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Jonathan Haidt blames teenage depression, anxiety on smartphones, social media
The social psychologist discusses the “great rewiring” of children’s brains, why social-media companies are to blame, and how to reverse course.
Tech companies and social-media platforms, Haidt insists, by “designing a firehose of addictive content” and causing kids to forgo the social for the solitary, have “rewired childhood and changed human development on an almost unimaginable scale.” But the problem is, and I don’t think you’d disagree with me on this, that there are aspects of social media, just as there are of the Internet writ large, that can be terrific—whether it’s about finding community, or staying connected to friends, or interest groups that you can join and learn from. People say to me, “Oh, you know, during COVID, thank God for social media, because without that, how could kids have found each other?” To which I say, “Well, I guess they could have used the phone, texting, Skype, Zoom, the rest of the Internet, Google.
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