A tide may be turning when it comes to smartphones in schools. Across the country, school districts introducing phone-free or phone-minimal policies are already seeing kids come alive again.1 And now, several states have instituted similar statewide policies, though actual implementation and enforcement vary widely.2 These positive strides are due at least in part to the work of Jonathan Haidt, who has been studying this issue closely for several years, alongside folks like Jean Twenge (author of several books, including iGen and Generation Me).
In The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, Haidt, a social psychologist, author, and professor, compiles his findings and makes a humble yet compelling case that the digital device, specifically the smartphone, has caused significant changes in what constitutes childhood. Haidt does not say that screen-based, internet-connected devices are the only factor. But he does argue that the evidence shows more than mere correlation when we consider factors like loneliness, anxiety, mental illness, academic decline, lack of meaningful social relationships, and many more.
For those of you who have had a hunch about these issues or have worried about them on the level of gut instinct or intuition, Haidt articulates clearly what you struggled to put your finger on—and he comes with data in tow, which means his suggestions for action come with more heft. He puts words to what many parents, teachers, and others have sensed but have been unable to articulate, or articulate persuasively enough to call others to action. He does both. For Haidt, it is about much more than schools and phones; it is about reclaiming childhood.
The Great Rewiring
In analyzing the research, Haidt concludes that something definitive has changed in the way child development now unfolds. He coined the term “the Great Rewiring” to refer to this shift from “play-based childhood” to “phone-based childhood.” He argues that this “profound transformation of human consciousness and relationships…occurred, for American teens, between 2010 and 2015,” when smartphones became their ubiquitous possessions. I would have to agree. I was a high school teacher in the public school system on both sides of that fateful transition, and the smartphone drastically changed the nature of the classroom and the challenges students and teachers faced.3
Haidt argues that the shift to a phone-based childhood is so significant because in a play-based childhood there is a sequential introduction of age-appropriate experiences via real time-and-space interactions with peers and adults. However, in a phone-based childhood, we see something very different:
Children are plunged into a whirlpool of adult content and experiences that arrive in no particular order. Identity, selfhood, emotions, and relationships will all be different if they develop online rather than in real life. What gets rewarded or punished, how deep friendships become, and above all what is desirable—all of these will be determined by the thousands of posts, comments, and ratings that the child sees each week.
As the number of children with screens and smartphones increased, so did their hours of daily screen time, to the point where today, many teens almost constantly interact with a screen of some sort at astounding levels of 16 hours per day—that’s 112 hours per week. Haidt explains that “This kind of continuous use, often involving two or three screens at a time, was simply not possible before kids carried touch screens in their pockets. It has enormous implications for cognition, addiction, and the wearing smooth of paths in the brain, especially during the sensitive period of puberty.”
Haidt goes on to document how these changes affect boys and girls differently. For boys, the digital world has been a gateway to pornography and gaming, which he points out are both environments of artificial risk and conquest. These digital worlds simulate what young men crave but don’t provide the real-world benefits, which leads to the downward cycle so common for boys today. For girls, the digital habitat has been oriented more around social comparison and appearance. And, like boys, they have a real human need and desire that needs to be met, but the internet provides an alluring placebo that turns out to be toxic, leading to the common challenges girls are facing today. Haidt summarizes,
Boys and girls have taken different paths through the Great Rewiring, yet somehow, they have ended up in the same pit, where many are drowning in anomie and despair. It is very difficult to construct a meaningful life on one’s own, drifting through multiple disembodied networks.
The Digital vs. Real World
A highlight of Haidt’s book is his framework for what really constitutes the core differences between “real life” and “virtual life” and why they make such an impact on human flourishing. To recognize that something significant changes for humans when we take our lives online and live through a backlit slab of glass is not old-fashioned. Such a recognition is entirely reasonable, truthful, and supported by the evidence. Haidt’s following four points of comparison capture precisely why humans struggle online and show how that’s not what we’re designed for:
When I talk about the “real world,” I am referring to relationships and social interactions characterized by four features that have been typical for millions of years:
1. They are embodied, meaning that we use our bodies to communicate, we are conscious of the bodies of others, and we respond to the bodies of others both consciously and unconsciously.
2. They are synchronous, which means they are happening at the same time, with subtle cues about timing and turn taking.
3. They involve primarily one-to-one or one-to-several communication, with only one interaction happening at a given moment.
