Prince Harry and Meghan founded and launched the Parents’ Network this year, to provide resources and support for parents who have lost children to social media bullying, online scams and the online world. This has been Prince Harry’s very consistent concern for more than a decade – how younger generations are dealing with addictive social media and they are unprepared for online threats. Harry once again highlighted all of these concerns in a new filmed conversation with psychologist Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation. Some quotes from their conversation:
On smartphones: “In many cases, the smartphone is stealing young people’s childhood,” Harry said. “Young people trade in their flip phones for smartphones,” Haidt said about that moment of generational shifting, “and now with a front-facing camera, high-speed internet, a million apps that are competing with each other to hook kids’ attention. So, the ‘anxious generation’ is helping us understand the incredible destructive force of this transformation of childhood … and what we can do now to stop that from happening and to help those who already have been through it.”
Parents vs. social media companies: One of Haidt’s biggest worries about the current state of parenting and social media is that, “We are overprotecting our children in the real world and under-protecting them online,” he said. “And both of those moves are mistakes. They’re bad for development.” It’s why he advocates for no smartphones before high school, no social media before 16, phone-free schools, and more unsupervised play and childhood independence. It’s also why, Harry said, “It’s very easy for social media companies to point the finger at parents and say, ‘Well, you know, this is down to you. This is down to your parenting.’”
Kids receive smartphones for safety: Through his Insight Sessions, said Harry, he’s spoken with parents who say they give their kids phones at a younger age to keep them safe. “It’s a double edged sword,” he said. “They want them to have their phone at school in case of emergency, but once, like any kid, you have your phone, even if you’re told you’re not allowed to download that app, kids have a way of working around it.”
The ‘myth’ of social media as lifeline: “Social media, we know, to a large extent, is giving an outlet, an added resource, to kids that perhaps don’t feel comfortable coming to us to talk about their issues and their troubles and their worries,” he said. “Kids online will be feeling more connected with complete strangers on social media. So how do you, if you’re a parent, know that your kid is getting good out of social media?” Haidt said it is “one of Meta’s favorite talking points” that “social media is a lifeline for LGBTQ kids, for kids from marginalized communities. And that’s just not true.”
It’s an interesting conversation, especially with Harry and Haidt grappling with real-world solutions for how to put the proverbial genie back in the bottle. It’s difficult to tell “the Anxious Gen,” Gen Z, that they can’t have smartphones anymore and that they really should disconnect from the internet and pick up a book or go for a walk or play with their friends in real life. How does that even work in practice? At one point, Haidt compared Gen Z to Millennials, with Millennials coming out favorably because they only had flip phones. Like… I’m online, Millennials are just as anxious and depressed as Gen Z. I don’t know. I don’t have the answer. Here’s the video, I’ve listened to almost all of this and the conversation is really interesting.
Photos courtesy of CBS, YouTube.
These are interesting and tricky issues. Phones are not good for small children who can get disconnected from the world around them, their families and friends and their bodies.
But I’m not convinced that they’re the root or at least only cause of anxiety in young people. There’s plenty going on in the world that’s anxiety inducing – climate change for example scares the crap out of gen z (and me too).
I think young ppl couldn’t ignore a looming third world war, climate change, migration issues, violence,
money pinching at most homes, etc even if they were kept away from their phones and internet. I’m not digging at Harry bc he has a point, but he’s just showing his 1% privilege while putting so much weight on social anxiety.
The problem is that a healthy use of social media is a balancing act that’s different for everyone. I can’t be on Facebook for any longer than it takes to write out the obligatory birthday messages, but without Instagram I feel disconnected from the world and start to spiral. It’s such a hard line to find, and I’m in my mid 30s!
We simply can’t tune them out. I have millennials and gen z kiddos and we’re all committed to simply hanging out. Easier with the millennial group for sure, but all of us hanging out together helps. They learn by doing and being engaged so we have to show up.
I think he is right on the nose.
Anxiety generation, of course they have anxiety, look at how the world is going!
IRL, the majority of my friends are taking either anti-dep or anxiety meds. Or both.
The reality of today CoL, 2 wars, hurricanes, school shootings, Trumpers constantly acting like angry 5 y/o, on and on. The past 6-8 years have just been unreal.
