The (online) kids aren't alright

and other reflections from a 3-month social media hiatus; when art and life aren't sure what to imitate

Listening to Ezra Klein and Jonathan Haidt on the way technology impacts and shapes childhood development, right after finishing the crushing finale of Netflix’s Adolescence, in the midst of a 3-month social media detox, was quite the journey.

TL;DR, technology has the capacity to very negatively shape the way children develop and build their worldview, and we see evidence of this from the disproportionate exposure young boys have to porn at early ages, to the well-documented phenomena of young girls learning to curate their digital selves and spending their time steeped in online envy and in-fighting.

But the solution to this problem is not quite as simple as taking technology away from them. I hate to break it to Klein and Haidt, but the proverbial cat is out of the bag. There is no going back to a simpler world of Xanga and Tumblr, let alone no social media or touch screen devices. In fact, I think the solution, or set of solutions, is much more complex and requires collective action across the board—from parents, to teachers, to technologists and policymakers—to reshape and refine our relationship to technology and the way we introduce it to children.

To be clear, I 100% share their concerns, and agree that they are valid and that we should aim to remedy these technologically introduced ills. But I also think that some of the problems are found in our culture writ large, our mores, the way we relate to one another as people—where technology becomes an ugly and amplified extension of us. And that placing all of the blame on the technology, the tool, the platform, obfuscates the deeper issues at play.

Especially after watching Netflix’s Adolescence, this reality hits different. I would highly recommend watching the show—bearing in mind that it is dark, troubling, and deeply sad. It is an important piece meant to spur conversation and in my opinion, encourage parents of young children to consider what their child’s relationship is to technology, and what their relationship to their child really consists of.

Ezra and Jonathan talk about kids being left to spend hours on the internet, and how dangerous it can be. The show illustrates this with the devastatingly portrayed character Jamie. That Jamie was often left to prowl the internet, with no aim in mind, no parental oversight (because hey, he had two working parents that worked late and slept early—not intentional neglect, but possibly emotional neglect nonetheless) He was free to take the images he found online and then wander the streets with friends, raging with hormones, and unequipped to safely work through the BIG feelings teenagers naturally have. They were fueled by toxicity and ugliness online, and ultimately powerless against the way their adolescent brain almost works against their own best interests.

Unfortunately, his hardworking parents, though well-meaning, weren’t able to devote the attention that is needed when a child has such unfettered access to the internet— to ask questions, inquire into what they’re thinking and seeing and feeling. Though his parents are part of his world, they are not really in it. The mix of technology, school bullies, natural urges and raging hormones, creates a perfect storm that sweeps him up into a murderous madness. One his parents don’t see coming until it's too late.

This is obviously an exaggeration of the depths that teenage technology use can go, but not a wholly imagined one. Kids like Jaime exist and have existed and have committed horrible acts in part due to their use of social media and the internet.

Coming out of the story though, you can see how complex the world is; and note that it is no one person’s fault that Jamie turned out the way he does, that all of the children in the show turn out how they do. But rather that we as a society need to be more thoughtful about what childhood looks like in a digital age. We all have to care about how childhood and adolescence is impacted, has changed, and what we ultimately want it to be. As Ezra says “children become adults” and the things they learn and experience as children will only carry on into adulthood.

Technology as an instrument; User as a Conductor

As a member of the generation who got to play outside AND got an iPhone in high school, it feels particularly resonant to consider the negative impacts that social media has on young brains. I have taken an approximately 3 month (and counting) hiatus from Instagram and TikTok and the benefits to my mental health, attention span, and overall headspace abound (no tech pun intended). But as a technologist who builds online experiences and tools, it is also important to recognize how much power we do have over the tech.

