Ep 6: Are Smartphones Stealing Childhood?

10/23/24 • 51 min

In today’s world, many parents feel like we need our kids to have phones. We tell ourselves it’s for their safety—they may need it while walking to a friend’s house or when going on a school field trip. And then there’s the fact that for many parents, the idea of not giving your kid a phone—when everyone else has one—just doesn’t even seem like a possibility. By age 10, 42 percent of kids in the U.S. have a phone. By age 12, it’s 71 percent, and by age 14, it’s 91 percent. The pressure to conform is just too great. And the reality is that phones keep kids entertained, which gives parents a break—to cook dinner, to do the laundry, or. . . to scroll through Instagram on their own phones.

The problem is that most parents have no idea what the effect of all of this phone time—46 percent of teens say they use their phones “almost constantly”—is. What are phones doing to our kids, their development, their physical health, their mental health, their social lives? Is the panic around cell phones like the panic that once met the invention of the radio or TV? Is it a kind of hysteria? Or are phones fundamentally transforming the essence of what it means to be a kid? Are phones. . . stealing childhood? If so, what should we do about it? Should we leave phone regulations in the hands of schools, or should parents take the initiative to drive the change? Is there even a middle ground, or have we passed the point of no return?

Resources from this episode:

Jonathan Haidt The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness (Bookshop)
Ben Halpert Savvy Cyber Kids (Amazon)
Johann Hari Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again (Bookshop)
Delay Smartphones

Resources from this episode:

Jonathan Haidt The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness (Bookshop)
Ben Halpert Savvy Cyber Kids (Amazon)
Johann Hari Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again (Bookshop)
Delay Smartphones

Previous Episode

Ep 5: Are Boys Being Left Behind?

Across the board in most advanced countries, girls and women are outpacing boys and men. Nowhere is this more stark than in education. When Title IX was passed in the U.S., the share of students enrolled in a bachelor’s degree program was about two-thirds men and one-third women. Just 50 years later, the numbers have reversed: Bachelor’s enrollment is now 58 percent women and 42 percent men. So, not only is the gender inequality we see in college today wider than it was 50 years ago, it’s the other way around, with men on the bottom. The difference in master’s degrees is even more striking. In the 1970s, women earned only 11 percent of them. Today, women earn over 60 percent of master’s degrees. Women are awarded 53 percent of PhDs, and they make up the majority of law students. These disparities also continue after school ends. Young men are out of the labor force at an unprecedented rate. Nearly half (47 percent) of prime-age men not in the workforce cite obsolete skills, lack of education, or poor work history as barriers to employment. And most American men earn less today (adjusted for inflation) than most men did in 1979.

Today: Are boys and men falling behind? Why are some experts so worried about this, and what is at stake for the economy, our society, our families, and the future of boys everywhere?

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Resources from the episode:

Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It (Amazon) by Richard Reeves
Hanna Rosin The End of Men: And the Rise of Women (Amazon) by Hanna Rosin
Erica Komisar
“Men are lost. Here’s a map out of the wilderness” by Christine Emba
American Institute for Boys and Men

Next Episode

Ep 7: How Important is Marriage?

The share of children in America growing up in single-parent families has tripled since 1950—from 10 percent to 30 percent. Children in single-parent families are three times as likely to live below the poverty level and, on average, they have a higher likelihood of poor academic performance and higher dropout rates from high school. Those translate into lower earnings in adulthood. And although it is very difficult to separate correlation and causality in these data, and hard to say whether single parenthood matters beyond poverty, there is no question that the associations are very strong.

Today: What happened to marriage in America? How has the trend divided along class lines and contributed to the widening economic gap? Is having two parents actually better for kids than a single parent? What advantages does growing up in a married family actually confer upon kids?

In the research world, these questions aren’t partisan. They’re questions that can be answered with data.

Resources from this episode:

Books/links:

Melissa S. Kearney The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind (Bookshop)
Melissa S. Kearney on Honestly
Philip N. Cohen’s critique of Melissa Kearney’s The Two-Parent Privilege
Abby M. McCloskey