Teens & Phones: NYU Researcher Advises Best Practices

A social psychologist from NYU's Stern School of Business, visited BSD last week to talk about his most recent book The Anxious Generation. If you were unable to attend the event our Health teacher Megan Feder wanted to share critical points.

Haidt dove into our brain’s reward pathway and specifically the neurotransmitter dopamine. He talked about dopamine's role: when we have success it makes us feel good and tells us to repeat the behavior a lot.

Teenagers are Highly Sensitive to Dopamine Release

We want teenagers to experience slow dopamine release. That’s how we can train teens to work hard, for an extended period, and then be successful in achieving something.

Phone Apps Work Against that Goal

Unfortunately, tech designers have figured out quick dopamine: gambling apps, social media, gamifying education, pornography.

Because our brains work hard to regulate our body to limit fluctuations in Dopamine and the related sensations, these high dopamine activities quickly become compulsive behaviors. When we are constantly receiving these high amounts of quick dopamine the rest of life seems boring. Anyone hear your teen’s complaining that routine activities are “boring”?

“We've unfortunately gamified many aspects of life for young people and this has harmful effects on their mental wellbeing,” says Haidt.

Safe-as-Necessary NOT Safe-as-Possible

Haidt states that we have “over protected in the real world and under protected online." When we over protect in the real world it creates fragility and leads to a lack of resiliency skills.

Safetyism, he says, refers to safety above everything, but his suggestion is that we want kids to be safe-as-necessary not safe-as-possible. We want kids to learn how to assess risk and make decisions for themselves. 

He referred to a resource that will help parents scaffold independence for their kids. Working with Parent Map, Bellevue School's Foundation has created resources for families. To access more resources from The Anxious Generation visit https://www.parentmap.com/antidote-anxious-generation-resources.

Four Proposals to Support Teens

In summary, Jonathan has four proposals for us to consider as a society. His advises, “if we can collectively agree on these proposals then we can make a large change together.  Parents and teachers won't feel so isolated as they combat teen addiction to phones. 

1. No smart phone before high school
2. No social media until 16
3. Phone free schools
4. More independence and free play

Tech Rules:

• No phone in the bedroom
• No phone or technology when first waking up. Make a rule to eat breakfast first, and then teens can look at their phone/computer.

As always thank you for your time—Megan Feder