Tweens and screens: how smartphones could be making our children sad

A mental health emergency is hitting young people globally because social media has 'rewired' their brains - and not for the better - argues social psychologist and author Jonathan Haidt. If so, can the damage be undone, asks Helen Coffey

My sister, who works at a specialist college, was recently telling me that phones are the number one issue that she and her colleagues are struggling with. Students have them out at all times, clutched in their hands like shiny, black security blankets. Her class will message each other from across the room during lessons, or scroll social media, or listen to music; meanwhile, she’s desperately trying to claw their attention back and get them to engage with the real world.

Screens and teens: it’s a combination that’s become increasingly tricky to navigate over the last decade. The switch from what I think of as “analogue” phones – those with buttons but no internet – to smartphones, compounded by an upsurge in digital living during pandemic lockdowns, has resulted in 46 percent of adolescents reporting they are online “almost constantly”. Some 97 percent of children have a smartphone by the age of 12, according to Ofcom data.

In February, new battle lines were drawn in this ongoing war. Government ministers confirmed plans to ban them in schools in England, with the Department for Education (DfE) issuing guidance to help teachers with implementation. Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, said the DfE believed the guidance would “empower” headteachers to exorcise these digital demons, and “would send a clear message about consistency”.

“You go to school, you go to learn, you go to create those friendships, you go to speak to people and socialise and you go to get educated,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “You don’t go to sit on your mobile phone or to send messages while you could actually talk to somebody.”