to text messaging [00:21:00] to specific kinds of extra addictive apps that are the central part of the problem or the strongest part of the addiction, distraction, and other such problems.
I think I want to answer this question by, I think we really need to separate out girls and boys here. It really, when we look at the data, the way that Kids are using these platforms are very very different on average boys and girls So if we start with the the average American girl she is spending the vast majority of time on Instagram and tick tock Those are the two platforms that most adolescent girls are on boys are just not on there at any Uh, extend the degree to which girls are on there.
Um, and what's important about these, these are visually oriented platforms, all about, videos and pictures of oneself, one's life. Uh, and they're full of, of [00:22:00] filters and dynamics around, visual social comparison, around, uh, looking at how, how you look compared to other people, around people that don't even exist.
TikTok are kind of the hotbeds for the kinds of problems, uh, that are driving, um, a lot of mental health problems among girls. And we can definitely go more into the mechanisms and how that, uh, we believe that works. for boys, the story is much more around, Video games, pornography, YouTube, just that's where they're spending their time.
So, both boys and girls are spending upwards of 8 to 9 hours on average per day, uh, which is really crazy on screens, but the way that they're using these screens are very different.
Well, let's, let's, let's go through some of that. So, Instagram, an example, And tiktok visual medium. [00:23:00] I think where you're going is that girls, their self image, uh, aesthetics, beauty, et cetera, et cetera, that I'm guessing that that use of those apps in specific. Exacerbate the problems that come from those kinds of issues, is that right?
absolutely. It takes something that is fundamental about human beings, which is that we compare ourselves against our group. We like to feel a sense of belonging and belonging is so fundamentally important as an adolescent. And then it takes that and it manipulates it in a way that you have prestige signals of likes and follower counts and pictures and you're constantly thinking about this all day long.
It creates a very, toxic relationship between, kind of publicly facing your own [00:24:00] self worth through these platforms. and one thing that I haven't spoken about at all so far is that there is a, to us, a very important backstory. It's not just what these platforms, both for boys and for girls, uh, are uniquely, uh, Uh, you know, doing it's also what kids are not doing as a result of all of the time being spent here.
So the amount of in person social interaction has, rapidly declined to where adolescents are now spending about the same amount of time in person as people who are around 50 years old, which is, Really a striking difference. It used to be, um, kids spending about 2 hours a day with other kids. Now it's down to 20, 30 minutes.
kids are sleeping much less than before. Um, and that is highly tied to screen use before bed. and there's. Just countless other things [00:25:00] of displacement of time that was so crucial to building friendships, building skills, building, uh, just a sense of self worth that is not always mediated through, uh, these new devices.
Absolutely, I'm glad you mentioned that, I mean, that's, that, right, it's, it's not just what's happening, it's what's not happening. Alright, so I wanna, I wanna take a, a pause here and go into the, the, the, the boy's side here.
Yeah.
Video games, YouTube. Let's put pornography off to the side, not to say it's not important, but, but that's, it's almost, it's not more understandable, but you can understand the taboo nature of that, of that as a, as a pull, and that being bad, I think it's sort of self explanatory why that's not good.
but, but let's talk about both video games and YouTube. When it comes to video games, there's an argument that's been out there that video games, especially when [00:26:00] played with other friends, even if they're not there, is somewhat communal, is eye hand coordination, isn't necessarily distracting in that you're not getting bits of information, you're like wired in playing a game.
I mean, I grew up playing Nintendo. Right. A lot of Nintendo. Now granted, I didn't play it over the internet. So my, when I played it, I was either alone or with my brothers or with friends. Right. Sort of physically there, but I want to unpack like, why are video games? Potentially a part of the problem.
And then let's also talk about YouTube, why that's different, for instance, from let's say the old television.
this is. a really tricky subject, and I, I want, you know, your listeners to know that there is, uh, there are people who strongly disagree with my position, um, generally on this, um, some people really find exactly what you're saying, that video games promote [00:27:00] socialization, um, it is essentially as good Doing stuff with kids in person, but to kind of frame this conversation I'm just gonna lay out just a couple of statistics about boys that I think is really important when we think about this.
So here's some Stats from monitoring the future which is a nationwide u. s. Study hundreds of thousands of kids done every year and they ask a variety of questions to get a sense of the Social and mental well being of kids. So they asked in 2009. It's how often do you meet up with friends every day? 46 percent of 12th grade boys said that they did that in 2017 that goes down to 30%.
loneliness. In 2009, 13 percent of, uh, American 8th to 12th grade boys say they often feel lonely. In 2019, that's 27 percent of boys. I [00:28:00] usually have friends that I can be around and be with. 61 percent in 2009, 50 percent in 2019. you know, I could go on and on with sleep, depressive disorders. These are the things that, make life feel worth living oftentimes, especially as an adolescent.