The Cold War caused generations of paranoia with school children hiding under their desks in nuclear bomb drills. Lack of contraception and social stigma meant every girl was terrified of getting pregnant. Every boy was terrified of being drafted and dying in Vietnam. And the conversations around my cohort were “how can we bring children into such a terrible world?” Maybe if the generations spoke to each other face to face instead living in their online bubbles, they might develop sympathy for each other.
I listened to the entire conversation and I came away so grateful that I was able to raise my kids before the internet, smartphones and especially social media. I don’t know the answers to the questions posed in this conversation but I can see that parents need to model good phone behavior/etiquette, as in put your phone away while interacting with others, unless your an on-call doctor there’s no need to check your messages while having a conversation with a living, breathing human being right in front of you.
I’m grateful that I was raised well before social media, smartphones, or even mobile phones. My teenage shenanigans remain fond and occasionally cringe memories. I don’t have to worry about embarrassing vids of me as an awkward teen doing stupid/dangerous/harmful things showing up on someone’s feed. And I’m so, SO sorry that today’s teens have to worry about it.
Same. The very worst that could have come out of my childhood and early adulthood is an actual printed photograph of an embarrassing moment, and someone would have had to have an actual camera on them to get it. No one was carrying cameras around in their pockets, unless they were on vacation.
That’s it. I am so grateful, and so sad for my son that this is absolutely not the case now.
I think every generation faces anxiety and depression, but maybe the issue isn’t about the amount of of anxiety but the kind of anxiety?
Eurydice, I think the anxiety of the newer generation is because of the vast amount of information that they are consuming. Whether that’s because they are finding it on sm or the news, all if is too much. Unfortunately, they are consuming this without their brains being fully developed. I wonder how I would have fared if smartphones had been available back in the day.
Parents need more tools to be able to lock down what they want their children to consume. It might be as simple as not allowing them to go online. They would still have talk and text.
So much information and too many choices. In today’s world trying to stay in touch with oneself and figuring out how to maintain a balance between using electronic media in a responsible, beneficial way vs becoming addicted via going down a mindless rabbit hole for hours, truly requires much needed personal discipline, strategic planning, and real life engagement and support from solid, loyal friends and loving family members. We are all in this together, yet many of us are disconnected from ourselves and each other. Too many of us are drowning in plain sight. Not to mention the horrific, ongoing global tragedies that to some extent, we may be trying to escape, or to gain brief respite from thinking about.
Good for Harry, Meghan, and their Archewell Foundation for tackling a variety of pressing social concerns head-on, even as they are nurturing their children and taking care of their own mental health. They are modern-day role models for courageous activism, and for living life with grace, personal discipline, and bountiful connection with others. 🙌🏽
Yes, I agree about the pressure of non-stop input. When I was a investment manager, one of the hardest things to do was determine what is useful news and what is just noise. It was so easy to be lured into a decision by some knee-jerk article without proper foundation. Now, with everyone’s opinion aired as news, it’s even more difficult.
My kids were the first generation to grow up with the Internet, mobile phones and social media but at least when they were in high school the idea of having a phone in class would have been laughable – now parents and kids are fighting school administrations about this. My grandkids are growing up as a generation with parents who have their phones in their hand 24/7. If the parents can’t disconnect even for the time it takes to eat a meal in a restaurant why are we expecting that from children?
At almost 73, I’m at the opposite end of the spectrum… I watched this video.
All my life, I’ve suffered from a GAD(general anxiety disorder) & have a long history of self-harm. In 2018, I almost didn’t recover at the ICU, where I must have gone 25 or more times.
Because of Covid & Long covid, I started, social media in 2020, Twitter only.
Twitter has saved my life. Sometimes, the hatred horrify me, but there’re also good people out here, or diverting sites like thus one. I can’t speak for other sites, but this platform has actually done me good.
I personally only experienced 1 trigger in over 4 years versus 1 weekly or bimonthly in real life. There can be good in virtual life. I rejected it for decades, and wish I hadn’t. Furthermore, it helps with loneliness.
This is of course no criticism of Harry. I learned of what I personally call Meghan’s persecution, here on twitter, and suffer for her because she deserved none of it. But for unknown me who was bedridden for 2½ years, twitter helped in regulating anxiety and hardly brought any suicidal triggers.
