\n
![](\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/GettyImages-1889146697-e1719422825909.jpg?w=2048\")
<\/p>\n [ad_1]
\n<\/p>\n
A couple months ago, my 15-year-old daughter admitted she was addicted to her phone and that she hated it. She deleted TikTok and asked me to buy her a timed lockbox<\/a> so she could take breaks from the smartphone\u2014and also asked for a flip phone so she could still stay in touch when she was taking time off. I happily obliged. But the pit in my stomach about her being a phone addict<\/a>\u2014and about how she still struggles daily to stop herself from scrolling and from actually using the lockbox\u2014has not dissolved.<\/p>\n It\u2019s why the gospel of Jonathan Haidt, social psychologist at NYU Stern School of Business and author of The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness<\/a>,<\/em> resonates so deeply\u2014not only with me, but with the tens of thousands of devotees who have kept his latest book on the New York Times bestseller list for 12 weeks and counting. (Which is not to say he hasn\u2019t faced<\/a> much pushback<\/a>, which he has.)<\/p>\n Inspired to get to the bottom of the teen mental-illness epidemic, which he says began around 2012<\/a>, and encouraged by the findings of other social scientists including San Diego State University\u2019s Jean Twenge<\/a> (author of iGen<\/em>), he looked toward years of correlational, longitudinal and truly experimental studies\u2014all kept track of publicly<\/a>. And the book, in summary, concludes that we as parents have overprotected our children in the real world but have under-protected them online, and that it has to stop in order to heal the mental-health of our kids.\u00a0<\/p>\n And the best path toward this, as he lays out in his book, is to follow four \u201cfoundational\u201d rules to \u201cprovide a foundation for healthier childhood in the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n Below, the rules, with context.<\/p>\n \u201cParents should delay children\u2019s entry into round-the-clock internet access,\u201d Haidt, the father of two teens, writes, \u201cby giving only basic phones <\/em>(phones with limited apps and no internet browser) before ninth grade (roughly age 14).\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMillennials went through puberty with flip phones, and flip phones aren\u2019t particularly bad. You use them just to communicate,\u201d Haidt told ABC News<\/a>. \u201cIt was when we gave kids smartphones and then right around that time, they also got \u2026 social media accounts. When kids move their social lives onto social media like that, it\u2019s not human. It doesn\u2019t help them develop. And right away, mental health collapses.\u201d<\/p>\n While speaking<\/a> at the Wall Street Journals<\/em>\u2019 The Future of Everything Festival in May, he added, \u201cYou do not give a child the internet in their pocket, where strangers can reach them and they can watch beheading videos.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Bill Gates, for one, agrees<\/a>. And at least 60,000 U.S. parents kind of agree: They\u2019ve signed a pledge through the campaign Wait Until 8th<\/a>, which aims to empower parents to rally together in waiting until eighth grade, just a year earlier than Haidt recommends, to get their kids smartphones.<\/p>\n So when do kids tend to get their first smartphone<\/a>? According to research by Common Sense Media<\/a> (2021), 42% of U.S. kids have a phone by age 10\u2014and by age 14, smartphone ownership climbs to 91%.<\/p>\n \u201cLet kids get through the most vulnerable period of brain development before connecting them to a firehose of social comp and algorithmically chosen influencers,\u201d Haidt stresses in his book\u2014adding at the WSJ<\/em> Festival in May, \u201cDon\u2019t let children go through puberty on social media, that\u2019s the really vulnerable time.\u201d<\/p>\n U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, who last week<\/a> called for social media platforms to come with a warning label, pointed out in his 2023 advisory<\/a> that up to 95% of youth ages 13\u201317 report using a social media platform, with more than a third saying they use social media \u201calmost constantly.\u201d And although age 13 is commonly the required minimum age used by social media platforms in the U.S., he noted, nearly 40% of children ages 8\u201312 use social media. And besides, Murthy said in a CNN interview<\/a>, \u201cPersonally, based on the data that I\u2019ve seen, believe that 13 is too early.\u201d<\/p>\n He added, \u201cIf parents can band together and say you know, as a group, we\u2019re not going to allow our kids to use social media until 16, or 17, or 18, or whatever age they choose, that\u2019s a much more effective strategy in making sure your kids don\u2019t get exposed to harm early.\u201d<\/p>\n As Haidt writes in his book, \u201cIn all schools from elementary through high school, students should store their phones, smartwatches, and any other personal devices that can send or receive texts in phone lockers or locked pouches during the school day. That is the only way to free up their attention for each other and for their teachers.\u201d<\/p>\n Because, as he noted at the WSJ<\/em> event, \u201cImagine, for those of you who went to school before the internet, imagine that the school had a new rule: You can bring in your television from home, you can bring in your walkie talkie, you can bring in your record player, put it all on your desk, we\u2019ll give you an outlet, and you can do that during class while the teacher\u2019s talking. This is complete insanity. But that\u2019s what we\u2019ve done.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Instead, when schools let kids keep the phone in their pocket, he added, \u201cYou have to hide it behind a book or under your desk if you want to text and watch video and watch porn, which the kids do.\u201d<\/p>\n Earlier this month, the board of the Los Angeles Unified School District\u2014the second largest school district in the country\u2014approved a total ban<\/a> on phones at school, set to take effect by the spring 2025 semester. In Massachusetts, more than half of districts<\/a> have a total ban on phones at school. In New York, as Gov. Kathy Hochul considers a statewide ban, leaders of New York City public schools\u2014which lifted a phone ban in 2015\u2014say a full ban will return<\/a> in 2025.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the way children naturally develop social skills, overcome anxiety, and become self-governing young adults.<\/p>\n \u201cThere can\u2019t be an adult guarding them all the time until they go to college,\u201d Haidt said at the WSJ<\/em> event.\u00a0<\/p>\n He credits<\/a> at least some of his epiphanies around this issue to Free-Range Kids<\/a> founder and advocate Lenore Skenazy, famously dubbed<\/a> \u201cWorld\u2019s Worst Mom\u201d in 2008 when she wrote about letting her 9-year-old take the New York City subway home alone. Haidt joined Skenazy in founding Let Grow<\/a>, which advocates through legislation and school programs for childhood independence.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n1. No smartphones before high school<\/strong><\/h2>\n
2. No social media before 16 <\/strong><\/h2>\n
3. Phone-free schools<\/strong><\/h2>\n
4. Far more unsupervised play and childhood independence<\/strong><\/h2>\n