8 Reasons Why Taylor Lorenz Is Wrong
About the moral panic of children’s smartphone use and social media
Now that Australia has effectuated a ban of social media for children under 16, several other countries are considering or planning to take similar measures.
In a recent video essay (see below), journalist Taylor Lorenz confidently dismisses the common concerns about children’s smartphone and social media use with an audible agitation. Lorenz claims the concerns are overblown, lack a factual basis, views them as a convenient political scapegoat, and a symptom of the same moral panic that has occurred throughout history with each new medium of communication whether novels, comic books, televisions, or computers.
Unfortunately, Lorenz is guilty of the very mistake she accuses conservative, boomer republicans of making: she grossly oversimplifies an extremely complex issue by misrepresenting the data. Smartphones and social media are obviously not all bad, but they are not all good either - certainly not for young, developing minds.
Here are 8 reasons why I think Lorenz is wrong about the effects of smartphones and social media on teens and children.
Reason 1: The scientific evidence warrants caution
Scientific evidence on the effects of smartphones and social media use on adolescents’ mental health and cognitive abilities is mixed, but that is unsurprising. Proving “causality” in science is notoriously difficult. For example, after the mass-commercialization of cigarettes around the early 20th century, it took more than 50 years before the causality between lung cancer and smoking was solidified (marked by a report from the US Surgeon General published in 1964). The scientific method is slow, while the social impacts of new information technology are nearly instantaneous.
Even if the available scientific evidence is unclear and ambiguous, it warrants caution. The evidence shows that there is a plausible causality between declining mental health and excessive social media and smartphone use among adolescents. More than 120 international researchers from 11 different academic fields agree with a 92-97% consensus that the following six statements are accurate or somewhat accurate
(link to pre-print):
Adolescent mental health has declined in several Western countries over the past 20 years.
Heavy smartphone and social media use can cause sleep problems.
Smartphone and social media use correlate with attention problems and behavioural addiction.
Among girls, social media use may be associated with body dissatisfaction, perfectionism, exposure to mental disorders, and risk of sexual harassment and predation.
Evidence on social deprivation and relational aggression is limited.
Evidence for policies like age restrictions and school bans is preliminary.
67.92% of the responding experts answered that the following statement is “Probably True”:
“If most parents waited until their children were in high school to give them their first smartphones, it would benefit the mental health of adolescents overall. (Parents would give only basic phones or flip phones before high school).”
56.19% of the responding experts answered that the following statement is “Probably True”:
“Imposing (and enforcing) a legal minimum age of 16 for opening social media accounts would benefit the mental health of adolescents overall.”
69.81% of the responding experts answered that the following statement is “Probably True”:
“Phone-free schools would benefit the mental health of adolescents overall.”
The scientific evidence on the harmful effects of smartphones and social media is not 100% clear. Yet, age restrictions on social media do not seem completely inappropriate considering the current level of consensus among researchers. As the former US surgeon general Vivek H. Murthy wrote in a guest column for the NY Times in June 2024:
“One of the most important lessons I learned in medical school was that in an emergency, you don’t have the luxury to wait for perfect information. You assess the available facts, you use your best judgment, and you act quickly.”
Reason 2: Young people are hyper-addicted to smartphones
We can’t compare the “moral panics” over new technologies of the past to modern concerns about smartphones and social media. While young people in the 20th century allegedly spent too much of their time immersed in novels and television shows, the new generation of information technology is hyper-addictive.
In a revealing study, the UK-based digital health company Fluid Focus surveyed 2,842 students between the ages of secondary school to university about their smartphone habits. On average, most students were on track to spent roughly 25 years of their life in front of a smartphone.
A significant percentage of the students (10%) reported that they spend more than 9 hours a day on their smartphones. If those trends continue, the students will spend more than 41 years of their waking life looking into a phone.
Smartphones are not just engaging like the information technologies of the past were. They are hyper-addictive and deliberately designed to maximize addiction. As a result, they are destroying the attention spans of students. According to the survey by Fluid Focus, less than 1 in 25 students can study for a full hour without picking up their phone.
Reason 3: Much of the time students spend on smartphones is wasteful
If the extreme amount of time adolescents spent on smartphones helped them to develop character, skills, knowledge, wisdom, compassion, or other positive traits, the harmful effects of screens could be debated. But that is not the case. Most of the time kids and students are spending on smartphones consists of mindless digital activities such as scrolling, swiping, consuming, and posting without a clear purpose other than dopamine stimulation.
A large majority of students in the Fluid Focus study reported to have an unhealthy relationship with their phone, particularly older students in university who presumably have gained more self-insight with age.
