Every time I write about smartphones taking a toll on adolescents, I get tut-tutted by critics accusing me of promoting moral panic. That’s just silly. I am not here to debate whether phones have contributed to an increase in anxiety, depression or low self-esteem among minors.
Plenty of experts are studying that, and they are getting plenty of conflicting results . But I am here to tell you that if you are raising a young teenager, you must know in your bones that worrying about smartphones and social media is not some irrational, “Reefer Madness”-style reaction to change. It’s as plain as the noses on our children’s faces — which, by the way, are constantly buried in their phones.
Find me a parent who does not regularly battle with their child about putting away the smartphone — at the dinner table, with friends, in the car, on the sidewalk, at the beach, at the mall, on their bicycles — and I will find you a parent who is deployed, detached or dead. Let’s be honest: Our children are addicted . It’s very difficult to control our kids’ smartphone use outside school, but there’s no reason we can’t control their smartphone use during school.
In fact, educators all over the world are coming around to that point of view. Some schools use lockers to store the phones; others use pouches that lock until they are tapped against a magnetic device at the schoolhouse door. In a recent Times opinion essay, Los Angeles Board of Education member Nick Melvoin call.