688. Are Smartphones and Social Media Making Gen Z and Gen Alpha More Anxious?

Hi everybody and welcome back to another episode of the Tuttle Twins, the way the world works. So today I want to talk to you about a book I read recently and start a conversation. I don't want to go into this with any answers necessarily, but I want to get a conversation started among families and parents.

So the Anxious Generation is a book I just read by Jonathan Haidt, who is a fantastic author, a fantastic person to just listen to on his podcasts and interviews. And this book is about the younger generation, so Gen Z, Gen Alpha, I think, and a lot of kids listening to this were either Gen Z or Gen Alpha, they might fall on both, but it's about their use of social media and technology like cell phones and if it's hurting them more than helping them, and if maybe we've gotten into a real problem by letting kids go on social media and letting them have phones. And so I want to talk about this.

And I don't know, kids these days, kids these days, that makes me sound old, I know a lot of parents have different ideas about screen time, about the internet, about usage, about social media, and even about, you know, cell phones. So I think social media, Instagram and Facebook technically have a rule that you have to be 13 to sign up for an account. But there's no age verification, so people, you know, there's probably younger kids on there.

TikTok, I think it's, I don't even think there's any age on there. You see a lot of young kids on there and you see a lot of kids, 10 year olds doing makeup tutorials and doing these things where they're acting much older than they are. But there's other things that happen with social media from a social perspective too, which is they're getting maybe mean comments underneath, or, you know, the bullying that has always happened in school comes home with the kids because you can't escape it because it's always there.

You know, bullying has always existed. There's no point in time when it didn't. But back in the day, and again, I feel so old saying that, before social media, you maybe you would get bullied in school, but you'd come home and you'd have a break from that.

Social media is really interesting because you get bullied at school and then you come home and maybe people are making fun of you online and, and it hurts people's self-esteem or they're going online and they're seeing these beautiful models and these beautiful people and they're thinking, why can't I look like that? Forgetting that most of what you see on social media isn't real life. There are filters you can put on your face to look completely different. We are living in a world where it's hard to tell what is real and what is not real because of social media.

Now saying all these bad things, however, I want to also point out very good things. You know, for social media, for me personally, and for a lot of adults, we get to keep in touch with old friends. We get to keep in touch with family members.

I get to see pictures of, I have nine siblings, I have a lot of brothers and sisters, and I love being able to see pictures of, you know, their kids or hear from them or old friends from high school because, you know, I moved since then, or even because of the world I work in where I've gotten to meet people through political campaigns, things like that. You get to keep in touch with people that maybe you wouldn't have otherwise. And that's amazing.

Absolutely incredible. Even TikTok. I have learned so much from TikTok.

I've talked about it before. I'm a big baker. I love baking bread.

I love desserts because I have the biggest sweet tooth. Probably a problem. I've learned how to do a bunch of different baking.

I have also learned that this is going to sound silly. I like to learn new skills every now and then, and I decided early this year I was going to learn basic plumbing skills so I could fix my own plumbing stuff, which I had varying degrees of success on that. I do not recommend, but I was watching TikToks about that.

There's so much at your fingertips that you can just learn by our phones. But is that appropriate for people of all ages? Again, I want to start a conversation with this. I don't want to critique anybody's choices.

With parenting, I don't want to make those assumptions, but I want to talk about what Jonathan Haidt in The Anxious Generation is concerned about. And that is that these things, these platforms are making kids more anxious, giving them more mental health issues. They're not as well as they were before.

They're sad or they're, again, anxious. And I think that he's got some good points. I do.

I think that social media and having phones on us all the time, especially in junior high and high school, have probably made us more prone to bullying, prone to not being able to escape that bullying, prone to thinking like, I'll never be pretty, I'll never be as good as this person, even though people only post the best versions of themselves on Instagram. It is not always real or Facebook or whatever. So all these things are harming people.

And how did we get here and why do we get here? And when it comes to phones, so social media, if you have a phone, it's pretty easy to just download that app. Now phones, I would love to say in my ideal world, I would love to say, I don't think anybody under 16 should have a phone. That is, that is my opinion.

That is not, doesn't have to be your opinion. But then you think about, we live in a world where parents have to work and you want to be in touch with your kids. Now Jonathan Haidt addresses this in the book and he says, well, great.

You can actually get phones now where kids can just call home and call like, there's like five people in the phone they can program to or Apple watches, I believe do something similar to smartwatches where they're not having the internet and they can't get on there. Now, Jonathan Haidt also suggests that people, people, kids shouldn't have social media until 16. And I tend to agree with that as well.

However, where me and Jonathan Haidt differ is how we go about that. And I want to talk about that really quickly. So Jonathan Haidt is big on like, we should petition, you know, we should work with Congress.