The core problem is that the vast majority of the time that boys are spending That we can see, recent common sense study in 2019 said about 17 percent of American boys are spending around four hours a day gaming. And so the question that I'd have to, that we have to ask is, if these platforms are as good or better or foster connection, why are so many boys feeling so much more lonely, disconnected, without friends than they were 10 years ago.
And what I want to argue is that what [00:29:00] video games and the online world was 20 years ago is not what it is today. I absolutely think that if you go to a friend's house with Nintendo 64, you have four controllers, you're all sitting next to each other, and you're battling it out, and then, you know, you eat popcorn or whatever.
It's very different from the story that a mother told me about her son, who didn't want to go to her friend's house because if he went there, then he couldn't play the video games because he needed his headset and he needed a screen, so he needed to stay in his room alone. It's a very different kind of social interaction.
One, I find, is much healthier. I have no real problem with that Nintendo 64 style. playing. It's more when the incentive is to be alone and that to connect, you have to be alone.
Yeah. I, and I can, I completely agree with that. So let's, and I want to take a moment to just talk a little bit about, about YouTube, YouTube [00:30:00] versus the old television, uh, or even today's television, right? The pay, the, the, the on demand, television. Why is YouTube. more of a problem in your opinion than the old television that I grew up with.
You know, you're going to watch too much TV. Your brain's going to turn to bubble gum, as my mom sometimes said. like what's the difference between that old television or even today's television on demand video versus YouTube?
you know, with YouTube, again, the problem is a lot of it has to do with quantity of time and just the design of these platforms. It's I am overall less concerned about specific. content. I'm concerned about how these are designed to maximize the amount of time that kids are on these platforms.
So there are a variety of things on YouTube. For example, we have autoplay. [00:31:00] We have all of these kind of unique design features, are designed to keep you on the site longer than you intended to, that you want to. And especially if you have your phone in your pocket, you're sitting in bed, you're watching a YouTube video, it's going to be two o'clock in the morning before you know it.
And that's going to happen night after night after night. And so my concern is that YouTube, just like every other social media platform, Are full of, the wrong economic incentives when it comes to kids, um, and that's what I really think we need to change now. YouTube has, you know, I think an enormous number of really interesting, uh, compelling benefits, the quantity of information that we can take on, Is extraordinary.
And I think again, just the issue is the economic incentives and the fact that those incentives are being paired with young Children. So 1314 15 year [00:32:00] old kids again, they can't make decisions in the way that adults are fully capable of doing. And even adults have a very hard time managing their time on on platforms.
Absolutely. Absolutely. So, all right. So I want to finish up this interview with both the question of Policy and the question of what an individual parent should do. Let's start there. Individual parent. I'll give you my takeaway from this and then I'm going to ask a few questions. Seems to me that what you're saying is that on an individual level, a parent has to try to think about how can I, at minimum, limit or create boundaries around the child.
How much, uh, usage, an adolescent has, of a smartphone and specific kinds of apps. You just mentioned quantity, that [00:33:00] regulating quantity, a. k. a. time, is probably a good idea. regulating times, specific times of the day. Don't be on it right before bed. don't be on, don't, certainly don't allow the smartphone in where the kid sleeps.
these all sound pretty, pretty basic. turn the The parental way to shut off the internet, make that on the kid's phone during school hours. if your kid even has, has to, or you're allowing them to bring a smartphone to school, have it basically not be able to access the internet and only be able to just basically call you during school hours so that the phone is not.
really an available distraction option in school. So I've just laid out, like, some basic ideas. Are there other things that parents should be doing, that, that are, that fall short of just literally don't give your kid a smartphone [00:34:00] until they're 18 years old? Which seems to me, being the parent of a kid seems to me a, a difficult kind of situation to implement.
I mean, you know, God bless people who try to do that. I, I, I don't value judge them at all. I think it's, it, it's just a hard thing to do in this real world. So short of being like, you can't have a phone or a computer, uh, or any kind of screen at all. What are some other things? That should be done.
So everything you said, um, I agree with. I think sometimes the boring is the most effective solution. Um, they're not the most exciting things, but yeah, managing quantity, managing time, really trying to understand, you know, how your kids are using these devices and what impact it's having on their lives.
It is different from kid to kid. Now, I know you said, uh, not a To talk about banning, but we do suggest, you know, if you can delay smartphones until age 14, before high school, the biggest [00:35:00] harm that comes from these devices is during puberty. And so we delay smartphones till 14, delay social media till 16.