A, I’m so glad that you found and use sm to help you. This is the positive side of the internet. There needs to be away to allow you to block all of the negative that you don’t want to see or deal with. It shouldn’t be that hard for the companies to write code to allow that.
That’s the thing. There’s no closing of the genie bottle at this point. And SM can have positives! I think what he’s talking about though is the kid’s brain and delaying an introduction to SM and then guiding a kid in a way in which the positives can be discovered and the negatives minimized. Which is no easy feat and I don’t have the answers on how a parent can perfectly achieve that. But It’s good to hear how SM has helped you @A.
Also, I’m still on twitter even though I loathe Elmo. My feed is mostly cat and animal stuff, Meghan and a few fandoms for tv shows I like. A very few politicos that I can take. Nasty stuff does creep through though and I do my best to click that it’s not relevant to me. I can’t imagine being a kid or a parent trying to navigate. Left FB and insta a long while back.
Yes, the internet has been a great technology for people who are isolated. It’s complicated.
Having a kid entering middle school, I can say with absolute certainty, it’s the cell phones. The damage I’ve seen in a matter of weeks – not even from social media, but from group chats – is so disturbing that I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around it. Kids are terrible communicators at this age in person, it is not a stretch to see how inept they become in Smartphone format. And from my experience so far, most parents aren’t all that interested in engaging in a whole lot of oversight. It’s been unpleasantly surprising to me, though I do understand given how busy many people are. Without parents guiding kids on how to use the technology, it’s a quagmire of crazy.
My inclination is to not allow my kid to be on anything, but the reality is that if you’re the only one making that choice, your kid end up being the weird kid – and they’re seeing it anyway through friends. I have no answers. We’re in the thick of it with my kid already in therapy working through things I did not expect to deal with this early. I honestly wish cell phones were banned for kids under a certain age. It’s a hellscape out there. This conversation hit home hard. I am definitely mourning the loss of allowing kids to have a childhood.
^^ Yes. I have so many fond memories of imaginative childhood play with my siblings indoors, and outdoors with siblings and neighborhood friends. Making mud pies, playing hopscotch and double dutch, climbing trees, reading books. Being in nature is very important. There is a better way today, I think, to make social media work in beneficial ways, while also making the effort to keep young people directly engaged with each other and with the natural world in real life settings.
Eldest millennial here – the last generation that knew what life was like before the internet. I’m telling you, I quit social media in June and I’m the least anxious and depressed I’ve felt in over a decade.
It got so much worse when I became a mom. Constantly comparing myself to other moms’ highlight reels of mom-life (which we know is not reality). Algorithm ads for stuff or for “online coaches” telling me there was something wrong with the way I parented or something wrong with my kid.
That’s all disappeared since I quit social media. I have real, two-way conversations about parenting from trusted friends. I’m not anxious that I’m just not doing enough for my kid or asking why everything about parenting is supposed to be bliss.
My only social media has been Facebook and I now only use the messenger feature. My FB wall used to just be stuff I posted or things my friends posted or linked to. Now it’s a daily barrage of memes. cartoons, posts from total strangers, political messages and of course tons of ads. I don’t know what the intent was behind allowing that to happen but I know I am far from the only former FB user out in the wild thanks to this!
It’s their business model. “Enshittification (alternately, crapification and platform decay) is a pattern in which online products and services decline in quality. Initially, vendors create high-quality offerings to attract users, then they degrade those offerings to better serve business customers, and finally degrade their services to users and business customers to maximize profits for shareholders.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
@Catherinski, 🎯
I also got off of everything a few years ago and am much happier. I recently had to get back on FB in order to do volunteer work for a cat rescue, but managed to do so by unfollowing every person’s feed who friended me. That way I get the info I need from the group, but get to maintain my social media ignorance. I know this now makes me a dinosaur, but I really do miss a time when we didn’t have to share everything at every moment.
I think I phrased that wrong. The youngest millennials do not know what life was like before internet. I was born in the 1980s, literally the eldest millennial.
