New Book Challenges Haidt's Social Media Theory, Citing School Pressure and Lost Autonomy

Haidt's book, released two years earlier, posits that the rise of social media and smartphone use is largely to blame for the prominent decline in teen mental health since 2010. The Verge reported that it quickly became a central rallying cry of the social media backlash. Haidt has been credited with helping inspire Australia's nationwide teen social media ban, has joined forces with bereaved parents fighting tech companies in court, and his name comes up unprompted in conversations with people in power who say his book opened their eyes to an online crisis.

Haidt's theory has received regular critiques from recognized academics. Candice Odgers, a leading adolescent mental health researcher, wrote a scathing review of Haidt's analysis in Nature that opened by conceding, “this book is going to sell a lot of copies, because Jonathan Haidt is telling a scary story about children's development that many parents are primed to believe.” The Verge described that as a highly accurate prediction. In the wake of it, a former colleague of Haidt's seeks not only to take down his theory but to offer an alternative. The Verge said the biggest question may not be whether he is correct, but whether it is too late to change course if he is.

In Restoring Childhood, Gray argues that teens' mental health declined thanks to decades of steadily reduced autonomy, and that after a brief period of reprieve, it fell again in the 2010s not because of phones and social media but because of rigid schooling methods linked to the Common Core curriculum and government pressure to improve children's performance. Far from being damaging, Gray also argues that the adoption of home internet in the 1990s and 2000s actually drove a rebound in teens' mental health by restoring freedom and connection lost in earlier decades. He fears social media bans are not just a distraction from real solutions, as Odgers has argued, but a new harm in themselves.

In an interview on The Vergecast, Gray told The Verge that Haidt's book “completely ignored” dozens of meta-analyses and other research that found “not even a meaningful correlation between the amount of time kids are on social media or on smartphones and their mental health.” Where there is some connection, Gray adds, studies suggest that teens may use social media to cope with their depression or anxiety. He references a study in Florida that found 11-to-13-year-olds who owned smartphones were more likely to spend real-world time with friends. “You take a smartphone away from your kids and that study suggests you'll make them less happy and they'll have less friends,” he says.

Gray says that in studies through the years, kids consistently identify school pressure, not social media, as their top source of anxiety. “That doesn't mean it's the primary source for everybody, but when you're looking at the population at large, every single study that I've been able to find where kids are asked, 'What's the primary source of your anxiety or your stress or your depression?', in every single one of them, school pressure comes out on top,” Gray told The Verge. “Nothing else comes close.”

Gray and Haidt both believe that since at least the 1980s, increased restrictions on kids' independence and unstructured play have damaged their resilience, according to The Verge. While it used to be common for kids to play together unsupervised, that practice has diminished in part due to the rise of “stranger danger” narratives fostered by rare but high-profile crimes. In 2017 the pair helped cofound an organization called Let Grow, which advocates for policies that make it easier for parents to let their children play freely, like ensuring they cannot be considered neglectful for letting kids outside by themselves. But the two have split sharply over the impact of the internet. Gray's book is intended as a deliberate rebuttal to Haidt's; after The Anxious Generation's release, Gray resigned from the board of Let Grow to avoid conflict within the organization.

Haidt did not respond to a request for comment from The Verge, but he told The Atlantic's Kaitlyn Tiffany in a July article that the 1990s and early 2000s dip in teen suicide rates may be credited to a phase-out of leaded gasoline, since lead exposure has been linked to mental health issues. He also told Tiffany that Gray relied too heavily on a minority dissenting group of researchers. Tiffany writes that many of the more than a dozen tech and child development researchers she spoke to “expressed concern that Haidt overstates the strength of correlational findings and suggests causation where it hasn't been proved.” Gray accuses Haidt of stirring a moral panic over technology, according to The Verge.

Editor's Summary

Peter Gray's Restoring Childhood challenges Jonathan Haidt's influential claim that smartphones and social media caused teen mental health declines, arguing rigid schooling and reduced childhood autonomy are more likely causes. The dispute has implications for social media bans and youth policy, with researchers divided over correlation and causation. Haidt did not respond to The Verge, while he has defended his thesis and criticized Gray's use of dissenting research.