But here's, here's the kick. This is not an individual person's, like, we're not going to solve this alone.
No, no, I know. I know. And I want to be clear. I want to get to policy in a second, but I just, I just, I know people are listening and I want people to be able to feel empowered that short of policy changes,
Oh, I totally
they can do. And I will say here, I fought it out to past 13 years old with my kid.
with my son. I didn't get to 14. I fought it out until he was into into his 13th year. I mean, you know, 13. I feel proud of that, by the way. And it was not an easy fight. you know, if my son listens to this he knows it was not an easy fight. He really wanted a lot of his younger friends had it for years, a phone and they were texting and he felt left out, right?
I mean, there is a real world Push and [00:36:00] pull here where it's not just like, you know, you're succumbing because you want your kid to be distracted. it's that sometimes your kids will make an argument to you that they feel excluded. Because they don't have the technology that their younger friends and kids at school have that they end up feeling excluded.
So it's like a, it's a tough balance between, well, I don't want, I don't want to be the person who keeps you excluded from things and denies you a way to feel included. But I also don't want to give you a technology that, Creates all the problems that we've just been discussing here. So I agree with you.
If you can fight it out to 14, that that is amazing. Now, I will also agree with you that social media, all that stuff, that's not at 13 or 14. That that's gotta be much farther, farther along. And, and, and so I, I, I think those are some basic things that people can do. And, and again, the other part of this is when can you use the device, right?
After. Whatever [00:37:00] time it is 7 p. m. 8 p. m. That's it. All the screens are gone. You can read books. You can do you can play Board games etc, etc, but the screens are gone that all makes sense to me
Yeah, let me, could I add
one thing? So I actually completely agree. And what I was going to say is that we're stuck in a collective action problem. So in psychology, core idea is that any individual who tries to make a change is going, the cost is going to be very high. Just like you're saying with your son, he's going to feel left out.
You're going to feel bad. It's your, it put in a terrible situation. Every parent. Is trapped. Every kid is trapped. That's what I'm what I'm saying. Collective action solutions. It's both at a legislative level, but it's also among parents. We need to come together as parents as schools find a group of five families that are willing to say we're all going to do this together.
We're going to delay smartphones till 14. Try to reduce that [00:38:00] burden. Uh, that each individual feels benefits increase and then we have collective action solutions. Um, so that's really where I think the biggest change in power lies is in parents coming together, families coming together to make what is hard right now a lot easier.
I totally agree. I totally agree. Now, policy wise, one of the things I've seen written about is the idea that schools should absolutely ban smartphones to the point of not just you're banned from using your smartphone in the school, but you can't even, you're not even supposed to allow to bring your smartphone to school.
Now, I should say, I basically support that concept. I, I would add an asterisk. I would say if you can put an exception for non smartphones, right? A dumb phone, right? So for parents who want to know that they can, that their kid can call them or they [00:39:00] can call their kid in an emergency, a dumb phone, as opposed to a smartphone, I'd put an exception in for that because I don't think dumb phones are all that distracting, right?
The old flip phones where you have to, you know, hit the button three times to text one letter. that all makes sense to me, but, but basically saying no more phones in the school at all. You cannot bring your phone to school, or at least at minimum, your phone can't come out of your bag ever at school, unless it's an emergency.
Although even that, I think the distraction, the, the, the pull of it. What are some other things that you think can be done? And again, at a policy level, either at a school level, or a legislative level, what can be done to protect kids from what we've been discussing?
So we are very strong proponents of phone free schools, exactly in the way that you're talking about it, where right now, if you look at the stats, you're going to see most schools are device free. What it means is you can't take it out of your [00:40:00] pocket. It's only in classes. It's not, We really are calling for phone lockers or phone pouches.
It's very cheap. It's very easy. and it's been tried in many other countries. So we really push for that. And yeah, dumb phones, dumb phones are the way to go before high school. Um, you can still do all of the important things. You can get in contact with your kid. They can get in contact with their friends, whatever they need at a higher legislative level.
There are kind of two approaches that are, uh, kind of being tested out, um, different places are trying different ones. an example is in the UK, they are, they have passed what's called the age appropriate design code, and this is trying to address the problem at its root. Um, the question of its effectiveness is unclear, but what they're trying to do is say, look, when you design Products these tech products.
You need to have a duty of care for kids. You need to [00:41:00] think about what are the implications of these design features for kids and you're going to be reprimanded if They need to there's a strong incentives to design their products with kids in mind. Um, and so that means, in this specific case that, privacy settings, such an obvious thing.
