They were dubbed “smart” because the phones could access the internet and thus enable the user to do so much more than make calls. I got my first smartphone in my early 40s and thought it was the coolest thing. Mine was white and sleek and the homepage had large tiles that were moveable and customizable. For a tech-loving person who likes to be organized, it was magic.
Smartphone malaise creeps in
As with all new tech, it took us a while as a society to become truly aware of the potential harms lurking behind those alluring screens. Many researchers including Jean Twenge, Sherry Turkle, and Jonathan Haidt have argued convincingly that in 2012, America turned a corner—a majority of Americans owned a smartphone (it’s 90% now) and we witnessed a sharp uptick in anxiety, depression, loneliness, self-harm, isolation, loss of community, and a general malaise about the present and future of human existence.
Then the COVID-19 epidemic hit the world only eight years later, in 2020. I’ve argued that the ensuing global panic attack was good for Gen Z in one sense: It opened their eyes to the fact that feeling anxious and sad wasn’t unique to their generation but was in fact shared by all humanity.
Gen Z’s feelings had been overdiagnosed and overmedicated, inadvertently encouraging the delusion that anxiety was their special cross to bear. But when the pandemic hit the youngest, oldest, and sickest the hardest and left the healthy youth of Gen Z largely intact, the narrative had to change.
Our growing unease about what’s happening to Gen Z has shifted to an elusive something that they seem to have lost. They seem lonelier, more isolated, and more self-centered, less community-oriented, less socially aware, less politically active. “Social” media seems to have backfired.
External vs. internal locus of control
It’s natural for people to cite internal reasons when things go well and external reasons when things go poorly. A student who gets an A on her paper cites her hard work and determination, while a C on a paper is blamed on unclear guidelines, insufficient time, or unrealistic standards (i.e., the teacher’s fault). But it’s not just students; all of us engage in this double-standard type of thinking some of the time.
It’s easy to find external reasons for anxiety and depression in today’s America. What’s hard is to admit that you’re exacerbating the problem by mainlining negativity into your consciousness via your smartphone instead of getting off social media and doing something good for yourself, for others, for the world.
In class discussions around smartphones and addictive social media, my students blame lax parents, schools, or predatory tech designers. But they’re not yet exercising their internal locus of control—opting to put the phone down, evaporating their social media presence, or switching to a non-smartphone— because, for most, the addiction runs deep and began too young.
Protect your child from tech-malaise
At an awards dinner last week, our son’s coach recounted a heartfelt story for the crowd about a young girl on the team who’d been in a tragic accident. But during his speech, most of the girl’s teammates were oblivious to the coach’s story, oblivious to their surroundings, staring down at their phones. We need to do better as parents and as a society.
While parents cite “wanting to be in touch” with their children when they give them a smartphone, the irony is they will be soon become as out of touch with their child as he or she is with the world outside their phone.
I think it’s a good to consider this: If you give your child a smartphone before they’re mature and disciplined enough to understand the technology for what it is, you could be creating a person who will be hard to teach, hard to have a conversation with, hard to hire for a job that requires communication skills and sustained attention, and hard to have a relationship with where empathy is expected.
Social Media Essential Reads
If the addiction is already there, smartphone etiquette is a must. Guidelines and rules around use and reasons why will help. If you’re considering a smartphone for your child, you might explore the GABB phone or other non-internet phones for kids so that they can call or text you but have no access to addictive and harmful social media.
