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Anjum Husain's avatar

I understand your point of view. Thanks for elaborating it further. I agree that any policy change shouldn’t be to make the life of adults easy but should be made to address the developmental need of the students. When you speak about tecnology being part of the society they are going to enter, I am reminded of Montessori’s quote in Childhood to Adolescence when she says, “…man must raise himself to a state that is higher than his natural state and the land-child must see that society is in a state of ascent from nature in which he, as a civilised and religious man must play his part.” She also says “But the thing that is important above everything else is that the adolescent should have a life of activity and variety.” I think that adolescents not finding ‘real’ activity and variety resort to using their devices and no matter how many discussions they and we have about the use of technology, they do not have a full life that supports ‘real’ work that is developmentally joyful instead. Montessori says this too - “The environment must make the free choice of occupation easy, and therefore eliminate the waste of time and energy in following vague and uncertain preferences.”

I think these are important points for consideration. If we push for traditional systems to be overhauled, do we have the courage to overhaul our own Montessori school systems and meet the needs of adolescents who need time away from family? Why do we come up with alternatives like camping and limited time away and not give them the whole thing with residential life in our schools?

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Tom Brown's avatar

Thanks for quoting me, Andrew! I support a lot of what you are saying here, but I want to push back a little, and I am interested in your response.

I think it is fair to say that phones aren't the single cause of the adolescent mental health crisis. I agree that Haidt overstates the research and is profiting off of moral panic. But I'm not sure it's fair to just supplant one single cause with another. Although the evidence doesn't show that phones and social media are the sole or main driver of the adolescent mental health crisis, they are surely playing a role. I also think his book has helped raise awareness of the issues with phone use in childhood/adolescence and has given schools/parents some language to tackle these issues in their homes/communities. The issue lies with schools/parents that then take this to the extreme and implement authoritarian measures of controlling tech/phone use.

I also think you go a little far with your dismissal of Andrew Haidt. I broadly agree with the ideas in his book - children need more free play, more autonomy, and less screen time. That we "overprotect children in the real world and underprotect them in the virtual world". His recommendations also seem common sense to me as a parent and teacher:

"Give children far more time playing with other children. This play should ideally be outdoors, in mixed age groups, with little or no adult supervision.

Look for more ways to embed children in stable real-world communities. Online networks are not nearly as binding or satisfying.

Don’t give a smartphone as the first phone. Give a phone or watch that is specialized for communication, not for internet-based apps.

Don’t give a smartphone until high school. This is easy to do, if many of your child’s friends’ parents are doing the same thing.

Delay the opening of accounts on nearly all social media platforms until the beginning of high school (at least)."

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