We should pass these laws. I don't know that I think that is the best solution for a few reasons. I think parents should be the, the government as far as the kids are concerned, meaning you should make your own rules based on what works for you and what works for your family.

I cannot make that choice for you. The Congress cannot make that choice for you. Jonathan Haidt cannot make that choice for you.

That is a very personal choice that you have to make as a family based on your own circumstances and your own values. That's, that's for you to decide. And so even though personally, I think we'd see a lot of benefit from people not having these social media accounts and, and smartphones connected to the internet until they're much older.

I don't think the government should be making that rule. I don't think it's their job. You know, in Utah where I used to live, they passed a law saying basically restricting kids on how late they could be on, on the internet, like there was like a curfew and all this stuff.

But there was a few things wrong with this. Not only is that taking away the ability of a parent to parent how they see fit, but it's also forcing internet companies like Comcast or Xfinity, whoever you use on Verizon, you're forcing them to comply with a law that they didn't pass. So you're, you're interfering in the free market in a way that is not okay.

So I don't think these laws are effective. And now there's also this, this idea, and Jonathan Haidt believes in this as well, that maybe schools should be a no phone zone. And I also agree with that if you're going to be going to, you know, public schools.

However, that could open some, some doors with, with free speech laws. I am not an attorney, so I'm not saying this definitely, I'm speculating, but there have been very important Supreme Court cases. There's one called Tinker where kids, it was affirmed that kids do have free speech on school campuses, as long as their free speech is not interfering with other people's ability to learn.

Now again, I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know how having a phone could play a part in this, but I think you could make an argument that there could be a free speech argument, a free expression argument about having phones and restricting that. However, I guess you could say you just can't take them out during class. I think that would be acceptable.

Now, I don't know if people would do that, but if you've ever gone to like a comedy show or a concert now, people are, they give you these little bags that lock and you have to keep your phones in there so you can't film. So there are, there are ways, there are ways we can do it without the government interfering. And I do believe that that would be in our best interest.

I do think that, you know, there's just so much that kids have now, but I also want to be careful, especially with like the Utah law. And I think some other states were wanting to do that as well. It's very problematic because then you want to say like, there's so many good things on the internet.

You know, there are kids that review toys online on YouTube and they've been able to make a living from that. Like I said, I've learned how to play the piano. I've learned how to bake bread.

I've learned so much from having internet access that I would hate to have that taken away completely or told that I can't learn past a certain, you know, time that is for the parents to decide. And so there's a lot of things to consider. And I want to make one more point before we wrap up.

And that is something that Jonathan Haidt says that I 1 million percent agree with on what we can do to combat that problem. And that is more free play with kids. It's, and again, I don't want to make every family, every parent has to make what's best for them.

And there's a big debate on screen time. Our kids having the iPad too much, our kids sitting in front of the TV too much. And we do treat it like a modern problem.

But I do want to say that, you know, I, I grew up with both the internet and not the internet. Internet came around when I was 10. So I had both.

But there was TV. I was watching Sesame Street. I was watching Mr. Rogers.

I was put in front of a TV. So I think there was opportunities for screen time for much longer than maybe we're thinking about. But free play is something we are very much missing out on.

You know, kids should be able to go outside and use their imagination and learn. That is how I learned not just to get along with other people, but that's where my imagination learned how to write stories. And I'm a writer now to create stories and just have fun to play house and practice being, you know, pretending I'm an adult and taking care of kids and making soup out of mud and grass.

And I was not eating it. Of course not. That would be gross.

But in the backyard, there's all these things that now I think we are not doing as much of because there are those screens that are so enticing because the Internet is cool. Streaming movies is cool. It's fun.

But nothing replaces free play and this ability to just make the world your your canvas for imagination, for entertainment, for socializing with other people. Because that, I think, is the biggest problem with social media. The word says social, but we're actually interacting with people less.

I say we, younger generations, because it's just easy to go online and like a picture that isn't real reality, right? It's the filter and all this instead of playing with your friends and learning how to conflict, you know, resolution because you're fighting and having these problems and learning how to solve them together as a group. So this is, I think, a really important issue. Like I said, I agree with Jonathan Haidt to some degree.

I very much disagree with him on others. But I do think parents reading The Anxious Generation is very worthwhile. I think there's a lot of things to glean from it.

And I think, again, it's a good conversation to have as a family and figure out where you stand on screen time and social media and, you know, having a phone. So I really just want to get a conversation started here. I don't want to judge anybody's parenting.

I don't want to act like I know what's best for everybody, because believe me, I don't. That's a personal decision. So we will leave it there.

Please, as always, don't forget to like and subscribe to the podcast. And until next time, we'll talk to you later.