When you see your kid with their head in their smartphone do you feel your chest tighten or your face flush. It’s a bit anxiety provoking isn’t it?

Your teen’s phone use may be up there as one of the most contentious subjects in your home.

Our whole society is in a panic over the negative impact smartphones (especially social media) have on young people.

Author/Researchers, Jean Twenge and Jonathan Haidt would have you believe that smart phones have rewired our kids’ brains and destroyed an entire generation.

But here’s something you may not realize…this societal reaction to a new technology is nothing new—these types of fear-inducing pronouncements about young people have been coming in cycles for hundreds of years. And it has a name: technology panic.

Stay with me because today I want to try and ease your mind a bit and tell you one of the most important things you should consider when it comes to your teens and their phone.

PODCAST INTRO

I know it’s hard to imagine any previous generation having to worry about something as scary as the internet in their kid’s pocket. But they certainly did.

You know what people said about novels in the 18^th century? There was the same major panic about these little bundles of paper with salacious stories on the pages. People were pearl-clutching and grand-standing about the “reading addiction” that was causing over-the-top risk-taking behavior and immorality. Society had never seen any technology like novels before. It was genuinely scary. People were in a tizzy over BOOKS.

And in the early 20^th century, magazines were cause for even more alarm. In 1907, someone wrote in the Journal of Education, that (quote) “our modern family gathering, silent around the fire, each individual with his head buried in his favorite magazine.” (close quote)

Reminiscent of everyone sitting around staring at their phones isn’t it?

Radios were introduced on the market in around 1922 and by 1940 most every American household had a radio. And the same type of fear took over.

One researcher who wrote an article published in the Journal of Pediatrics determined that more than half of the hundreds of children and adolescents that she’d studied were severely addicted to radio and movie crime dramas. She said these kids were as consumed by these shows as an alcoholic is driven to drink and that the more of these dramas they consumed, the more anxious they were, the less sleep they got, the worse they ate and the less healthy they were in general.

Consumed, addicted, anxious, sleep deprived…again, what does that sound like?

In 1954 a guy wrote a book about the ills of comic books—claiming they were contributing to maladjustments or delinquency in teens. He said they were “chronic stimulation, temptation, and seduction”.

The New York Times lauded his book and it even prompted restrictive legislation for comic books with the goal of decreasing adolescent aggression.

Okay, well fine, Ann, but we know that novels, the radio and comic books are completely benign. There’s no comparison to smart phones and social media.

No, that’s exactly what each generation who’s been through this panic has said.

In 1935, the Director of the Child Study Association of America declared radios as the most insidious type of media ever because “no locks will keep this intruder out, nor can parents shift their children away from it”.

Television violence had the same impact on society. Between 1950 and 1970, TVs replaced the radio. The Surgeon General, in 1969 declared TV violence as a public health problem and spent the equivalent of 7 million dollars in today’s money to commission 23 scientific studies to determine it’s effects on young people.

Then along came violent video games and everyone panicked once again.

This has literally been happening since Medieval times when the printing press was declared as a technology that would destroy human memory, people’s ability to pass down stories from memory from one generation to the next.

There’s a name for this cyclical phenomenon—technology panic—and it will keep on happening long after we’re gone. It happens every time a new technology emerges that propels society forward in some way that’s hard for the current adults to understand and fully embrace.

Now, hold on before you think I’m saying we have absolutely nothing to worry about with cell phones, the internet, social media. That’s not quite right. Just hear me out.

How Tech Panic Happens

Tech panic happens because the technologies we use as a society form the basis of how we operate in our day-to-day lives and affect everything about how we live. So, when there’s some big new innovation (the printing press, novels, the radio, tv, smart phones…) that changes how our entire society operates, we feel powerless against it.

We feel it’s this autonomous force and it tends to make us pick a side – is this new thing inherently good or inherently bad for society? We see it as having these intrinsic powers to affect everyone, no matter the situation, in exactly the same way.

And what happens right away is the people who feel it’s bad (usually the majority of adults) begin connecting this new technology to other negative changes happening in society in general - especially with our young people, and decide that it has to be the tech’s fault…what else could it be?

For example, in Jean Twenge’s bestselling book from 2017, iGen, she says in the introduction that in her research on differences between generations (like millennials and Gen Z), she noticed (quote) “large abrupt shifts in teens’ behaviors and emotional states” in her data at around 2011 to 2012. And, as she put it, (quote) “then it occurred to me: 2011-2012 was exactly when the majority of Americans started to own cell phones that could access the Internet…”

What most of us don’t stop to consider is that technology is not inherently good or inherently bad—just like sugar is not inherently good or bad, or fire, or, I don’t know, pain pills.

Everything must be evaluated in context: who is using it, how are they using it, why are they using it, etcetera.

When a new technology is introduced it’s always the young people who’re the early adopters. They start spending all their free time using it and the adults don’t fully understand or appreciate whatever it is (because they didn’t grow up with it) so they see this new thing as bad news and the cause of all their kid’s problems.

And when parents are upset, their politicians are going to hear about it.

