This week on Firing Line with Margaret Hoover she interviewed psychologist Jonathan Haidt about the great harm that social media and smart phones have done to adolescents since the development of social media platforms, front facing phones, and more. They also look at some of the platforms out there, in particular, TikTok. This conversation makes it clear why there is a problem, despite the protests of adults that they use these responsibly (but many don't, and the platforms are pretty much free to act irresponsibly with no consequences because of laws that protect these providers.)

There is a transcript with the program that broadcasts on the link above. Here is the start of it:

HOOVER: We’ve known each other for several years, and I have followed your work for many years. You are out with a brand new book, “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.” What is the great rewiring?

HAIDT: The great rewiring refers to a five year period, an extraordinary five year period where the nature of life for adolescence changed radically, more than it ever has. In 2010, adolescents had flip phones. They had no, most did not have high speed internet. They had, did not have unlimited data plans. They did not have Instagram. They did not have front facing cameras. Over the next five years, by 2015, most American teens have a smartphone with a front-facing camera, high speed internet. They have an Instagram account or other social media accounts, Snapchat, a bunch of other ones. And now, in 2015, it’s possible to spend almost every waking hour online and many do.

And so my argument in the book is that all of a sudden, boom, in the blink of an eye, childhood became about sitting down and looking at a screen,hour after hour, year after year. And that, I believe, is the major reason why rates of mental illness go skyrocketing around 2012, 2013.

HOOVER: In your book and in your talks, you zero in on three specific dates: 2007 when the iPhone is introduced, 2010 when the first front-facing camera is introduced to the iPhone, and 2012 when Facebook acquires Instagram.

HAIDT: That’s right.

HOOVER: The internet had been around for more than a decade beforehand. And people were using it. So why is it that these developments were so significant?

HAIDT: Yeah. I was born in 1963. I remember the first day someone showed me a web browser. And, you know, it was like God came to Earth and said, do you want unlimited knowledge? Here you go. It was incredible. And all of us adults, we thought, ‘Wow, look what it’s doing for the world. Look what it’s doing for democracy. It’s going to knock down dictators.’ We were all very optimistic about the World Wide Web. In 2009 Twitter invents the retweet button. Facebook copies it with the share with the share button. Facebook puts on the Like button. Everybody copies it. And so before then, social media was called social networking systems, SNS. You connect to people. After then it’s called a social media platform. You stand on it to perform at others and you’re desperately fighting for attention. You’re trying to be noticed. You’re trying to go viral. So the millennials were basically through puberty by the time this great rewiring happens.

That’s why they’re okay, I believe. The definition of Gen Z, I would say in it, you know, the definition of Gen-Z, is that they went through puberty on super viral social media, on a smartphone in their pocket, that was giving them notifications and calling them away from whatever they were doing, calling them away from people, calling them away from their friends. You can see them sitting in a lunchroom next to each other, each on their phone. That is not a way that a human being can grow up. And that all happened between 2010 and 2015.

I broke up the paragraphs a little just so they're easier to read.