CAPT Presentation

What is happenig in the real world?

Childhood And The Virtual World

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Dr. Jessica Maliphant Senior Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist Published Sep 19, 2024

Let to their own devices:

Parenting in a world of screens

Section I

The world has changed dramatically over recent decades with tech advances bringing many advantages, but many of us have growing concerns about how much time young people are spending on screens. Though we are beginning to think carefully about what the implications might be for our children’s development, many parents feel uncertain how to navigate what is undeniably an extremely difficult time to be a parent.

The child and the world

Those of us who are old enough not to have grown up surrounded by technology will remember that the idea of being left to your own devices as a child meant you had to either put up with being bored or come up with something to do. Parents often encouraged their children to get out of the house and so days were generally spent with friends, careering around on bikes, climbing trees, playing football, or simply hanging around in groups. We learnt a lot in these experiences – how to get on with each other, overcome disputes and invent games and stories. .

'Tech-free' childhoods of the past

Modern life parenting challenges

The ‘tech-free’ nature of childhoods past is a starkly different picture to the experience of most of our children now. Many children and young people are now spending upwards of four hours a day on screens. It feels important to me that we recognise that the reason for this has a lot to do with radical changes to our society. The wider family network has become increasingly fragmented, with the contemporary nuclear family often having to manage in isolation, at odds with the wisdom that it takes a village to raise a child. It’s not easy to raise a family without a strong network. On top of this, parents are inundated with news stories warning of the risk of abduction and abuse threatening their children in the community. In this context, of course we’d allow our children to spend time online, left to their own (tech) devices. But we are beginning to see that the dangers we feared were outdoors are now rife in the online world where tech companies have domineered unregulated, and children have been left vulnerable. We know that online platforms (such as Instagram, YouTube and TikTok) provide content purposefully designed to be as addictive as possible and which can easily lead young people into rabbit burrows of misinformation about topics such as self-harm, eating disorders and toxic masculinity. These platforms are designed to keep people engaged for as long as possible, hooked on a world that portrays unrealistic lives of people who always appear to be ‘living their best life’, exacerbating mental health difficulties and supporting the old adage, ‘Comparison is the thief of joy’.

What the research tell us?

Learning

Comunity

Changing

So... What can we do as parents?

Boundaries

Communication

Modeling

Activities

Parents have been put in a double bind where they are unhappy with the amount and type of screentime their children are accessing but where they fear peer exclusion if they don’t allow their children to do the same as others. Making changes to our own and our children’s screentime is hard to do alone, and in those moments of setting and holding boundaries, we may not be our child’s favourite person. But we just need to remind ourselves that this is one of those tricky parenting areas, where we do things to protect them and to support their optimal development.

A stolen childhood

+info

Twenge, J. M., & Campbell, W. K. (2018). Associations between screen time and lower psychological well-being among children and adolescents: Evidence from a population-based study. Preventive Medicine Reports, 12, 271-283.

Smartphone-Free Childhood Movement

King’s College London. (2023, August 30). Teens with problematic smartphone use are twice as likely to have anxiety—and many are eager to cut down.

Haidt, J. and Rausch, Z. (2024) ‘The Youth Rebellion Is Growing: Seven Gen Z Leaders Working to Reduce the Harms Caused by the Phone-Based Childhood’

Haidt, J. (2024). The anxious generation: how the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness. London: Allen Lane.

References

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Haidt, J. (2024).

how the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness

Section II

The anxious genaration:

Social medias

The decline of play-based childhood

Haidt discusses how the proliferation of smartphones and social media has reconfigured childhood, leading to isolation and mental health issues. Beginning in the early 2010s, he observes that widespread use of social media correlates with rises in depression, anxiety, and self-harm among adolescents. Girls, in particular, face heightened risks, including social comparison and cyberbullying, while boys often retreat into gaming and online environments, impacting their real-world relationships and social development.

Smartphones

Internet

Personal Computer

Colour TV

Radio

1983

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1925

“A play-based childhood is one in which kids spend the majority of their free time playing with friends in the real world as I defined it in the introduction: embodied, synchronous, one-to-one or one-to-several, and in groups or communities where there is some cost to join or leave so people invest in relationships”

Loss of unstructured, play-based learning

Haidt argues that free play, which traditionally encouraged creativity, resilience, and social skills, has been eroded by both increased parental supervision and children’s shift toward virtual forms of play. He draws on research demonstrating that unsupervised, exploratory play is essential for building competencies in problem-solving, social interaction, and risk assessment, all of which are undermined in a "phone-based" environment.

Societal and Educational Reform

Impact of "Phone-Based" Childhood on Family Dynamics

Boys and Social Withdrawal

Impact on Girls vs. Boys

“When some adolescents start spending the majority of their waking hours on their phones (and other screens), sitting alone watching YouTube videos on auto-play or scrolling through bottomless feeds on Instagram, TikTok, and other apps. These interactions generally have the contrasting features of the virtual world: disembodied, asynchronous, one-to-many, and done either alone or in virtual groups that are easy to join and easy to leave.”

Spiritual and Social Degradation

The rise of the phone based Childhood:

Four basic harms

Haidt, J. (2024). The anxious generation: how the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness

Reference

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Section III

The data

Anxiety Prevalence by Age

Mental Ilness Among College Students

Self-Harm Episodes, U.K. Teens

Major Depression Among Teens

Boys/Girls

Communication Technology Adoption

Suicidal Rates for Young Adolescents

Emergency Room Visits for Self-Harm

Thank you!