Students report that they are struggling to disconnect from their phones, not because they are having too much fun, but because they are addicted, use it for stress relief or escapism, don’t know what else they are supposed to do, or they are afraid to miss out on “the next new thing” (FOMO =Fear Of Missing Out).
Screentime in itself is unproblematic. But the whole attention economy that governs what is happening inside the elusive metaverse the phones give access to is problematic. The attention economy is seeking to mold children, teens, and the rest of us, into passive, obedient consumers without independent will or thought. In this state of mind, we are most profitable.
Reason 4: Cyberbullying
I was bullied in school, and I bullied other children too. Overall, my school experience was traumatic. However, if my classmates were all equipped with smartphones, I imagine the trauma would be 10x worse. The constant threat of an unfortunate video clip of you going viral. Mean text comments from people you barely know or don’t know at all. The in-built status games of social media. The perception of a picture-perfect life people can easily fake on the platforms. Companies claim that social media facilitates human connection, but the platforms can just as well exacerbate feelings of loneliness and isolation - especially for those kids who already feel left out and are socially awkward. Cyberbullying is an order of magnitude worse than regular bullying, because it can leave a lasting digital footprint and potentially reach thousands, if not millions of people.
Reason 5: Sexualization of underage girls
Young teen girls or pre-teen girls who post silly dance videos on TikTok may attract a large audience for wrong reasons that they don’t yet have the cognitive abilities to understand. The number of daily sexual inquiries young girls can receive on social media platforms from strange men are absolutely shocking. Platforms like TikTok typically do not intervene, sometimes even if certain accounts or videos are reported. Parents are practically left powerless to control what their children are doing on smartphones when they are alone in their rooms or at school with friends.
In a recent experiment, a research group posted AI-generated video of underaged girls in sexualized clothing and positions, and some of the videos racked up millions of views. One reporter has described TikTok’s livestream feature as a strip club filled with 15-year-olds. Internal leaked documents at TikTok reveal that the company is unable to moderate 100% of videos that include “Fetishizing Minors “ and 50% of videos that include “Glorification of Minor Sexual Assault”.
We - as a society - are not ready to face up to the reality of how social media platforms have normalized and encouraged so many young women to pursue a career on OnlyFans.
Reason 6: Smartphones give children access to hardcore pornography and traumatizing videos
When I was growing up as a millennial, I had friends who exposed me to extremely disturbing clips. For example, the infamous “2 girls 1 cup” video or a clip of a Russian man who was beaten to death with a hammer. Twenty years ago, these kind of extremely disturbing clips were much rarer than they are today. Any curious child with a smartphone can seek out these sorts of videos now and watch them for hours on end. Even if the children don’t actively seek them out, they have a much higher chance of being exposed to them through social media algorithms or friends.
You and I may stay on the polite side of the internet, and tend to think that this is the only reality, but we can’t forget there is dark side of the internet too, one where sexual abuse and murder are uploaded and viewed for entertainment . Genuine evil exists in this world and even children from safe neighborhoods can easily be exposed to it online.
Reason 7: Social Media Platforms Are Not Designed for Human Connection
Social media platforms like Facebook, X, TikTok and Instagram are fundamentally not designed to facilitate “connection” like they claim. The major social media platforms are entertainment engines designed to brainwash people into buying products and services through targeted advertisement. Instead of connecting people, social media have a tendency to divide people and attenuating false, misleading, or low-quality information for the sole purpose of retaining people’s attention.
The point of implementing age restrictions on social media, is not to restrict young people’s access to information, but to protect them from the companies that have not designed their platforms with the users’ well-being in mind. As Jonathan Haidt writes about Australia’s new social media law:
“Under the new policy, children under age 16 can still watch videos, read posts, and look things up online. What changes is that some of the largest companies on earth can no longer form business relationships with young children or use their personal data to keep them hooked on feeds, likes, and alerts. “
Reason 8: Social media does not give people a political voice
Lorenz asserts that social media platforms give young people a voice in the political system. Judging from developments in US politics over the last year, how much do you think a random person’s social media activities matter politically? I think, zilch. People complaining about politics on social media are venting, which is fine, but they rarely initiate changes outside of the platform by posting. Resistance is best organized through non-public platforms, and best practiced offline through peaceful actions such as casting a vote at the ballot box on election day. I would argue that giving children under 16 access to social media is a terrible way of getting them more politically engaged. Instead of giving teens a political voice, the platforms will radicalize, misinform, and deeply confuse them about the world they were born into.
Well, you chose a narrow enough topic at least. So, the depths of her wrongness can be explored by everyone!
Only 8?