Right now they're often set default public. You create an account. Everybody can see everything. Um, it creates a. Generally, an increased risk of you get adults on your daughter's site. You don't want that. Set it to private, very simple things, design features. and this is something that, you know, hopefully can be passed in different states in the U.
S. Uh, there have been, challenges to it in the courts, but, uh, people are trying. The other thing, uh, that other states are, are going for is considering actual bans. So, banning social media before age 16 and then requiring that social media companies, have to enforce [00:42:00] that. And if they don't, they, you know, legislators need to figure out how to create a cost that's high enough for them to actually, uh, make the changes that need to happen.
Yeah. And there's been bipartisan support for that, in Congress. Uh, we had, we had Senator Chris Murphy from Connecticut on, on this podcast discussing, the federal efforts and it's not a Democrat. Republican issue. I mean, there are Republicans and Democrats who were together on that in Congress, uh, and they're taking on the power of big tech.
I would add one other thing, by the way, just if we're, if I could wave a wand, I would say that the phone carriers and the phone makers must all make available at least one dumb phone.
On all of their plans that the makers of phones must make one, at least one dumb phone and the, the carriers, you know, whether it's Verizon or, or T Mobile must allow on to their [00:43:00] networks and offer as an option, a dumb phone, because I can tell you, having looked for a dumb phone.
By the way, for myself, having looked for a dumb phone, because I'd like an alternative to my smartphone at times, I want to put my smartphone down, I want a cheap dumb phone, my own carrier does not offer a dumb phone, so it's a huge kind of logistical hurdle to actually get a dumb phone, and there should just simply be an FCC mandate that says if you're using the airwaves to do wireless technology, you've got to offer At least one dumb phone option, which of course would be the option for kids.
And they don't, they don't do that. I feel like, I feel like they don't want, they, they obviously don't want to do that because they can't make as much money off of a dumb phone. all it does is make calls, right? It's not, it's not as much of a profit generator. Uh, and, and so there are so many [00:44:00] things that can be done here.
I think the last question I'll ask you is, is about. Whether you're optimistic or pessimistic. I'm somewhat optimistic that we are starting to realize this problem. Uh, and one of the things that recently made me optimistic about this was I saw the preview for the next Inside Out movie and I'm not giving anything away here. But Inside Out, the first one, is one of the best movies, really one of the best movies that's been made in the last many, many years.
Uh, and specifically about this and about kids. Uh, just a brilliant, creative movie. Uh, and the next movie, the central character in the brain of the child. is anxiety. That's the, you know, there's, there's anger, there's sadness, there's joy, now there's anxiety. And I say that I'm optimistic in that that is popular culture realizing[00:45:00] at least this is the way I interpret it, that we have an anxiety mental health crisis among Adolescence.
We're recognize if it's hit the pop culture Pixar Disney level where we're realizing now that this is a real situation. So I am slightly optimistic that we're starting to at least recognize that we have a problem. And I wonder In your, in looking out at, at the research you've looked at and in the reaction you've gotten to the articles, that you've read, that the article, the, the material that you've put out there, that your book is coming out, whether you are optimistic or pessimistic about where we're headed.
I am completely on board with what you're saying. I feel that the tide is turning. the level of bipartisan support, is really quite profound. every parent that we've speak spoken to, every [00:46:00] teacher, um, in particular, um, Is sick of these phones and of the devices and the impact that it has and many young people feel that as well.
So the thing that we just need to remember is that this is a collective action problem and it's only going to be solved by. Coming together, as groups of people within communities, going to the schools, putting, applying the pressure, to make the changes within your district. Um, there are usually just a few couple loud voices who are worried that if your kids don't have smartphones in school, then something terrible is going to happen.
They won't be able to reach out. Um, but the vast majority of people want this to change. Um, and we just need to come together. Speak out about this issue, and the core idea of the book over protecting kids in the real world under protecting online, we got to just reset the balance about how we are managing things, letting kids [00:47:00] out to play more, more social in person interaction, less time on screens.
It's very doable. and so I'm hopeful, I think that we can do it.
Zach Roush is an associate research scientist at New York University and the lead researcher for social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. He was the lead researcher on the upcoming new book, which I cannot wait to read, called The Anxious Generation. Zach, thank you so much for taking time with us today.
David. Thank you.
That's it for today's show. As a reminder, our paid subscribers who get Lever Time Premium, you get to hear My interview with media strategist Jason Kint about Facebook and its parent company Meta, which is currently suing the Federal Trade Commission over the company's harvesting of data from children.
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The Lever Time Podcast is a production of the Lever and the Lever Podcast Network. It's hosted by me, David Sirota. Our producer is Frank Capello with help from Lever producer, Jared Jacang Mayor.