Adults pissing away their mortal minutes in idle distraction is fine. But children subjecting themselves to a constant stream of idiotic nonsense is downright obscene. In the not so distant past, stimulating a release of endorphins to the detriment or exclusion of other aspects of life was exclusively the domain of the grownup and it was mostly done with drugs. And when the drug in question proved to be harmful, enervating or incapacitating, it was prohibited, especially among children. Why then do social media, which in the hands of children have the same deleterious effects as an addictive substance, get a pass? Why, with the added danger of the child being exploited, misinformed and extorted by individuals and businesses, are these media considered safer than, say, going to the park and playing Frisbee?
The toys and games of the past do not deliver the same chemical surge that digital media do. They require volition and social interaction and active play, the child analog of practice. The child who does not actively play does not learn. It is not so much a matter of what is played as what is learned in play.
Humans live heuristically—“To err is human, to forgive divine,” said Pope. In play, errors are both allowed and forgiven. In play, children learn how to safely win and lose and improve among their peers. They learn how to accept defeat without denial and projection. They learn how to win without killing their opponent and dragging him around the city walls like the overweening Achilles. Play, in effect, civilizes people.
Watching YouTube, Instagram and TikTok videos delivered one after another by an algorithm which ensures that content is homogeneously vapid is not play. It is being enthralled by a spectacle that promises what it cannot deliver, a spectacle that captivates by stimulating expectation and postponing its fulfillment. This sort of content is what I call “antimatter”—matter that is identical in mass but opposite in charge. Antimatter repeatedly subtracts what it proposes to deliver. It is matter that holds out the promise of meaning and breaks that promise over and over again to keep the viewer in a state of agitated anticipation.
Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation, in an interview published in Noema Magazine, attributes the sudden decline in the mental health of children and teens to the advent of smart phones. In the interview, Haidt outlines several stages in this decline: loss of social capital as technology isolates people in their homes; loss of play-based childhood as parents “lock our kids up out of fear of each other”; and the “massive, sudden transformation of childhood between 2010 and 2015 into a phone-based childhood.” He goes on to say that five to ten companies “own our children’s childhood,” and those companies, under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, can’t be sued for making damaging content available to children.
That parents would prefer smart phones and other deleterious media to the minuscule risk that their children might be abducted, molested or hit by a vehicle is senseless. Substituting the learned ability to identify and avoid threats with media that teach children nothing about those threats only increases the likelihood that they will come to harm. Subjecting children to blue light instead of sunlight to ostensibly to keep them safe from criminals only exposes them to the more prevalent criminals who prowl the social media platforms. Allowing children media-driven endorphin binges instead of social or creative play only familiarizes them with the porn, drugs, alcohol and food addictions that we see in so many adults these days. If you really want to pull this country out of addiction and strengthen your communities, take these insidious media out of your children’s hands and minds.