#1931 The Four Foundational Harms

In our last couple +1s, we’ve been exploring some wisdom from the the week I recently spent hanging out with Jonathan Haidt immersed in 1,000+ pages of wisdom from his last three books.

As you may recall, we talked about cuckoo birds.

Crazy creatures, eh?

Then we talked about the things our cuckoo smartphones might be pushing out of our lives.

I promised to share the specific things Jonathan talks about in The Anxious Generation.

He calls them “The Four Foundational Harms.”

Here’s how he frames it up: “In fact, smartphones and other digital devices bring so many interesting experiences to children and adolescents that they cause a serious problem: They reduce interest in all non-screen based forms of experience. Smartphones are like the cuckoo bird, which lays its eggs in other birds’ nests. The cuckoo egg hatches before the others, and the cuckoo hatchling promptly pushes the other eggs out of the nest in order to commandeer all of the food brought by the unsuspecting mother.”

He continues by saying: “Similarly, when a smartphone, tablet, or video game console lands in a child’s life, it will push out most other activities, at least partially. The child will spend many hours each day sitting enthralled and motionless (except for one finger) while ignoring everything beyond the screen. (Of course, the same might be true of the parents, as the family sits ‘alone together.’)”

And, he says: “Are screen-based experiences less valuable than real-life flesh-and-blood experiences? When we’re talking about children whose brains evolved to expect certain kinds of experiences at certain ages, yes. A resounding yes.”

I never knew that about cuckoo birds.

Fascinating, eh?

😲 🤯

And...

What a frightening metaphor for the “opportunity costs” of our kids spending most of their waking lives staring at their phones.

In a chapter called “The Four Foundational Harms,” Jonathan walks us through what kids lose when they spend as much time as they do immersed in the virtual worlds of their phones— which, for the record, for teens aged 13 to 18, is close to 50 hours per week.

As CRAZY as 50 hours per week is, even THAT is an “underestimation” as “a third of teens say they are on one of the major social media sites ‘almost constantly.’”

Here’s a SUPER quick look at “The Four Foundational Harms”:

HARM #1: SOCIAL DEPRIVATION. Jonathan tells us: “Children need a lot of time to play with each other face to face, to foster social development.” One of themes he comes back to MOST OFTEN is the importance of in-person “free play.” It’s REALLY (!) important.

Later he asks: Isn’t connecting on Instagram, Snapchat and online video games “just as good? No. As Jean Twenge has shown, teens who spend more time using social media are more likely to suffer from depression, anxiety, and other disorders.”

HARM #2: SLEEP DEPRIVATION. Jonathan tells us: “Sleep-deprived teens cannot concentrate, focus, or remember as well as teens who get sufficient sleep.”

So, how much do they need? “Teens need more sleep than adults—at least nine hours a night for preteens and eight hours a night for teens.”

HARM #3: ATTENTION FRAGMENTATION. “This never-ending stream of interruptions—this constant fragmentation of attention—takes a toll on adolescents’ ability to think and may leave permanent marks in their rapidly reconfiguring brains.”

Does being a heavy user of smartphones and video games cause ADHD? “It appears so.”

HARM #4: ADDICTION. Jonathan walks us through the behavioral design hacks that social media sites use to get us “hooked.”

He references Johann Hari’s Stolen Focus (see Notes) and tells us “The creators of these apps use every trick in the psychologists’ tool kit to hook users as deeply as slot machines hook gamblers.”

Check out our Notes on Irresistible and The Scarcity Brain for more. And, of course, watch The Social Dilemma if you haven’t yet!

That’s Today’s +1.

Remember the cuckoo birds.

And their Four Foundational Harms.

Every time YOU pick up your smartphone…

TODAY.