4 smartphone rules parents should follow, according to a social psychologist who has studied the Gen Z mental health crisis

A couple of months ago, my 15-year-old daughter admitted she was addicted to her phone and that she hated it. She deleted TikTok and asked me to buy her a timed lockbox so she could take breaks from her smartphone—and also asked for a flip phone so she could still stay in touch when she was taking time off. I happily obliged. But the pit in my stomach about her being a phone addict—and about how she still struggles daily to stop herself from scrolling and from actually using the lockbox—has not dissolved.

It’s why the gospel of Jonathan Haidt, social psychologist at NYU Stern School of Business and author of The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, resonates so deeply—not only with me, but with the tens of thousands of devotees who have kept his latest book on the New York Times bestseller list for 12 weeks and counting. (Which is not to say he hasn’t faced much pushback, which he has.)

Inspired to get to the bottom of the teen mental illness epidemic, which he says began around 2012, and encouraged by the findings of other social scientists including San Diego State University’s Jean Twenge (author of iGen), he looked toward years of correlational, longitudinal, and truly experimental studies—all kept track of publicly. And the book, in summary, concludes that we as parents have overprotected our children in the real world but have under-protected them online, and that it has to stop in order to nurture the mental health of our kids. 

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