Jonathan Haidt (@JonHaidt): "Testimonials are coming in from teachers about their newly phone-free schools, and the amazing things that students are now doing. Like taking notes, completing their assignments, then talking to each other. "Was it this easy of a solution the whole time?"" | nitter
https://nitter.net/JonHaidt/status/1954702445868884013#m

It's baffling that students were ever allowed to bring #smartphones into schools. Fortunately we're banning them in Québec.

#JonathanHaidt #polqc

So, personally, I think the problem started when parents started using television sets as babysitters. And yeah. I had a TV (black and white) in my room at probably too young an age, and a landline when I was 16. Nowadays, I use a computer when I want to go online, and only use my smartphone for important calls/texts, and identifying birds and plants. I don't understand folks who are staring at their phones 24/7, and ignoring the world around them. It's been going on for a while now...

When Kids Are Addicted to Their Phones, Who is to Blame?

By Kathryn Jezer-Morton
Mar. 30, 2024

Excerpt: "While reading #JonathanHaidt’s recent long, evidence-filled manifesto in The Atlantic, 'End the Phone-Based Childhood Now,' I began to think about how this line of thinking has become costly to ignore. (Haidt’s book on which the article is based, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, came out on March 26.) He argues that indicators of childhood well-being in developed nations began precipitously decreasing at exactly the same time that smartphones became widely available. He argues, thoroughly, that these falling indicators can’t be linked to any one nation’s problem — instead, it’s the common denominator we all share. It’s not America and its guns. It’s not South Korea and its pressure on young people to test into professions. It’s everywhere, and it’s the phones.

"There is nuance to Haidt’s evidence, even though it is overwhelmingly making a simple, unambiguous argument. He identifies two entwined causes of the decline in young people’s mental health and well-being: parents’ increased protectiveness of their children and children’s increased access to smartphones. It’s not the fault of video games or even social media per se. (Millennials came of age with video games with no measurable harm done, and younger millennials came of age with social media in the desktop era — no lasting scars but for the embarrassing Facebook pics from 2007.) The problem is in the mobility of the technology. It’s the affordances of privacy and portability, and the access to these affordances, that parents have given their children.

"Ultimately, what Haidt is implying, with the utmost tact, is that we parents need to start acting differently. Our kids’ reliance on mobile devices to pass the time starts long before high school, and it coalesces into an unshakeable habit under our watch — or, rather, while our gaze is averted and we’re looking at our phones. No legislation, no industry-oversight panel, is going to help us. Apple’s and Google’s executives know enough to withhold mobile devices from their kids, but they’re not going to stop selling them to ours.

"What Haidt doesn’t say is that parents can’t change their kids’ relationships with their phones and tablets without also addressing their own. Criticizing parents is very treacherous for any public figure, so it’s understandable that Haidt would avoid doing so.

"People with very strong opinions about parenting are usually pushing a skewed ideological agenda and are best ignored. A 'screen-free childhood'? Sounds precious. No thanks! Haidt may be an over-50 white guy, but he is not making an ideological argument in this book. His suggestions are realistic, and his argument is not shrill. We’re beyond moral panic. I know many children who are absolutely addicted to their mobile devices, whether we’re talking about a Nintendo Switch, a phone, or an iPad. This circumstance is normal now — so normal, in fact, that you’d be rude and tasteless to remark on it. Our social norms have been very quickly reshaped around this behavior. Kids who aren’t on iPads at the restaurant are the ones who get remarked on, not those who are.

"It’s a lot like any other kind of addiction: We’ve learned to tread very lightly around it, to explain it away. But unlike adults who live with addiction, children are not responsible for themselves. They can reasonably expect their parents to take responsibility for them, at least until high school. (At which point even Haidt says they get to have phones, so all bets are off!)

"The impossible condition of parenting is part of what has gotten us here. Parents work too much, and there is no affordable care infrastructure anywhere. It is inevitable for many parents to be working while trying to care for young children. But we do a lot more on our phones than work. It’s where we socialize and stay in touch, and the inflated amount of time we spend texting alone is a monopolizing factor. Is it possible that we have reached peak texting? Would it be possible for us to text less? I am nauseated at the thought of texting more — I truly hope we’ve hit our limit, but who am I kidding? We are at least as addicted to our phones as our kids are; we need them in order to relax. And since we don’t feel safe letting our kids wander around the neighborhood freely while we scroll in peace, we keep them inside with us, scrolling.