1980 baby here. For my vanity, I refuse to call myself a geriatric or elder millennial. I still consider myself gen x bc that’s what I was classified as up until recently. And yeah I get that I’m splitting hairs on a created category system😂
I agree with the broad strokes of how smartphone ubiquity and social media has an outsized effect on young, developing minds, but I push back on dismissing how crucial a lifeline it often is for LGBTQ and marginalized kids. The teens living in rural, red state areas don’t often have supportive families and access to community resources and are most at risk of suicide and self harm.
Brynne, I don’t think they have to cut off that support. I do think they should be able to get rid of ALL of the negative. The user should be able to control what they see. The sm companies aren’t allowing that or there wouldn’t be the mess we have now.
@Saucy&Sassy, my comment was a response to the book author’s quote denying that social media offers value to marginalized groups:
“ Haidt said it is “one of Meta’s favorite talking points” that “social media is a lifeline for LGBTQ kids, for kids from marginalized communities. And that’s just not true.”
I don’t want to defend or agree with social media companies but it does help some teens. I agree that the algorithms are what’s largely the main driver of the problem.
I saw a clip of Erin Napier who is part of a movement to keep smartphones from children (Osprey) where if children have phones, they are flip phones. She talked about adults using phones in front of younger children with explanations. “I’m responding to text from work right now”, “I am reading the newspaper online” and explaining what you are doing with your phone so kids don’t see “doom scrolling” It seemed like a smart strategy.
Eating popcorn, that’s a really good place to start. It does give kids some guidelines.
Can people see this?
Honestly society has reached a point where our problems are self inflicted.
We are scraping at the bottom of the barrel for problems at this rate.
And to be so privileged that you make this your cause. Honestly this world is just mad if you think about it rationally for a min
Smartphones and instant access to news have become overwhelming. Beyond stealing childhoods, they’re also time thieves. As a Gen Xer, I struggle with anxiety more now than in my 20s. I wonder: is there a cure for this dependency on information and the internet?
I am so disappointed that Prince Harry aligned himself with Haidt. Michael Hobbes of the You’re Wrong About, Maintenance Phase, and If Books Could Kill podcasts–did a wonderful takedown of his research. He is one of those kids are too woke and campuses kill free speech people. His “research” and methodology was so weak and what findings they had to prove his hypothesis was even negligible. He came in with an idea and looked to prove it.
I am actually a therapist that has worked on campuses for most of my career. I even got swept up in these theories myself. There is an increase in mental health issues, however we forget that due to Obamacare before many adolescents lacked insurance leaving many to never have access to care before. To blame one thing is reductive and ridiculous and leads to over simplistic and individualistic responses.
For a better analysis of teenagers and social media I recommend Behind Their Screens: What teens are facing and adults are missing– done by legitimate researchers.
Just because something feels true, doesn’t mean it is.
^^ Thanks for the book resources and the insights on Haidt’s research and Michael Hobbes’ counter research. For sure, the Sussexes need to be careful about who they align themselves with. Harry surely did some checking into Haidt prior to sitting down for this interview. Harry may not be aware of the relevant concerns expressed about Haidt’s research. Since you are a knowledgeable therapist working in this area of problematic social media effects on young people, you should definitely write to Harry via Archewell to outline your concerns about Haidt’s questionable approaches and faulty assumptions.
That’s actually a good idea, I tend to step back from these types of actions (first of all dealing with a chronic illness and fulltime clinical work is exhausting) but also a belief of who am I to speak on this, lol.
Thanks again, for sharing @E. I’m sorry to hear that you have a chronic illness. You should definitely reach out to Archewell. Even if they do not respond directly, they are surely made aware of caring, engaged, thoughtful, and relevant correspondence. When you sincerely care and reach out to communicate, it always makes a difference, often in immeasurable ways. The Sussexes truly appreciate the generosity and support they receive from kind strangers all over the world.
Thank you for sharing your perspective.
They discussed criticisms of his approach though so don’t understand the disappointment. Goes to show that you should never put celebrities on pedestals bc they’re doing them snd you will definitely not always agree but doesn’t mean it’s wrong
Well, I agree looking at things on the internet makes me anxious, especially during this political season. I imagine for a child or young person it must feel overwhelming, even if it looks like they are just looking at videos about dancing and cats. So much can creep in and it’s hard for parents to monitor everything.
#NoChildLostToSocialMedia