Perhaps most importantly, remember that it’s ok to change your mind. We are all learning more and more about the positives and negatives of the online world and, as we learn more, we are entitled to change our minds in order to protect our children. Many years ago, a wise friend told me a phrase that I think has been adapted from something the amazing Maya Angelou said which is, ‘You do what you do when you know what you know. When you know better, you do better’. I think we can all find solace in this advice especially when it comes to working out what technology our children should have access to.

There are lots of helpful resources to support healthy screen habits online (irony acknowledged!). A good place to start could be Childnet International.You may also find it helpful to join the Smartphone Free Childhood movement for peer support

Though it remains important to recognise that some time online can be positive, for example for marginalised groups that may find solace or support online, there is growing evidence of the harm being caused to many young people with a dramatic rise in adolescent depression and anxiety increasingly being linked to excessive screen use[1]. Current research is also showing that many young people themselves are also concerned about their screen use and are keen to find ways to limit their use[2]. Papaya Parents and Nip in the Bud charity recently created a powerful video that advocates for delayed access to smartphones and social media, based on vulnerabilities to online harms and influences during the developmental years of childhood and adolescence. Videos created by Dove, about selfies, self-esteem, and body appearance (trigger warning for content about disordered eating), and Vodaphone in collaboration with NSPCC, about toxic masculinity, give further illustrations of the potential harms these platforms pose. In his new book exploring the effects of screens on childhood, ‘The Anxious Generation’, Jonathan Haidt draws our attention to the ‘opportunity cost’ of so many hours lost to screens: all those hours on screens reduce the time that children and young people could spend on other pursuits, and this has a negative impact on many areas including academic attainment, sleep, socialisation, mental health and attention. And, even when not looking at their devices, the addictive pull of so many screen-based activities result in children and young people thinking about their screen-based worlds even when spending time doing things offline.

It is really helpful to get kids involved in a regular pursuit that happens offline and is physically embodied. This could be anything based in sports, drama, art, or any group that gets young people doing things together. Get them passionate about something offline that makes them feel good.

Haidt outlines how smartphones contribute to social deprivation, sleep disruption, attention fragmentation, and addiction. Smartphones have minimized face-to-face interactions crucial for social development, especially during formative years. Sleep deprivation worsens with phone use, disrupting natural sleep cycles, while endless notifications fragment attention and foster dependency on digital interaction, fueling addictive behaviours.

Through interviews with parents, Haidt illustrates how family life often becomes centered on controlling screen time, leading to conflicts and a sense of helplessness. Parents report that even brief breaks from digital engagement, such as summer camps without phones, tend to improve their children’s moods and well-being, highlighting the deep effect of technology on daily life and family cohesion.

Haidt discusses how social media’s effects are notably harsher on girls. Platforms like Instagram and TikTok amplify social comparison and cyberbullying, leading to more severe psychological impacts on girls, including increased rates of self-harm and body image issues. While boys are also affected, they tend to experience a different set of challenges, often related to gaming and isolation rather than direct social media pressures.

Hard as it is for many of us, we can support screen-free time by role modelling ourselves. Make sure you have dedicated times with family where you do not have your phone in reach and where your attention is dedicated to those you’re with. Only when we model this ourselves can we expect our children to do it too.

Just because you gave one of your children a phone at a certain age doesn’t mean that you have to do the same thing for their younger sibling. Similarly, if you hadn’t previously put in screentime limits and your teen has become used to being online for as long as they like, it’s ok to talk to them and explain that you have learnt more about the impact this can have and have subsequently decided to put screentime limits in place.

Decisions around screens can be much easier when parents support each other. It can be really helpful to explore other parents’ boundaries around tech. Perhaps find one or two families among your child’s friendship group where they are keen to adopt similar approaches to yours. This helps to ensure that your child doesn’t feel ostracised or the only one ‘without’. You can openly share that you have talked with ‘so and so’s parents’ and you are all taking similar approaches to make sure your child isn’t left behind or the only one with different rules and boundaries.

The first step is to talk to our children and adolescents about the issues surrounding smartphone use, acknowledging the pros and cons and learning about what they are drawn to. It’s important that our children know we are interested in what interests them and that we do not make decisions on screentime without understanding where they are coming from. This also signals to them that it is ok to share any worries or concerns they might have for themselves, around these complex areas – for now or in the future.

When we come to setting boundaries around screentime, apps and social media, we can explain that the reasons for our decisions are based on learning more about the implications of high screentime-use and are underpinned by our focus on supporting their development.

This chapter addresses the loss of a sense of meaning or “spiritual elevation,” suggesting that screen time fosters superficial interactions that replace real-life experiences with virtual ones, affecting both teens and adults alike.

Haidt proposes several structural changes to reverse this trend, including phone-free school policies, delaying access to smartphones and social media until adolescence, and encouraging environments that support independent outdoor play. He suggests that families, schools, and policymakers need to collaborate on strategies that reintroduce independence and mitigate the excessive digital influence on children’s lives.

You are not alone in this challenge; as collectives of parents we can help to change the status quo. In the words of CS Lewis, highlighted in the A stolen childhood video, “You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending”.

For boys, phone-based interaction tends to fuel different patterns of disengagement, often seen in decreased academic engagement and increased gaming addiction, which can limit their face-to-face social skills and long-term social confidence.