"It’s not just the parents who can’t afford child care whose children are addicted to their phones by age 10. Many parents of means and privilege rely on phones to keep their kids 'happy' to a degree that is — and here I’m going to break the No. 1 rule of parenting writing and shame people — totally gratuitous and lazy. I would be very interested to read a study of parents explaining why they have their children eat dinner in front of an iPad: For many people it’s exhaustion at the end of a long day, but for others it’s an unwillingness to deal with the challenging task of teaching your kids how to act. People tether their children to iPads so as to streamline and optimize their own lives, to avoid meltdowns and chaos. Everyone can be engaged in a semblance of respectable pantomimed productivity through their individual screens, and peace can reign. No messes, no fighting, no whining."

Full article:
https://www.thecut.com/article/children-teen-smartphone-addiction-what-to-do.html

#Internet #InternetCulture #MentalHealth #MentalWellbeing #Teenagers #Parenting #MeaningfulConnections #TechAddiction
#SmartPhones are #DumbingUsDown
#MoreGreenTimeLessScreenTime

NYU psychology professor taken to task for hawking dubious paper about children, screen time and harms

The screen-time moral panic is not yet over, and this guy (thread) is being roasted on bluesky for selecting arbitrary experts, asking them if screen use MAY be correlated with harm, and graphing the results as if causative:

https://bsky.app/profile/jayvanbavel.bsky.social/post/3lpaaktc6bc2x

Via:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2480657-attempt-to-reach-expert-consensus-on-teens-and-phones-ends-in-argument/

#jonathanHaidt #moralPanic #onlineHarms #screenTime

Doorgaans focus ik op het goede, want alles wat je aandacht geeft groeit. Maar dit moet ik echt even delen:
https://www.felienne.nl/het-ai-nieuws-van-week-19/
Heerlijk, zoals @Felienne kwalijk werk van types als #JonathanHaidt en #RutgerBregman affakkelt. Met de vraag naar hun professionele identiteit als uitgangspunt, want wie denken ze wel niet dat ze zijn.

En in het kader van wat je aandacht geeft, groeit: lees liever Felienne!
#FocusOpHetGoede #FF -> @Felienne

#AI #Onderwijs

Jeunes : comment grandir dans un monde qui déraille ?

Il faut se préparer très jeunes, presque depuis la maternelle, à réfléchir à la façon dont [les élèves] se projettent dans une formation et un métier. » Cette phrase, prononcée par la ministre de l’éducation nationale, Élisabeth Borne, nous a donné envie de faire cette émission.

Car si la qualité d’une société, de ses imaginaires, de ce qu’elle propose se révèle à travers le sort qu’elle réserve à ses jeunes, force est de constater que la nôtre n’est pas au rendez-vous. Partout dans le monde, y compris en France, la santé mentale des plus jeunes se dégrade.

Le succès de séries comme Adolescence sur Netflix, qui interroge la violence des mineurs – un fait ultraminoritaire, il faut évidemment le rappeler – mais aussi l’emprise du masculinisme chez certains garçons, en dit long sur l’inquiétude qui nous travaille face à leur avenir.

Réseaux sociaux, pression scolaire, atomisation de la société, néolibéralisme cruel, monde qui brûle : les générations qui viennent ont des raisons de ne pas aller bien. Et quand elles s’engagent et proposent un autre monde, elles restent trop souvent regardées de haut par des essayistes qui les traitent de geignards narcissiques, ou des dirigeant·es bien plus âgé·es qu’elles qui les veulent aux ordres et n’auront pas, eux, à affronter le monde de demain.

Comment mieux prendre soin de la jeunesse ? Comment lui proposer des perspectives et le plus d’épanouissement possible dans un monde qui déraille ?

Nos invité•es :

• Caroline Coq-Chodorge, journaliste à Mediapart ;
• Achille Demaillard, étudiant ;
• Lucas Fugeard, président de la ligne d’écoute pour les étudiant·es Nightline.fr ;
• Jonathan Haidt, psychosociologue à New York University, auteur de Génération anxieuse. Comment les réseaux sociaux menacent la santé mentale des jeunes (éd. Les Arènes) ;
• Jean Le Goff, psychosociologue, auteur de Politiser l’éco-anxiété (éd. du Détour) ;
• Salomé Saqué, journaliste à Blast, autrice de Sois jeune et tais-toi. Réponse à ceux qui critiquent la jeunesse (éd. Payot & Rivages) ;
• Lisa Ouss, pédopsychiatre.

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