The Anxious Generation - Cherry Picks it's data

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Potential trigger warning. (Sarcasm, I hope). The book “The Anxious Generation” has been talked about in many of our podcasts recently. Too many to count.

As a parent, I see many problems with our kids and society. I want to lay the blame at the feet of social media, as it would make the solution easier. Unfortunately, Haidt’s book has been widely criticized for cherry-picking the studies that show what he wants while ignoring data that show the effect sizes are small.

Consider listening to: The Anxious Generation — warning the hosts can be vulgar. Zoe Schiffer of Platformer: Inside the debate over The Anxious Generation lays a good review of the debate.

By repeating Haidt’s narrative, we oversimplify the problem and ignore the fact that real solutions are more complicated.

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Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.

H. L. Mencken

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Technology is a convenient excuse, but not the root cause or solution.

I listen with amusement on MPU that teachers are welcoming the new law banning use of smartphones in school during class.

I recall, perhaps with rose colored glasses, that when I went to school, I could not chew gum, talk in class, pass tiny written notes, or write the answers to tests on the palms of my hands.

No laws needed to be passed for teachers to ban these distractions or cheats. Amazingly, society provided teachers and schools with all the tools they needed to teach and keep their classrooms orderly.

IMHO, the fact that teachers and schools, can no longer insure or enforce obvious norms of decorum and expected class behavior without “big brother” government passing laws that allow them to demand students put down their phones and place them in lock boxes at the beginning of class says a lot more about society than technology.

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I don’t want to speculate. I’ve learned that in some areas, I know just enough to know that my guesses are likely wrong.

Systems thinking has taught me that the causes of most problems are multilayered and often extend back over time.

I’m an expert in software development and in helping teams be effective.

I also read enough research to know when solutions seem overly simplistic.

Beyond that I would just be speculating. Speculating about the next over priced Apple device is harmless fun. I prefer to keep it at that level.

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Thank you, @mlevison for bringing this up. I work for a research center that studies the effects of tech on teen mental health, and the role that educators could and should play, and I’m encouraged to see your grasp of the nuance.

The science isn’t settled, and blaming social media would be easier, is easier. You might be interested to listen to a debate with Haidt and Candice Odgers. Odgers is pretty much polar opposite in her position: Making Sense of the Research on Social Media and Youth Mental Health: A Discussion with Jonathan Haidt and Candice Odgers - TYDE

On our team, we feel the answers aren’t on the continuum between Haidt and Odgers, rather they’re on a completely different axis.

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I think that part of the challenge here is that things like phones or devices given by parents to children, frequently for the purpose of allowing the child to communicate with them. In particular, they are considered to be safety devices by many parents.

Taking away your chewing gum is an entirely different thing from taking away a communications device.

I also think the “all or nothing” approach with cell phones in schools is quite possibly misguided. This reminds me of the “screen time” debate, where I literally heard parents talking about taking away their child’s Kindle because the kid ran out of screen time.

Simplistic solutions that can’t differentiate between a child playing Candy Crush and a child reading an e-book aren’t helpful.

Same for phones in school.

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Parental expectations have changed. Too many parents expect to have 24/7 access to their kids at all times. Enough parents complain and the school relents to the chaos.

Someone has to be the bad guy and i welcome these laws.

Of course Id ban calculators in math class as well.

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I remember orderly classrooms too.

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My wife teaches middle-school social studies. We think we should get rid of almost all technology in schools. Real text books, notebooks, pen and pencil. Move the computers to a lab, used sparingly and only when needed. It’s worked for a long, long time. Our schools should not be an experiment in psychology and how technology affects us.

I remember that when the 1to1 program got started at our school, the superintendent at the time said that they needed to teach “21st century skills!” but had absolutely no idea what that phrase meant. Unfortunately she mistook proximity to technology for an understanding of that technology. The two are not at all the same.

For context, my wife does ban cell phones in the classroom. They are still a problem. She does not talk much about problems with students chewing gum. They do all talk too much though.

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Good point. Sadly, “school shootings” is not something anyone would ever have thought as a real threat back in the '60s and '70s when I went to public school.

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