Kids Need “The Wind” –
Smartphones, Resilience, and The Next Generation

“The smartphone kids are not all right.”
 
That is the headline that first grabbed my attention seven months ago and sent me on a path from “Mildly Concerned Mom,” to “Mom on a Mission,” when it comes to kids and smartphones. I pre-ordered The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt and read it cover to cover as fast as I could. As a mom of two kids (currently 6 and 8 years old), my kids will not be getting smartphones until they are at least the end of 8th grade. Piece of cake. I am sure parents of adolescents are rolling their eyes right about now.
 

There are so many threads on this topic, but two that stick out to me are 1) content and 2) stunting development. I think we can all agree that it is impossible to monitor everything a kid does on their smartphone. When I was growing up, TVs and movies were the only forms of screentime that existed, and both were monitored by ratings. To this day, children under 17 can’t get into a Rated R movie unless accompanied by an adult over 21 or 25. Unfortunately, smartphones allow kids to see Rated R and Rated X content for hours every day with no such rating system and no adult by their side.
 

Smartphones also stunt the development of mental toughness and resilience because time spent scrolling is time not spent out in the real world. There was one passage in the book about an experiment in the 1980s to create a fully enclosed bubble for life to survive in outer space. The bubble contained water, trees, animals and more in a self-contained ecosystem. However, when the trees got close to full-grown height, they unexpectedly fell over.
 
“The designers had not realized that young trees need wind to grow properly. When the wind blows, it bends the tree, which tugs at the roots […] in response, the root system expands to provide a firmer anchor.” The Anxious Generation
 

Who knew? Trees must be tested while they are growing and endure some hardship to mature into strong healthy trees that can stand the test of time. What a simple concept that applies directly to kids. A concept we would never think about because how could “wind” ever be removed from the environment, yet we have removed “wind” from our kids’ childhoods when they have a smartphone glued to their hip.
 

I started writing this with the intent to encourage parents to wait until high school to give their kids smartphones and make do with basic watches or flip phones up through middle school. However, as I got writing, I realized delaying smartphone use for kids is only part of the story. The other part is to teach the next generation of kids to have unbounded determination and resilience to weather all of life’s storms. And I think everyone can get on board with that.
 

If you are interested in this topic, please join the Westwood School Engagement Committee (SEC)’s Conversation with Caregiver series this fall. We invite you to read Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation and join us for a discussion on October 24 at 6:30pm in the Professional Development Room in the Central Administration Office.