Generation Anxiety: smartphones have created a gen Z mental health crisis – but there are ways to fix it

From the article:

How do we escape from these traps? Collective action problems require collective responses: parents can support one another by sticking together. There are four main types of collective response, and each can help us to bring about major change:

1. No smartphones before year 10
Parents should delay children’s entry into round-the-clock internet access by giving only basic phones with limited apps and no internet browser before the age of 14.

2. No social media before 16
Let children get through the most vulnerable period of brain development before connecting them to an avalanche of social comparison and algorithmically chosen influencers.

3. Phone-free schools
Schools must insist that students store their phones, smartwatches, and any other devices in phone lockers during the school day, as per the new non-statutory guidance issued by the UK government. That is the only way to free up their attention for one another and for their teachers.

4. Far more unsupervised play and childhood independence
That’s the way children naturally develop social skills, overcome anxiety, and become self-governing young adults.

Re No. 4 - I've been saddened to see how different the lives of children are now to when I was young, although my life was far from perfect.

I did however have a lot of independence, so much that perhaps it was neglect.

I went out to play from a young age and stayed out all day (I had one friend when I was under 12 and a lot of time was spent at his house in his garden) but when I was 12 we moved to a council estate and I used to just stay out all day with whoever I knew (a gang I seem to remember) and we would play on old bomb sites and building sites.

It's not ideal but it is incredibly different.

At school we played actual games like hopscotch, skipping and ball games.

A lot of rhymes were sung - I am trying to find a video of these - if I do I will post it here.

I thinking the 'self-governing' part of this is very true.

I grew up to be a pretty independent thinker.

From the article:

How do we escape from these traps? Collective action problems require collective responses: parents can support one another by sticking together. There are four main types of collective response, and each can help us to bring about major change:

1. No smartphones before year 10
Parents should delay children’s entry into round-the-clock internet access by giving only basic phones with limited apps and no internet browser before the age of 14.

2. No social media before 16
Let children get through the most vulnerable period of brain development before connecting them to an avalanche of social comparison and algorithmically chosen influencers.

3. Phone-free schools
Schools must insist that students store their phones, smartwatches, and any other devices in phone lockers during the school day, as per the new non-statutory guidance issued by the UK government. That is the only way to free up their attention for one another and for their teachers.

4. Far more unsupervised play and childhood independence
That’s the way children naturally develop social skills, overcome anxiety, and become self-governing young adults.

Re No. 4 - I've been saddened to see how different the lives of children are now to when I was young, although my life was far from perfect.

I did however have a lot of independence, so much that perhaps it was neglect.

I went out to play from a young age and stayed out all day (I had one friend when I was under 12 and a lot of time was spent at his house in his garden) but when I was 12 we moved to a council estate and I used to just stay out all day with whoever I knew (a gang I seem to remember) and we would play on old bomb sites and building sites.

It's not ideal but it is incredibly different.

At school we played actual games like hopscotch, skipping and ball games.

A lot of rhymes were sung - I am trying to find a video of these - if I do I will post it here.

I thinking the 'self-governing' part of this is very true.

I grew up to be a pretty independent thinker.

here here for all these, #4, especially. I was way under supervised too. I had to rely on myself as well. for me it was endless exploring on foot as far as I could go. I loved being in the woods among the little creatures and the trees, especially. 

Its wonderful that you could mix in with other kids, living in council housing among so many others.

Your gang was your social media.

I remember those games and songs too. I wonder if any of you younger people here have something equivalent, like call and response zoom games or other group games you play online?

"If you go out in the woods today..."

"Red Rover, Red Rover, let me come over..."  Before it morphed into a melee.

"clothes Horse"

I would go much, much further than this - because a child is a child until they are 21, the traditional legal age of majority, to which everything should be increased to, no child under the age of 21 should ever be allowed anywhere near mobile phones nor the internet at all for any reasons, no exceptions, as warned by our grandparents generation - family homes in which young children are present must never be online nor have any access to mobile phones at all for any reason, even if other family members “need” such devices for any reason - I have long advocated for a licence system based on provable need in a court of law, in front of a judge and jury in an open court hearing for the internet and mobile phones, especially where children under 21 are involved, as these devices being present in the family home are never in the children’s best interests - we have got to go back to the beauty of tradition and traditional family life - we have got to be “cruel to be kind” in this instance in order to protect children, as even the WiFi and mobile phone signals affects children’s developing brains aside from the content on such devices and I’ve had to counsel parents over the years about the danger that they are putting their children in 

I haven't read the article but lot of anxiety comes from uncertainty and I think phones and social media could create an artificial fight or flight to be activated (or constantly on).

My observations as a person in school 5 days a week*

Around a fifth of the kids are sufficiently compelled by their phones that they can't resist them. There's a 'no phones except at breaktime' rule, but it's ignored by them, particularly, and they're routinely asked to put their phones away. 

A significant group in each class want to spend their time chatting, social peer interaction is at least as important to them as their phone.

The rest of them pretty much get on with it. 

From experience, these behaviours are difficult to change by the timethey get to secondaryschool, and in general, they'll carry them all the way to their GCSEs.

There are probably multiple factors influencing behaviour, of which access to phones is just one. 

There's talk nationally of banning phones in school, as if that would be a simple fix - I'm not sure it would. 

*But not for the next 2 weeks!