Smartphones are bad for kids – we don’t need to call on scientific data to know it

Jonathan Haidt's claims about the effects of devices on children's wellbeing have been criticised for lacking proof, but they tell us what we need to know

Jonathan Haidt is a man with a mission. In his day job, he's a professor of ethics at New York University's Stern School of Business. But outside academia, he's a compelling campaigner. His mission: to alert us to the harms that social media and modern parenting are doing to our children. And his latest book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, pulls no punches. It is, said the New York Times, erudite, engaging, combative, crusading", which possibly explains why it has been on the newspaper's nonfiction bestseller list for 14 weeks (it is now at No 2).

Haidt writes of a tidal wave" of increases in mental illness and distress beginning around 2012. Young adolescent girls are hit hardest, but boys are in pain, too, as are older teens. He sees two factors that have caused this. The first is the decline of play-based childhood caused by overanxious parenting, which allows children fewer opportunities for unsupervised play and restricts their movement. This translates into low-risk childhoods in which kids don't have the opportunity to make mistakes and learn from them. The second factor is the ubiquity of smartphones and the social media apps that thrive upon them. The result is the great rewiring of childhood" of his book's subtitle and an epidemic of mental illness and distress.