Parents saying no to smartphones

Olivia Reingold, Free Press -  A growing body of research shows that smartphones are at least partly to blame for skyrocketing rates of teenage anxiety and depression. As author Jonathan Haidt, reporting on a recent worldwide study on smartphone use among nearly 28,000 youths, put it: “The younger the age of getting the first smartphone, the worse the mental health the young adult reports today.”

For years, the risks have been clear as day among Silicon Valley’s brightest minds, including Bill Gates and Google’s Sundar Pichai, who famously kept smartphones away from their own kids, and Steve Jobs, who limited his children’s screen time altogether. But it has taken the Covid-19 pandemic for ordinary Americans to come to the same conclusion: that their kids had become dependent on their phones, and their school work suffered as a result. This year, an increasing number of school districts—in Ohio, Maryland, Colorado, and other states—have banned the devices in class. And in July, the state of Florida will enforce a new phone fatwa, barring their use during instructional time at all public schools.