Hey friends,
Meta is on trial.
Today, let’s judge the case for ourselves: Are social media platforms intentionally designed to be dangerous products that harm our kids?
And if so, what should we do about it?
In today’s newsletter:
How Jonathan Haidt summarized the case against Meta
The most surprising thing about the evidence
3 ways parents can respond accordingly
Grab your gavels. Let’s dive in. 🧑⚖
Last week, I shared Meta's Internal Research with you, and I imagine the response was mostly, “That’s a lot to read through. Can you summarize?”
I’ll do you one better.
How about a summary of a summary?
Jonathan Haidt and Zachary Rausch recently shared a Substack titled The Case Against Social Media: Seven Lines of Evidence. It’s a summary of the full essay they wrote for the World Happiness Report, in which they laid out seven lines of evidence that reveal social media’s harm on kids.
It’s worth the full read, but here’s my SparkNotes version:
Gen-Z “Victims” Statements: The overwhelming number of Gen-Z surveyed reported evidence of cyberbullying, sleep deprivation, sexual exploitation, sexual advances, and diminished confidence thanks to social media.
Adult “Eyewitness” Testimonies: An internal Meta survey reported that over 85% of clinicians think social media can be addictive. Additionally, parents and teachers report that social media affects moods, self-esteem, academic performance,
Research-Based Evidence: The article lists four types of studies: Cross-sectional, Longitudinal, Randomized Control Trials, and Natural Experiments.
Heavy users are 2.65x more likely to meet the criteria for depression
Heavy use predicts later increases in anxiety and depression
Cutting social media reduces those symptoms within two weeks
As high-speed internet expanded into new regions, teen mental health declined
The Most Surprising Part
Does it strike you as odd that none of this data is surprising?
There is overwhelming evidence of explicit content, unsolicited contact, and mental health deterioration, but my first thought reading all that is, "Yeah, that makes sense."
So the most surprising part is that, after all this evidence, we're still so prone to do nothing about it.
Why is that?
I think it comes down to three things:
There's real social pressure to give our kids social media. Other kids have it. Your kid knows it. You know it.
This is genuinely new territory. There's no parenting playbook for a product that didn't exist a generation ago.
We still believe moderation is actually possible. We’re trying to teach moderation in an environment that is designed to override it.
I've felt all three of those so I'm not going to pretend any of this is easy. But parents just like you are out there figuring it out together.
Three trends I see among proactive parents
Like I said, none of us inherited a playbook for this. A lot of us are the first wave of parents with digitally native kids.
No one taught us how to do this.
But here's what I see proactive parents doing that might be worth a shot.
1 | They're delaying smartphones.
They're not handing over a smartphone until high school.
They start with something simpler to teach them responsibility and expectations. You can use a watch or a dumb phone. Every step of the way, introduce new pieces of technology with guardrails.
Which leads to my next point.
2 | They're okay with being the "strict" parent.
They’ve embraced being different and to accept what this data actually reveals.
You will parent differently than others no matter what. Other kids will have phones first. While you should never stick your nose up at others' parenting decisions, you have to be confident in your own decision-making as a parent.
Make peace with parenting differently.
3 | They keep the conversation going.
They treat social media like the car keys.
When their kids turn 16, they don't just hand them over. They set rules, expectations, and give their kids the full picture: the limits, the dangers, the why behind all of it.
With social media, we should do the same.
Take your kid for ice cream and have a conversation about social media. They don't want a full data-driven approach with surveys and charts, but whether they know it or not, they do want your wisdom here.
And don't just talk about this once: create an ongoing dialogue.
Create space for your kids to talk to you whenever they run into the evil things online. Delaying smartphones and setting clear boundaries are great first steps, but an ongoing dialogue is how you give them what they need to handle what they'll find online.
And someday, you'll be ready to “hand them the car keys.”
Need help starting that conversation with your kid? Check out our Practical Parenting Screen Time Course.
Last weekend, I had the chance to join a men’s retreat with my church.
Played a lot of pickleball. 🏓
We also took time to practice silence and solitude. Came back feeling refreshed.
When’s the last time you unplugged?
— Ian
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