This shift in the social landscape of childhood and adolescence, often referred to as the “Great Rewiring of Childhood,” has had a significant impact on the mental health of Gen Z. As their social lives have increasingly moved online through the constant access to social media, video gaming, and other internet activities, the first generation of teens in the United States to go through adolescence with this level of connectivity has become more anxious, depressed, and suicidal than any generation recorded before them. This troubling trend is not limited to the US; studies across Canada, the UK, and the Nordic states have reported similar findings, suggesting that this is a global phenomenon.
While other factors, such as anxiety surrounding global issues like climate change, may also contribute to the mental health outcomes of Gen Z, the ubiquity of smartphone usage and the corresponding changes in social dynamics appear to be the primary drivers behind this tidal wave of mental illness. As we grapple with the implications of this crisis, it’s clear that a deeper understanding of the complex interplay between technology, social interaction, and adolescent development is needed to develop effective strategies for supporting the mental health of our youth.
Play-based childhoods, not phone-based childhoods, promote healthy development
Why has the introduction of the smartphone been so detrimental to children’s and adolescents’ mental health? The answer may lie not just in what the smartphone gives them access to – social media, photo filters, addictive games, and more – but in what time spent on a smartphone takes away from them. Specifically, the introduction of the smartphone has eroded the traditional play-based childhood, with far-reaching consequences for the mental well-being of Generation Z.
Humans have a longer childhood than any other mammal, and there’s a good reason for this. The slower pace of human development allows the brain to undergo a critical process of synaptic pruning, where the connections that are used frequently are strengthened while those that are used rarely fade away. This process of pattern and habit formation is evolutionarily designed to occur through three key areas: free play, attunement, and social learning. Smartphones have enticed children into a virtual world, where it’s challenging to fully explore these three critical functionalities.
Through unstructured, undirected play, children learn to cooperate with each other, assess risks, form friendships, and exercise their imagination. A phone-based childhood, in contrast, is necessarily structured – the content and interactions have been designed by teams of experts. This structured virtual environment can’t offer the same developmental opportunities as the physical world of free play.
Attunement, or the art of connecting with others, is another crucial aspect of child development. From a young age, children learn to read emotional cues, take turns, and build social bonds through synchronous interactions with their caregivers and peers. These interactions are vital for developing emotional self-regulation and social skills. By 2014, a third of preteen girls reported spending roughly 20 hours a week on social media, potentially losing valuable opportunities for attunement.
Social learning, the process by which children emulate effective behaviors and social strategies from role models, is also impacted by the rise of smartphones and social media. While social media doesn’t take away children’s and teens’ opportunities for social learning, it turbocharges them. Children can now identify behaviors to emulate through metric systems, such as the number of likes and engagement on posts. But the role models they choose to emulate may display behaviors or embody values that are inappropriate, or that set impossible standards for children to live up to rather than organically identifying good role models in their communities.
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