By Paul W. Bennett
July 11, 2024
Executive Summary
Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s international bestseller, The Anxious Generation (2024), alerted the public to the rise of “phone-based childhood” and its role as a prime contributor to the mental health crisis facing our children and youth.
What was, until recently, a battle waged by education authorities and schools to limit, control, or eliminate cellphones in schools has been recast as one of the most urgent social issues of our time. U.S. Surgeon General Vivek M. Murthy has weighed in and identified social media as addictive and proposed health risk warning labels on its purveyors (Murthy 2024). This paper provides a short companion study looking more closely at social media addiction among Canadian children and youth and its broader implications for policy makers in the health, education, and social sectors.
Classroom cellphone bans have been debated for fifteen years but previous policy initiatives in Canada and elsewhere have either stalled or fallen short in implementation. Dire warnings since the mid-1980s about the impact of computer screen technology on children’s developing minds, and particularly on their critical thinking and reading capabilities, have also failed to make change.
What is different this time around is that governments are approaching cellphone use as a public health issue, preparing to close the loopholes in previous policy initiatives. The pioneering research of Haidt and American psychologist Jean M. Twenge demonstrates that cellphone use precipitates a surge in anxiety, loneliness, and depression. Pandemic school shutdowns, learning loss and the associated collateral damage made matters far worse for children and teens (Bennett 2023, 2024a).
Classroom teachers need support in reclaiming children’s minds and fostering “habits of attention” essential to learning. Provincial child and youth advocates, such as Kelly Lamrock of New Brunswick, are now on side, calling for schools to be “cellphonefree-zones” (Alam 2024). Policy-makers in the United Kingdom view classroom disruptions and cellphones as intimately connected and may be showing the way by casting the initiative as an extension of a much broader “student behaviour” policy committed to ensuring calmer, safer and more productive classrooms.
Pediatric and mental health interventions and support will play a role in rescuing children and youth suffering the most from the addictive effects and lingering mental health issues.
A broader, multi-sector approach is warranted because of the urgency of excessive social media use affecting our children and youth. Banning cellphones in classrooms is little more than a band-aid solution. Smartphones have become as addictive for teens as cigarettes were until two decades ago (Els, Kunyk, and Selby 2012, 4–5).
Changing the trajectory will require a concerted, integrated effort comparable to successful public health initiatives to eliminate smoking in public places and curb the spread of infectious diseases. It’s in everyone’s interest to embrace “cessation” policies to ensure that the rising generation goes on to lead healthier, more active, and productive lives.
Read the full paper here:
