It feels impossible to tell if the technology our kids use should be celebrated or feared.
I intended the book to teach startups how tobuild healthy habits, but now Im not so sure.
How alarmed should we be?
Is this a crisis or a fear frenzy?
One side clearly believes the kids arenotokay.
Much of this deterioration can be traced to their phones.
They are cyberbullied, like-obsessed, and more prone to killing themselves, she says.
Odiaga is a mother of two daughters, ages 14 and 16.
It is an epidemic.
People are tracking it back to social pressures and social media.
I think its going to escalate and get worse… Whats going to happen next?
As a father of a pre-teen myself, I worry.
Its easy to get worked up about what technology might be doing to kids brains.
Taking this one step further, some might believe the storecausedpeople to eat more ice cream.
Its true that in Twenges study, social media exposure was correlated with depressive symptoms in some adolescents.
Firstly, there are many potential variables that correlate with adolescent depression.
80% of the correlation?
Thats not 36%.
Its not even 1%.
Furthermore, even that weak correlation didnt hold for the boys in the dataset, only the girls.
But as so often is the case, the devil is in the digital details.
A closer read finds the correlation only with extreme amounts of time spent online.
Isnt five hours a day on any form of media a symptom of a larger problem?
Nationwide, the juvenile arrest rate for vandalism fell 75% between 1994 and 2015.
Teen pregnancy, birth, and abortion rates in the United States all reached historic lows.
Today, 9%.
Anecdotes of kids gone wrong remain, but theyre rarer than ever.
Of course, like depression, these are correlated factors and its difficult to draw conclusions about causation.
There are certainly other factors at play keeping kids safe.
Critics blaming technology for kids ills also gloss over what exactly kids do online.
Twenges study lumps both activities together.
How you feel after using the web depends on how you use it.
Good can come out of it.
Its not all bad, Odiaga admits.
I think we need to keep some historical perspective and think, What is our future going to be?
Although thinking this time is different is a common reaction to rapid technological change, history tells another story.
Swiss scientist Conrad Gessner worried about hand-held information equipment causing confusing and harmful consequences.16That was 1565.
He was talking about books.
He was referring to public education.
It seems outlandish now, but leaps in technological innovation are often followed by moral panics.
It could well be that todays technology does have negative consequences.
We can also adapt our technology use with new tech tools that help our kids moderate overuse.
Instead of headline-grabbing hysterics, moderation and adaptation seem to be the answer after all.
This article was originally published onNirandfar.combyNir Eyal.
you might read the original articlehere.
