Free the Anxious Generation
For Parents
The Problem: The New Phone-based Childhood
Adolescents are in a mental health crisis. Major depressive episodes among American
teens have more than doubled since 2010 as their social lives moved onto smartphones
loaded with social media apps. Self-harm and suicide rates are way up too.
The only available explanation for why this happened in many countries at the same time
is that the ancient “play-based childhood” was replaced by the “phone-based childhood”
in the early 2010s. Specifically, children and adolescents began to spend much more
time on smartphones, social media, video games, and porn, and much less time doing
healthy activities such as face-to-face interactions with friends and family, sleep,
exercise, and reading books.
Many parents feel hopeless or resigned. They don’t want their child to spend all day
swiping at a screen, but they are afraid to let their kids have adventures in “the real
world.” And they are also afraid to take away their kids’ phones or social media, lest they
consign their child to isolation, because “everybody else” is spending all day online.
The Solution:
Parents can coordinate with each other to
establish four new norms that will roll back
the phone-based childhood, improve
family life, and protect their children’s
mental health.
Take the steps!
Take the steps!
1 No smartphones before high school
There’s strength in numbers. Link up with the parents of your child’s friends to commit
together to waiting until high school (at least) before giving a smartphone. Nostalgia is
big right now; bring back the flip phone! It did no harm to the millennials
If you live in the U.S., see this list from waituntil8th.org of smartphone alternatives
If you live in the UK, see this list from delaysmartphones.org.uk.
2 No social media until 16
Social media platforms expose children to a wide variety of harms, including sextortion,
feelings of inadequacy, and contact with ill-intentioned strangers; there is no way to
make it appropriate for children. Link up with the parents of your child’s friends to commit
together to not allowing your children to open social media accounts until 16.
3 Advocate for phone-free schools
Policy changes follow public opinion. If other parents in your kids’ schools share your
concerns (and they do!), then gather them together to sign and send a petition to the
school’s leadership asking for the school to go phone-free and to offer more free play
and independence. When children are in school they should be paying attention to their
teachers and to each other, not to their phones.
4 Give more independence, free play, and responsibility in the real world
Kids develop social skills and overcome anxiety naturally through independence and
unsupervised play. This means letting them do more activities and errands on their own,
unsupervised, in the real world. From second or third grade on, kids can walk to school
(ideally in a group, which is more fun), or they can walk or ride a bicycle to a nearby store
to buy a few groceries. Teens can grab pizza with friends or get part-time jobs. Schools
can help parents to foster this independence by assigning The Let Grow Experience
(which gets kids doing new things on their own) and starting a Play Club for students in
K-8: keeping the playground open before or after school as a no-phone-zone for mixed-
age free play with minimal adult intervention.
Note that the cost of these measures, combined, is essentially zero.
To learn and do more, c hec k out these resources:
AnxiousGeneration.com for more about the problem and what schools can do to help. Sign up for our mailing list.
The Anxious Generation: Buy the book!
LetGrow.org to find manuals for teachers to implement the Let Grow Experience and Play Club.
PhoneFreeSchools.org and PhoneFreeSchoolsMovement.org for support in implementing phone-free policies.
AnxiousGeneration.com/aligned to see our allied organizations
ConstructiveDialogue.org to try out the Perspectives Program, to teach skills of productive disagreement to high school
students.
Subscribe to Jonathan Haidt’s free Substack: AfterBabel.com.
