I recently spent a week with high school students training and empowering them as media literacy and wellbeing ambassadors. The experience was both inspiring and insightful. In fact, without the insight of youth in the conversation about how to address the harms of media and create pathways to media wellbeing, the conversation is woefully incomplete. There's so much to say about youth leadership in the movement, but I'll leave that for another day.
Today I want to talk about the risk-reward relationship in both assessing the role of media alongside other possible causes of the youth mental health crisis, and evaluating the ways we may attempt to solve the crisis. We discussed this during the week as our student interns rightfully raised important criticisms of Haidt's proposed "new norms" which delay and restrict access to smartphones and social media. These ranged from, "If helicopter parenting is bad in preventing unsupervised play, why would we promote helicoptering in the digital world?" to "Won't restricting access to social media prevent kids from connecting with peers who can support them and lead to greater social isolation for some?" They were all good questions, but we kept coming back to the reality that the risk of doing nothing is worse than the risk of doing something to mitigate the impact of media on children's health.
We had the benefit of hearing from Michelle Ciulla Lipkin who leads NAMLE, and she used the metaphor of a wildfire to explain the dire need for media literacy saying, when the forest is on fire and spreading, you combat it from every angle...spraying it from above, dropping into it, surrounding it on the ground. You keep at it because if you don't, it will spread. This visual really struck me, and I believe it's important we apply it to the youth mental health crisis with the same urgency. We really can't afford to wait for science to prove without a speck of doubt that X, Y, or Z factors is causing the crisis to start to try and solve it. The forest is indeed on fire, and the trees are our children.
This is where we can apply a business framework of the risk-reward analysis to the issue. In advocating for a delayed and scaffolded use of smartphones and social media, especially when combined with media literacy education in schools, the risk factors are really low. We are not saying, "We're really not sure what this pill does, but you should give it to your children and check it out." Instead we are saying, "We have numbers that show a strong correlation between personal tech use around the clock with an increase in anxiety, depression and suicide...why don't we try to do something about when and how our children use social feeds and TV streams carried around in their pockets?" The risks can very easily be mitigated with a fairly low threshold of creativity and alternative tech:
- Risk: Kids will feel left out --> Create communities of shared commitments to delayed and scaffolded smartphone and social media usage. Lean into communities that are offline, like activities and parent social groups that can bring children together. Use social forums designed for children to capture the benefits without the risks.
- Risk: Kids won't learn digital skills --> Teach media literacy and build digital skills through family and school managed devices at an age appropriate progression. This would allow for a far more intentional and purposeful use of technology, and a learning mindset regarding it.
- Risk: Kids need phones for independence & safety --> First, that is not true. Whole generations navigated childhood safely without phones. Second, if parents feel phones are essential for safety as children reach stages of independence, kids can use devices designed for children like Light phones or flip phones which allow for text and calling but don't have access to all the other media.
- Risk: Kids won't be able to access helpful resources --> This movement isn't about taking away the internet. We can simultaneously delay childhood access to smartphones, and commit to phone-free schools, while also using family and school devices for children to access helpful resources and online communities we can better monitor and which aren't intentionally designed for addiction.
Even if we did nothing to mitigate the above "risks", the reward of trying to do something is compelling compared to the very low risk factors. When we assess decisions from a risk-reward lens, we always look for that combo, high reward + low risk...it's the win-win of strategy, so why wouldn't we throw all our efforts into trying it out? And let's be honest, no one is walking around saying, "I wish my kid was on TikTok more."
Sitting in a recent session debating the phone-free schools movement, one of the facilitators offered up this counter-argument to the benefits of phone-free schools, "If we focus too much on how phones may be causing mental health issues, we risk not paying proper attention to the other factors and solutions to solving the youth mental health crisis." To this argument, I return to the wildfire metaphor...we need a full attack of the issue from all sides. Also, it's simply not true. Having worked in many schools, there is never just one focus. In fact, a school is a multitasker's dream workspace because the luxury of singular focus is simply not available. While budgets are a zero-sum game, the same cannot be said of strategy, especially when the problem is as urgent as youth mental health.
As we confront this urgent crisis, it's clear we must launch a comprehensive offensive. Just like combating a wildfire, we cannot ignore any potential kindling or accelerators, including smartphones and social media. The risk-reward analysis is straightforward: the potential benefits of a delayed and scaffolded access to phones and social media far outweigh the risks of inaction. It's time we stop slinging arguments within the false dichotomy of the phone-no phone conversation, and start rallying together—parents, educators, and policy leaders—to help our children navigate their digital world with confidence, resilience, and wellbeing. The forest is on fire, but together we can safeguard our children—their wellbeing depends on it.
