The weird “Fridays’ Phone-Free Summer Challenge” its own grownup cheerleaders won’t sign up for
Elders incessantly demean Gen Z as “destroyed” by cellphones while past teens enjoyed wondrously idyllic “together” childhoods. What garbage. Teens should hold “lying-grownups-free Fridays” instead.
Psychologist Jonathan Haidt and followers declare social media are damaging human psyches so grievously that they’re urging Generation Z to sign pledges to give up cellphones every Friday this summer (… while also taking pictures and recording their newly liberated face-to-face joys, just one glitch in the plan.)
Interestingly, so far Haidt and the adults in his room such as psychologist Jean Twenge (who insists iPhones “destroyed a generation”), haven’t publicly signed on to his phone-prohibiting pledge. Why not — if iPhones are so terrible?
Why just Gen Z?
There are excuses, of course. After all, Gen Z tells surveys that the more they use social media (including phones), the more depressed they are… or, is it that the more depressed they are by other things, the more teens use social media? The latter possibility seems more likely, given how social media use helps teens avoid suicide attempts, self-harm, and other major risks while enhancing their expression, feelings of acceptance, and connections to others.
By the best evidence, today’s seriously troubled grownups, not cybergadgets, are driving teens’ depression. As documented repeatedly in these posts, self-destructive (suicide and overdose) deaths, hospital-ER-treated injuries, and depression treatments have skyrocketed among Americans in their 30s, 40s, and 50s over the last two decades far faster to levels far, far higher than among adolescents. Perhaps teens should keep their phones and hold “adults-free Fridays” instead.
Twenge has twisted illogical speculations into pretzels to insist that soaring self-destructive deaths and hospital ER cases among adults of ages to be parents, parents’ partners, family members, teachers, coaches, etc., during the 2010-2021 period couldn’t possibly have anything to do with teens’ increased depression over the same 2010-2021 period. No; it must be some snarky texts or Victoria’s Secret images.
Very well. Suppose the 5 million drug-related ER visits among ages 26-64 in 2022 alone – equivalent to the entire middle-aged population of Michigan – prove midlife sanity (?). Given the extreme urgency of the teenage “mental health crisis” that Twenge, Haidt and colleagues clarion, wouldn’t truly caring, mature, self-disciplined grownups want to set the most compelling good examples for kids by giving up cellphones themselves?
After all, plenty of research shows parents’ “do as I say, not as I do” hypocrisy is completely ineffective. Teen drinkers, smokers, drug-takers, crime arrestees, etc., overwhelmingly have parents and nearby grownups with the same bad habits.
Or… are today’s adults so addicted to their iPhones that they can’t give them up even for summer Fridays? Maybe the grownups have worse problems than teens. That’s America’s dirty, unmentionable secret across a wide variety of vital measures.
Fact: grownups are more messed up than teens
I have long suspected that the latest “teenage mental health” uproar erupted exactly at the 2000s time that (a) teenage crime, violence, pregnancy, dropout, etc., rates were plummeting to all-time lows, while (b) middle-aged drug and related crises were exploding to all-time peak – twin trends threatening elders’ fragile self-esteem.
Today’s 40-age parent is much more likely to be arrested for a criminal offense, die by guns, and commit suicide – and far, far more likely to overdose on drugs and alcohol – than their high-school or college-undergrad teen (especially girls). That’s an unpleasant shock for established American interests. They still can’t admit the obvious is happening.
So, we have to find something wrong with the young (especially girls) to deploy as an excuse to cut young people off from social media that affords them dynamically new, independent information and connections – and also some “drama,” as screen users point out.
Stop believing older generations’ lies
It’s sad that Gen-Z sponsors of “phone-free Fridays” have been sold on the degrading lie that past teens basked in an idyllic adolescence featuring wonderful “we had each other” growings-up.
What conceited crap. Gen Z should study the identical fears of mental health crises, alienation, and suicide that elder critics hurled at 1980s, 1960s, 1930s, and 1910s generations – especially the searing attack by Haidt’s book-title forebear, Allan Bloom (The Closing of the American Mind, 1987).
If teenhood was so together-perfect back when Haidt and Twenge were adolescing, why did “teen suicide triple from the 1950s to the 1980s”? Why did crime, violence, murder, gun killings, criminal arrests, youth incarcerations, unplanned pregnancies (a large majority caused by adult men), and school failure soar to record peaks among 1980s and ‘90s teens?
Since the disastrous 1990s, younger Millennials and Gen Z – no thanks to their elders, who morphed into America’s worst middle-aged generations ever – have brought down crime and major ills sharply and elevated young-age educational attainment and political awareness dramatically. Gen Z (especially girls) is leaving older folks in the dust.
Today’s teens act and think more maturely than grownups across many major indexes from risk behaviors to political attitudes. Fear and insecurity among troubled older generations who control the narrative, not screen-based disconnection and deteriorating mental health among youth, is why you are hearing a drumbeat of dire negativism about younger generations.
I disputed the teen-terror-tales vilifying Haidt’s and Twenge’s younger generations 40 years ago, and I even more strongly dispute the more irrational anti-youth terror campaigns demonizing today’s much better-behaved youth. Elders’ railings decade after decade, century after century at least back to Greek poet Hesiod in 700 BC that their younger generation is the worst ever should be redefined as bullying.
Gen Z: stop letting self-flattering elders lie to you about how strong and angelic we were back in our adolescence compared to “screen addicted” 2020s youth. Look hard at the horrifying statistics of the older generations back then and now that they don’t tell you about.
Bravo if Gen Z wants to experiment with phone-free Fridays – and every other challenge its members think might benefit them. (I recommend dedicating summer Fridays to studying just how grossly aging haters lie about young people.) Just don’t do it because you buy the grotesque bigotry that today’s young people are mentally “destroyed.”
Well-said.