Politicians

So, the second phase of this tech panic is political. Opportunistic politicians step in and show parents what saints they are by fighting for their kids, fighting against whatever the tech is or the companies that produce it. It’s great political fodder. They get to be see as champions for parents and kids and insure their next political office.

And what’s been happening for at least the past century is these politicians have been enlisting the help of academia to solve the problem for their constituents…and the researchers are thrilled to do it because it not only means they get funding for their research, but they’re all but guaranteed to get their study published, which solidifies their place in academia, and enhances their reputation…plus they may be able to get even more publicity and earn some extra money by writing a bestselling book (or several bestselling books – hello Jean Twenge and Jonothan Haidt).

The Research Itself

The third phase of tech panic cycle is the actual scientific research itself which lacks a theoretical or methodological framework. That’s too complicated to fully get into here, but it basically means that science has failed to look for the thread that connects all of these technologies over time that might relate them to the societal issues they’ve claimed to have been associated with.

In other words, rather than radio, comic books, tv, social media, etc. each being looked at separately to see if they’re causing psychological issues for young people, there should be a general theory as to why that might be the case with all newly introduced technology so each can be examined under that larger umbrella.

For example, one theory is that a new technology replaces other activities a kid or teen would be doing and that’s what causes the problems. So maybe this is the broader theory to be examined. But no one theory has caught on to shape this entire field of research yet. That means every time there’s a new tech panic, researchers are asking the same questions, reinventing the wheel every time, and not getting any real answers:

“does listening to radio dramas cause anxiety in adolescents” “does reading comic books cause delinquency in adolescents”, “does video games cause aggression in adolescents?” “does using social media cause depression in adolescents?”

These questions also examine the tech very generally (any social media) as well as the audience (all adolescents) – and for far too short a time period. And the results can’t hold up under scrutiny because all social media is not alike and certainly all adolescents are not alike, and it takes years to look at the effects. There are simply far too many other factors that could be at play.

I’ll talk about that more in a minute, but the 4^th and final stage of technology panic is that there’s never much progress made by anyone in addressing the scary issues raised…then before you know it, there’s another new tech unleashed on society that grabs everyone’s attention…and the cycle starts all over with another panic.

 

So, when we all start to panic about the latest shiny object, we want answers as soon as possible—we want to know what to do about it. That’s when we get the smarty pants researchers saying don’t put a smart phone in their hand until they’re 13, keep them off Instagram until their 16, which freaks us out even further because the cat’s already out of those bags. Are we ruining our kids if we don’t go by these rules?

But in psychological science, you are rarely going to get a solid answer quickly. And actually, the real answers often end up coming over time by actually observing society and our kids.

For instance, in the 1990s there was a panic over violent video games. There was a wave of school shootings, including Columbine, and people latched onto the idea that it was the games causing all the violence. However, the research on whether there’s actually a link between violent video games and aggression in gamers, hasn’t been conclusive at all.

As a matter of fact, there’s even been evidence that playing these games causes a decrease in crime, with the data showing that there’s a clear decline when a new video game is released.

But after the Columbine shooting, all the academics or experts who were interviewed about the incident, talked like there was a definite link with the violence and video games. Even making comments like “violent video games and aggression is like smoking and lung cancer” or that the Army trains soldiers to kill by playing these games – neither of which is true.

And although the governments of Australia, the UK, the US, and Sweden have concluded that there’s no evidence that ties playing violent video games to actual violence, the worry among many parents persists to this day.

So, smart phones started the panic cycle all over again.

In time, with enough space between one panic and the next, sometimes after centuries of time to evaluate, clearer heads prevail.

We know now that the printing press didn’t destroy our memory. We know that listening to the radio, reading novels, magazines or comic books didn’t ruin an entire generation of kids. Neither did watching violent television shows, listening to rock music or playing violent video games, or the internet, and I don’t believe cell phones will either.

But when we’re in the thick of the panic and looking for resolution to protect our kids, we’re much more myopic and willing to jump on the bandwagon (we’re not thinking about the panics of the past and how they didn’t come to fruition).

I’m not saying there’s zero cause for concern but as I said earlier, every kid is different. The research we’ve been fed is far from conclusive—it’s correlational and not causational.

In other words, just because teen mental health hit a decline about the same time cell phones were introduced, it doesn’t mean cell phones caused this decline. This is not proof of anything. Although it doesn’t look good, right?

But let’s say the year that VCRs came out, there was a huge spike in baby’s being born. Would we all assume VCRs caused more women to get pregnant that year?

If there was a huge decline in college applications the same year the first home video game was introduced, would we assume home video games caused the decline in college applications?

One can find a correlation in a lot of things. But to get to the bottom of the situation you have to look further. You have to control for other environmental and individual factors.

It reminds me of the legal concept of proximate cause (the “but for” test): But for the defendant’s actions, the injury would not have occurred. But for the driver running the red light, the second driver wouldn’t have swerved and hit a tree injuring themselves. The driver running the red light was the proximate cause of the second driver’s injuries.

Can we say, but for smart phones or social media, adolescent mental health wouldn’t be what it is right now?

