The Anxious Generation

Suppose that when your first child turned ten, a visionary billionaire whom you've never met chose her to join the first permanent human settlement on Mars. Her academic performance—plus an analysis of her genome, which you don't remember giving consent for—clinched her a spot. Unbeknownst to you, she had signed herself up for the mission because she loves outer space, and, besides, all of her friends have signed up. She begs you to let her go.

Before saying no, you agree to learn more. You learn that the reason they're recruiting children is that they adapt better to the unusual conditions of Mars than adults, particularly the low gravity. If children go through puberty and its associated growth spurt on Mars, their bodies will be permanently tailored to it, unlike settlers who come over as adults. At least that's the theory. It is unknown whether Mars-adapted children would be able to return to Earth.

You find other reasons for fear. First, there's the radiation. Earth's flora and fauna evolved under the protective shield of the magnetosphere, which blocks or diverts most of the solar wind, cosmic rays, and other streams of harmful particles that bombard our planet. Mars doesn't have such a shield, so a far greater number of ions would shoot through the DNA of each cell in your daughter's body. The project's planners have built protective shields for the Mars settlement based on studies of adult astronauts, who have a slightly elevated risk of cancer after spending a year in space. But children are at an even higher risk, because their cells are developing and diversifying more rapidly and would experience higher rates of cellular damage. Did the planners take this into account? Did they do any research on child safety at all? As far as you can tell, no.

And then there's gravity. Evolution optimized the structure of every creature over eons for the gravitational force on our particular planet. From birth onward, each creature's bones, joints, muscles, and cardiovascular system develop in response to the unchanging one-way pull of gravity. Removing this constant pull profoundly affects our bodies. The muscles of adult astronauts who spend months in the weightlessness of space become weaker, and their bones become less dense. Their body fluids collect in places where they shouldn't, such as the brain cavity, which puts pressure on the eyeballs and changes their shape. Mars has gravity, but it's only 38% of what a child would experience on Earth. Children raised in the low-gravity environment of Mars would be at high risk of developing deformities in their skeletons, hearts, eyes, and brains. Did the planners take this vulnerability of children into account? As far as you can tell, no.

So, would you let her go?

Of course not. You realize this is a completely insane idea—sending children to Mars, perhaps never to return to Earth. Why would any parent allow it? The company behind the project is racing to stake its claim to Mars before any rival company. Its leaders don't seem to know anything about child development and don't seem to care about children's safety. Worse still: The company did not require proof of parental permission. As long as a child checks a box stating she has obtained parental permission, she can blast off to Mars.

No company could ever take our children away and endanger them without our consent, or they would face massive liabilities. Right?

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At the turn of the millennium, technology companies based on the West Coast of the United States created a set of world-changing products that took advantage of the rapidly growing internet. There was a widely shared sense of techno-optimism; these products made life easier, more fun, and more productive. Some of them helped people to connect and communicate, and therefore it seemed likely they would be a boon to the growing number of emerging democracies. Coming soon after the fall of the Iron Curtain, it felt like the dawn of a new age. The founders of these companies were hailed as heroes, geniuses, and global benefactors who, like Prometheus, brought gifts from the gods to humanity.

But the tech industry wasn't just transforming life for adults. It began transforming life for children too. Children and adolescents had been watching a lot of television since the 1950s, but the new technologies were far more portable, personalized, and engaging than anything that came before. Parents discovered this truth early, as I did in 2008, when my two-year-old son mastered the touch-and-swipe interface of my first iPhone. Many parents were relieved to find that a smartphone or tablet could keep a child happily engaged and quiet for hours. Was this safe? Nobody knew, but because everyone else was doing it, everyone just assumed that it must be okay.

Yet the companies had done little or no research on the mental health effects of their products on children and adolescents, and they shared no data with researchers studying the health effects. When faced with growing evidence that their products were harming young people, they mostly engaged in denial, obfuscation, and public relations campaigns. Companies that strive to maximize "engagement" by using psychological tricks to keep young people clicking were the worst offenders. They hooked children during vulnerable developmental stages, while their brains were rapidly rewiring in response to incoming stimulation. This included social media companies, which inflicted their greatest damage on girls, and video game companies and pornography sites, which sank their hooks deepest into boys. By designing a firehose of addictive content that entered through kids' eyes and ears, and by displacing physical play and in-person socializing, these companies have rewired childhood and changed human development on an almost unimaginable scale. The most intense period of this rewiring was 2010 to 2015, although the story I will tell begins with the rise of fearful and overprotective parenting in the 1980s and continues through the COVID pandemic to the present day.

What legal limits have we imposed on these tech companies so far? In the United States, which ended up setting the norms for most other countries, the main prohibition is the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), enacted in 1998. It requires children under 13 to get parental consent before they can sign a contract with a company (the terms of service) to give away their data and some of their rights when they open an account. That set the effective age of "internet adulthood" at 13, for reasons that had little to do with children's safety or mental health. But the wording of the law doesn't require companies to verify ages; as long as' a child checks a box to assert that she's old enough (or puts in the right fake birthday), she can go almost anywhere on the internet without her parents' knowledge or consent. In fact, 40% of American children under 13 have created Instagram accounts, yet there has been no update of federal laws since 1998. (The U.K., on the other hand, has taken some initial steps, as have a few U.S. states.)

A few of these companies are behaving like the tobacco and vaping industries, which designed their products to be highly addictive and then skirted laws limiting marketing to minors. We can also compare them to the oil companies that fought against the banning of leaded gasoline. In the mid 20th century, evidence began to mount that the hundreds of thousands of tons of lead put into the atmosphere each year, just by drivers in the United States, were interfering with the brain development of tens of millions of children, impairing their cognitive development and increasing rates of antisocial behavior. Even still, the oil companies continued to produce, market, and sell it.

Of course, there is an enormous difference between the big social media companies today and, say, the big tobacco companies of the mid-20th century: Social media companies are making products that are useful for adults, helping them to find information, jobs, friends, love, and sex; making shopping and political organizing more efficient; and making life easier in a thousand ways. Most of us would be happy to live in a world with no tobacco, but social media is far more valuable, helpful, and even beloved by many adults. Some adults have problems with addiction to social media and other online activities, but as with tobacco, alcohol, or gambling we generally leave it up to them to make their own decisions.

The same is not true for minors. While the reward-seeking parts of the brain mature earlier, the frontal cortex—essential for self-control, delay of gratification, and resistance to temptation—is not up to full capacity until the mid-20s, and preteens are at a particularly vulnerable point in development. As they begin puberty, they are often socially insecure, easily swayed by peer pressure, and easily lured by any activity that seems to offer social validation. We don't let preteens buy tobacco or alcohol, or enter casinos. The costs of using social media, in particular, are high for adolescents, compared with adults, while the benefits are minimal. Let children grow up on Earth first, before sending them to Mars.


© 2024 by Jonathan Haidt. Published by Penguin Press. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.