Yes, some of the tools have inherent moral systems baked into them (infinite scroll and “liking” being particularly egregious examples) But technology companies are actively increasing the number of safeguards for parents to deploy (see Instagram’s teen privacy controls and Google’s Family Link.) Whether parents choose to deploy them is the question. This means parents need to care enough, take enough interest in the moral, intellectual, psychological rearing of their children, to implement the safeguards in the home and through the mimetic modeling of healthy habits.

After these 3 months away from social media, I feel better equipped to consider what healthy habits might look like, and how I might leverage the positive aspects of social media, while curtailing the negative impacts. But I am also an adult with a fully developed frontal lobe, and one who chooses to care deeply about the interplay between my corporeal body, my mental and spiritual self, and my digital reality. I wouldn’t expect teenagers or children to be able to grok this delicate interplay.

However, I do expect that those in control of our shared digital reality take more seriously the increasing role that technology plays and how we might develop societal, behavioral, and policy infrastructure to manage our ever-evolving digital landscape. For example, I support Klein and Haidt’s call-to-action for schools and administrators to consider how they permit and leverage technology in schools.

More critically still, as with many moral lessons we learn, I also think they start in the home. A major reflection from this social media detox is how my habits might impact the people around me. My husband has admittedly spent less time on them since I have, primarily due to us spending that time doing other things, like reading, walking, or playing music. Realizing how much my own relationship with technology can shape the relationship of those closest to me, makes me consider how that might be another level of the internal scaffolding we build in a home for a child. While I can attest to how challenging this shift can be, and don’t downplay how it might be overlooked in the grand scheme of tending to your home life; I think I’ll take on the challenge if it means I can build a more healthy example for the people I care most about.

I am in favor of limiting children’s access to technology especially during the years where parents have an outsized impact on their kids’ attention. While they are mostly in your care, you control their environment, and where their attention goes if you choose to. However, if Haidt wants to encourage kids playing together—”being a good parent doesn’t have to mean spending copious amounts of time with them, they should be out playing with other kids”—then he has to acknowledge, nay, accept that those kids will introduce new things, ideas, and technologies to a hypothetically tech-free child. In this case, teaching children good habits, how to have a healthy relationship to technology (as you, the parent, define “healthy”) and how not to be naive about the impacts of technology, become your greatest safeguards against the harms.

Blanket “bans” or restrictions will only go so far if you intend for your child to be out in the world. In that case, imparting a worldview that there is a time and place and role for technology, but an even larger and more important role for face to face, voice to voice, human-driven interaction, is the only surefire way to equip children with an operating system that can handle living in pixels and IRL. Where a selfie only intimates at the beauty of life, rather than encapsulates it.

Not all technology is bad—giving a child an iPad that has educational games, drawing apps, language teachers and heavy controls on what parts of the internet they can access (if any at all) could be a boon for a child’s development. I say this as someone who doesn't have kids (yet!) but who can imagine a world where this sort of techno-optimism could be effective in the household. While I want to preserve a child’s childhood, their adolescence, their innocence, I also don’t want them to grow up fearful or naive about technology. I almost see this as more dangerous—to shield them, to pretend like the big bad instagram feed will never grace their screens, is to disadvantage them in a world that will only increase its use and reliance on technology as a whole

My techno-origin story

I still remember building my Dad’s old PC with him, playing with the green PCBs before he put them in their rightful place. Learning about how the circuits come together to make the computer run. My brain likely couldn’t handle the magnitude of what was in my hands, but I learned to have a curiosity, a reverence, and a thoughtfulness about the technology that I wield because my parents chose to teach me about what it could and couldn’t do. What it was good and not good for. That learning to read and write and communicate were paramount to being able to write a MySpace post.

Although I was likely exposed to some of the darker parts of the internet earlier than I would have preferred, in retrospect, I was also able to build a resilience to the darkness because I was comfortable using the technology and had a conception of what life meant off the screen. Because I spent my early years playing outside AND playing jumpstart 6th grade when I was in 4th grade (any high achievers in the house?) Because life rarely happens at the extremes, and is often sweetest in moderation.