Social media might soon come with a warning label, just like cigarettes. Across the globe there’s a growing unease about what social media might be doing to especially young people’s mental health. The United States is considering outlawing data-based algorithms for those under sixteen years old. The United Kingdom has toyed with raising the age of access to platforms like Facebook from thirteen to sixteen. Australia is currently considering legislation to restrict social media account to those sixteen years or older.
A key influence in this shift in public opinion is The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness (2024) by Jonathan Haidt. Haidt makes no apologies for trying to stir a groundswell of awareness to sway policymakers —and it seems to be working. The Anxious Generation, together with Haidt’s previous book, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure (2018), are very relevant to parents and others ministering to the next generation. Recently, the principal at my daughter’s school gave a brief review of the book in her monthly update, and virtually pleaded with every parent to read it as soon as possible.
A Youth Mental Health Epidemic
The basic premise is that we’re in the midst of a youth mental health epidemic. The digital world that Gen Zs and Alphas have been exposed to, often from a young age, can be pretty toxic, and the rest of us have not prepared them for it well. Haidt points to statistical patterns across multiple nations that show something has gone wrong.
He argues that on the one hand, Gen Z have been over-protected from the real world, while on the other hand, they have been under-protected in the digital world. He outlines which forces seem to have been the most influential, and how this has played out in males and females differently. Finally, he makes some suggestions about what parents, schools, and policy makers might be able to do about turning the tide.
Like all sociological works, there’s probably more going on than his central argument. Still, I find Haidt’s case persuasive. I also appreciate that he avoids unnecessary alarmism, or a reactionary stance towards technology. At the very least, it’s an excellent conversation starter.
Important Differences in Digital Technologies
It is important that we take the time to understand these technologies and the impacts they can have on us and those we minister to. This means not being overly simplistic and generalised. The Anxious Generation is clear on the diversity of digital technologies. As Haidt writes:
We need to develop a more nuanced mental map of the digital landscape. Social media is not synonymous with the internet, smartphones are not equivalent to desktop computers or laptops, Pac-Man is not World of Warcraft, and the 2006 version of Facebook is not the 2024 version of TikTok. (The Anxious Generation, p. 138)
He argues that developments in smartphone hardware made a difference to how they were used, and so the effects they had on young users. The addition of the front-facing camera, for example, which encouraged self-portraits (The Anxious Generation, p. 35). Building on this observation, it’s helpful to realise that one of the key problems with social media is the toxicity of comparison—especially for girls.
Changes within social media platforms themselves also make a big difference, as we move increasingly from one-to-one modes of communication to using these apps as platforms of performance. Or consider how one study found that 74% of Gen Zs use TikTok as a search engine, not just a scrolling entertainment feed. The social media landscape is neither flat nor static.
We won’t be able to be effective disciple-makers if we treat technology as a one-size-fits-all “problem with young people these days”. Not least because if you begin to criticise something you clearly don’t understand, it’ll be hard to gain much traction with the people who do.
But I’m also finding most young people already have a sense that there’s something off about social media. When I asked a few of our youth about the possibility of losing their social media until they turned sixteen, they were surprisingly okay with it—perhaps even a little bit relieved. If adults who are invested in their discipleship can give language to their experiences and categories that resonate with their anxieties, we help them in their quest for better alternatives.
A Plausible Counter-Community
The most common objection to simply unplugging from Instagram is that it’s social suicide. Even when a teenager is totally dissatisfied with their doomscrolling habits, their fear of missing out can be enough to keep them plugged in. But what if we could ensure they weren’t missing out?
It seems to me that churches are uniquely placed to be counter-communities—to enable plausible alternative ways of life. What if some church families all adopted a smart phone covenant, agreeing to give only ‘dumb phones’ to their pre-teens and setting strong social media boundaries for their older kids? What if a group of sixteen-year-olds all agreed to only use Instagram for thirty minutes each day and turn their phones off at 8pm? It wouldn’t be easy. And there would be the risk of it leading to pride and judgmentalism. But if adopted in the right spirit, it would make proactive change in this area seem a little less utterly impossible. Given how stuck we seem to feel in the social media status quo, perhaps that’s enough.
It will interesting to see how future historians evaluate The Anxious Generation. Perhaps it will spark a cultural landslide as people unplug in unprecedented numbers and legislation finally catches up with the dark side of the digital revolution. Or maybe it will be seen as just one of many expressions of social media suspicion in the mid-2020s. We’ll see.
As a youth minister, I found The Anxious Generation, along with the Substack of supporting material, compelling, helpful and strangely hopeful. It helped me better understand the people I’m trying to serve, the digital world they’re living in, and their dissatisfaction with it. And I’ve now got more conviction about advice to give them.