4. They take place within communities that have a high bar for entry and exit, so people are strongly motivated to invest in relationships and repair rifts when they happen.
These are the normative ways in which humans are designed to build relationships and in which they are most likely to flourish. Haidt argues that the digital habitat works in the exact opposite direction:
In contrast, when I talk about the “virtual world,” I am referring to relationships and interactions characterized by four features that have been typical for just a few decades:
1. They are disembodied, meaning that no body is needed, just language. Partners could be (and already are) artificial intelligences (AIs).
2. They are heavily asynchronous, happening via text-based posts and comments. (A video call is different; it is synchronous.)
3. They involve a substantial number of one-to-many communications, broadcasting to a potentially vast audience. Multiple interactions can be happening in parallel.
4. They take place within communities that have a low bar for entry and exit, so people can block others or just quit when they are not pleased. Communities tend to be short-lived, and relationships are often disposable.
What We Can Do
These insights typify those found throughout the book as Haidt provides the language, research, and framework for us to understand better what is happening, to talk more effectively about it with others, and perhaps most importantly, to actually do something about it. Haidt offers numerous worthwhile ideas and solutions that are not just a list of bullet points hastily thrown together but are research-based action points for reform:
1. No smartphones before high school.
2. No social media before age 16.
3. Maintain phone-free schools.
4. Return to far more unsupervised play and childhood independence.
He has more to say specifically regarding these four action items, including advice for parents, homes, schools, and even government policy. And in this regard, he also makes an important point: what we are facing is in large part a collective-action problem. It is hard for one person or family to be the “weird one” who says “no” to their kids about phones or social media or makes digital-minimalist decisions for themselves. And furthermore, even if that family stays committed to their principles, they don’t see the full benefit from it because others are still living in a phone-based world. Haidt puts it this way:
This is the great irony of social media: the more you immerse yourself in it, the more lonely and depressed you become. This is true both at the individual and at the collective level. When teens as a whole cut back on hanging out and doing things together in the real world, their culture changed. Their communion needs were left unsatisfied—even for those few teens who were not on social media.
Only a Beginning
Perhaps we are nearing an inflection point when it comes to smartphones and childhood. For that we should all take note and be thankful. But we should leverage this moment to take up a deeper evaluation, one towards which Haidt’s work points. We should employ the same type of thinking he displays as we consider the broader effects of our technological environment on both children and adults. Thanks to his work, many are waking up to how digitally mediated living impacts all of us—in our habits and lifestyles and in how we think about ourselves, our work, one another, and our world. Let’s join this discussion and bring to bear the power and beauty of the Christian story to fill in gaps Haidt has left as yet unfilled.
Going Deeper
Haidt’s work opens a door to numerous areas for further exploration. In our book Are We All Cyborgs Now? Reclaiming Our Humanity from the Machine, Robin Phillips and I tackle many of them: If we are taking the step to ban cellphones in schools, what about technologically mediated classrooms with laptops or iPads for every student? What about habits and practices in our personal lives, homes, or churches? What about the growing role of AI and AR/VR (augmented reality/virtual reality)?
Haidt also bumps up against questions of spirituality. While he sees a societal value in religion, his psychological and evolutionary framework leaves much to be desired. Robin and I dive into these issues headfirst and offer a way forward with a philosophy of technology anchored in Christian metaphysics, the sacramental life of the Church, and the rich tradition of liberal learning. And we ground much of the discussion in what is perhaps the defining issue of our day: questions of what it means to be human. •
Notes
1. Peter Stiepleman, “A Mindshift Over Cellphones in Schools,” School Administrator Magazine (Jun. 1, 2024).
2. Natasha Singer, “Why Schools Are Racing to Ban Student Phones,” The New York Times (Aug. 11, 2024).
3. Several years ago, I decided to collect student cellphones before it became trendy. It was the best classroom-management decision I ever made.
is a classical educator, furniture-maker, and vicar at All Saints Lutheran Church (LCMS) in Charlotte, North Carolina. He also taught high school history for thirteen years and studied at Messiah College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Winthrop University. In addition to Salvo, Josh has written for Areo, FORMA, Front Porch Republic, Mere Orthodoxy, Public Discourse, Quillette, The Imaginative Conservative, Touchstone, and is a frequent guest on Issues, Etc. Radio Show/Podcast.