For example, an interview with Jean Twenge was published just a couple of weeks ago as her next book is coming out, and the article mentioned a study from 2018 that found that teens who were heavier users of social media were 3 times as likely to be depressed than those who weren’t heavy users.

Can we say, but for their heavy social media use, they wouldn’t be depressed?

No. You’d never win a lawsuit with that case.

As the defense attorney I’d be calling all sorts of BS on this argument. This teen had just broken up with her boyfriend, this one’s parents are going through a divorce, that one had just developed terrible acne. I’d also add that the inverse could be true: maybe depressed teens spend more time on social media.

But most of us just hear the connection between the two things and assume it must be true. I mean if the argument is made in bestselling books that our worst fear is in fact true, which is then repeated all over the internet, the news and social media, we assume it’s true.

If we’ve learned nothing after years and years of technology panics and scientific research, it’s that definitive answers are very hard to come by.

For example, when the Surgeon General’s Office deemed TV violence a “public health problem” in 1969, psychologists of the day were enlisted to provide the evidence for the American people. The government spent the equivalent of 7 million in today’s dollars on this project.

They modeled the whole thing on the Surgeon General’s Advisory Committee on tobacco-related health risks. And they really hoped to get the same type of definitive evidence out of this psychological research—they wanted to shut down TV violence with some good old fashioned “I told you it was causing aggressive behavior”.

But that’s not exactly what happened. The report that summarized these 23 separate studies concluded…well, it depends.

Overall the research showed that TV could influence some kids in some ways but not others. It turns out there were plenty of other environmental factors that needed to be considered: parental attitudes, personality traits, and community violence to name just a few  - these factors could play a huge role in aggressive behavior.

The report summed it up this way, “Television is only one of the many factors which in time may precede aggressive behavior. It is exceedingly difficult to disentangle from other elements of an individual’s life history.”

Not exactly the clear cut answer the government was hoping for. And that pretty much sums up all the current research on social media use.

Back in 2023 when the Surgeon General issued a warning about adolescents and social media, the report clearly stated that social media is not inherently bad and can even be as beneficial for some kids as it is harmful for others.

It’s just irresponsible and fear inducing to make sweeping statements about all adolescents and certain tech. And freaking out and calling for a ban on smartphones or social media until age 16, is not going to help.

As a matter of fact, if you’re a parent who’s already concerned about phones and screen time, all of this will likely just make you more anxious. You may already see their phone or social media as the enemy.

And fear makes for some very irrational reactions and controlling behaviors, which will certainly not help your kids’ mental health.

Remind yourself that everyone is different and that we cannot assume something that’s bad for this kid is bad for another. Or that a certain amount of time of social is okay across the board, or whatever. That’s not the way it works.

Your teen’s response to certain tech depends on a variety of factors such as temperament, personality, personal history, culture, developmental factors, genetics, environment, parenting, social skills, substance use, their current mental health, and so much more.

All young people who use a smart phone or social media do not develop a mental health disorder.

And for teens who do have anxiety or depression—it may not be caused by (or at least not 100% by) their smart phone or social.

Even if you found that the tech did cause their mental health issue, it’s because that young person had a certain set of individual attributes that made them more vulnerable.

Also, an anxious or depressed kid who’s using social media a lot may be doing so because they’re anxious or depressed.

The bottom line is that technology, social media, the internet, can be bad, good or neutral depending on how it’s used, the social context, the developmental stage of the person using it, and the individual susceptibility of the person using it.

How to do it

Keeping kids safe and healthy while using smart phones and social media is all about teaching them how to navigate the online world. For younger kids, you start teaching them before just handing them a phone or allowing them to open an account on a social media app.

With older teens who’re already on social and you feel the battle for screen time has begun, it’s about staying connected with them so that they will talk freely to you about what’s going on in their life, talking about your family’s values, helping them understand what’s dangerous online. It’s not about parental controls and may not even be about the specific amount of time they’re spending on their phone – it’s about ongoing conversations and trust and knowing what your teen needs. External controls alone don’t work and in fact can make things worse. And constant arguments about screen time aren’t helpful either.

I’ll link to several additional episodes in the show notes to elaborate on these issues.

The main thing I want you to get out of today’s episode is that you do not need to panic. You need to be vigilant, stay connected with your kids, educate yourself and keep the conversation going with them to make sure they’re educated and navigating the online world with their eyes open and with their values in mind.

 

 

 

 

And if your teen is experiencing mental distress, it’s not likely just the tech causing the problem, it’s a combination of factors. So, instead of freaking out and overreacting, get them help. If turns out that tech is part of the issue, they can learn to develop a healthier relationship it in time.

Hang in there. I know this is hard. Just remember our grandparents were equally freaked out over comic books.

Okay, that wraps up another episode of Speaking of Teens. If you’re new here, thanks for popping in and I hope you come back. You can dip into a back catalog of over 200 episodes. Of course, if you’re an SOT OG, thank you so much as always for listening.

If you’re listening on Spotify or Apple, would you please take a minute to give the show a 5-start rating? It really helps parents know the show is definitely worth listening to.

Alright then, until next week, be sure to try and connect with your teen in some small way, each and every day.