There is no such thing as “other people’s children”
There are two ways to set a child up for success. One way is to focus on preparing your child for the world – making sure they are healthy, smart, kind, accomplished. The other is on preparing the world for your child – making it healthier, safer, kinder.
American parents, especially the affluent ones, stereotypically focus on the former. (There are a gazillion articles written about helicopter parenting, so we’ll skip that here.) But our children aren’t going to be the best they can each individually be – the healthiest, kindest, smartest, most accomplished versions of themselves —without the focus on the world.
I can’t protect my individual child from the external threats that limit their potential without inherently protecting other people’s children. Gun violence, the ills of social media, unsafe streets, air pollution… we can’t “bubble boy” our babies into health and safety. Society doesn’t work that way. Wanting to build the best possible world for my child necessitates building it for others.
Reading recent best seller, The Anxious Generation, crystallized this point for me. In it, author Jonathan Haidt lays out the dangers of smart phones for children and adolescents. These include (1) risks of self-harm and lower self image among girls using social media and (2) decreasing prosocial behavior for boys accessing too much porn and video games.
He repeats his solutions ad nauseum: “No smart phones before high school. No social media before 16. Phone-free schools. Far more unsupervised play and childhood independence.”
While reasonable people can debate whether all the problems that Gen Z faces should be attributed to smartphone and social media use, his solutions seem necessary to me regardless. Parents of pre-teens and teens will tell you that “just banning them from social media” doesn’t work. We need community-based solutions. If we begin from those on our literal street and go from there, we have a few options:
Talk to other parents. A lot of parents might want to hold out on giving their middle-schoolers smart phones, but fear what will happen if their child is the only one without one. No parent wants their child to be left out. However, if a critical mass agrees to wait until ninth grade or age 16 before giving their children smartphones, it alleviates the social pressure for everyone.
Petition the school board. Change.org lays out clear steps for actions to take to shift the tides in our neighborhoods. If a group of community members band together to promote phone lockers, for example, they could make tangible progress for children in their district.
Support political leaders pursuing change. Last fall, 33 attorneys general (AG) filed a federal lawsuit against Meta, arguing that its products have harmed minors. Given that AGs are generally directly elected positions, concerned residents can learn about the state AG’s positions and let them know that this is an important issue. The current surgeon general has also made adolescent social media use a top concern, advocating for a “Surgeon General’s Warning” similar to what we see on cigarettes. Voting is an important way to push for change.
Adolescent/teen social media and smart phone use is a particularly ubiquitous collective action problem, but it is not the only one we face daily. We – society at large, but particularly those raising the next generation – have the urgent responsibility to act. The Chamber of Mothers quote I started this post with has been my “Roman Empire” since becoming a parent – what can I do to make life better, safer, healthier for all children?
Thanks for reading,
Shannon