This doesn't end until parents stop giving their kids smartphones

It is so simple. It cannot be overstated how simple it is.

Freddie deBoer this week has an excellent essay about the horrific social media-begotten pathologies plaguing modern children today. As he notes, social media companies are explicitly engineered to ensure you “keep on scrolling,” they are “designed to compel people to use them irresponsibly,” apps like Tik Tok are created with the goal of “keeping people from putting the phone down for awhile” in mind. This has resulted in a generation of children a frighteningly sizable portion of which “like[s] being online more than living their real lives because their online lives serve as an intermediary and distraction from what they don’t like about themselves and their world.”

This is not meant to knock on Freddie, whose insight into the basics of the human condition are as incisive and interesting as ever. It is rather to point out that he, like pretty much everyone else, misses or else ignores the very basic point that this problem is going to exist, and keep getting worse, so long as parents keep giving their kids smartphones. That’s it. That’s the whole ballgame. Take that factor away and the problem pretty much vanishes.

This is not complicated. It is simplicity itself. Most children have smartphones these days, and they are using them en masse to interact with toxic, deleterious social media platforms. This makes them unhappy and unwell. If you take away their smartphones then you’ll see a massive decrease in these maladies. Children will be happier and healthier as a result, not just in relative but in absolute terms. This is not complicated. As Thoreau wrote: We must distinguish the necessary and the real. Why is nobody talking about this more? Why is this not an option that is constantly on the table?

I guess there are a few primary objections to this proposal. One is: “I can’t take my kid’s smartphone away, kids need smartphones these days!” No, they don’t. Children do not need smartphones. There, problem solved. “He’ll be really mad at me if I take his phone away.” He’ll get over it. There, problem solved again. “If I take my kid’s phone away he’ll just find other ways to get on social media and toxic websites.” Well, you’re the parent, so do something about that. Figure it out, genius. I don’t mean to insult you, I just want to call attention to the fact that you’re being willfully stupid. You have authority over your child. Exercise it. You can keep them off social media if you want. One really easy way to do that is to take away the hypercompact, hyperpowered Internet-enabled supercomputer they have in their pockets. Do that and the task will become 99% simpler. Or keep letting them have smartphones and keep wringing your hands about how they’re being ruined by the awful, miserable, poisonous websites you’re letting them access. It is absolutely your choice.

I understand there’s sort of this weird inevitable thinking about this sort of thing. This kind of bizarre fatalism has been going on forever among parents. It used to be more frowned on. There have always been the parents who, say, let their kids drink alcohol unimpeded in the basement rec room, and they say things like, “Well, they’re going to find a way to drink, they might as well do it here, safely.” But these are weirdo parents. Other, more responsible parents distrust them and hold them in a simmering sort of contempt. Parents often think they’re helpless in the face of their children’s often-shallow and shortsighted desires and ambitions. Of course, they’re not. They can just set rules and enforce them. It’s not hard. I’m not saying it’s always pleasant. I’m just saying it’s not hard.

We can stress about this all we want and avoid the basic solution at hand, or we can just admit that the only thing that’s going to solve this crisis is that parents stop proactively giving kids the tools that actively help them ruin themselves. It can happen. It’s not out of reach. Just don’t give your kids smartphones. If they have to have a phone for some reason, give them a dumb flipper that can’t access the Internet. I have one and it’s great. Tell your kids they can be like Zack Morris the Elder. If you want your kid to lead a healthy, normal life like you lead—one where you’re not always, everywhere, constantly, unceasingly, relentlessly looking at a little computer screen wherever you go, everywhere, all the time, nonstop, endlessly, every single place you go—then don’t give them a smartphone. Or give them one and watch them be always on it and unhappy. It is absolutely your choice. Just don’t pretend like you don’t have a choice.