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podcast friday
Aug. 9th, 2024 08:34 amI let out a literal squeal when this appeared in my feed. If Books Could Kill did The Anxious Generation, a.k.a. the book that will destroy your relationship with your adolescent children and/or students if it hasn't already.
The Anxious Generation is by Jonathan Haidt, the author of The Coddling Of the American Mind, and if you happen to suffer from Imposter Syndrome, one look at this man's career should cure you of it quickly. He is, quite straightforwardly, a man who knows fuck-all about jack shit and yet has made a career opining about it anyway. The Anxious Generation should, in theory, be a much easier book for him to write than Coddling, but it is in fact very bad, sloppily researched, and he didn't talk to any kids, teachers, or psychologists in writing it.
The main question of this book is this: Are social media and cellphones bad for kids or nah? He answers, yes. You would think that the answer is yes, because if you've spend any time in a classroom or around kids who have phones, it is self-evidently bad, and that's why we need teachers to no longer instruct our kids in those old-fashioned things called "subject-matter content" or "critical thinking and research skills" and instead work as the full-time cellphone police. Obviously social media is bad and addictive and it's worse for society to have that accessible in our pockets, distracting kids from important things like school and socializing in meatspace and playing outside. Obviously we shouldn't have let that happen. But now that it has, instead of tackling interesting questions like "can we fix social media to make it less addictive?" or "how do we reduce cellphone use in classrooms without downloading enforcement onto the teachers and destroying relationships between kids and teachers and kids and their families?" or even "how do we break up Big Tech and force them to make their technology less addictive?" it posits that cellphones and social media make kids more depressed and anxious.
Which.
Okay.
Michael Hobbes sets out believing that the error that he'll have to correct has to do with Haidt not understanding correlation and causation, which in fact he doesn't. Are kids depressed because they're on social media more, or are depressed kids more likely to spend more time on social media? Or did, in fact, adolescent mental health care funding become more accessible due to Obamacare during the exact period of time that Haidt is examining, leading to a jump in teen depression diagnoses before social media use was as ubiquitous as it is now? Those are some very interesting methodology questions but if it were just that, the episode wouldn't be two hours long. In fact Haidt is wrong about everything, and, I must stress again, did not speak to any actual kids (which Hobbes, bless his heart, actually did). There's a lot to debunk, including the initial process of data collection, the timelines, the collapsing of all social media, including pre-algorithm Facebook, addictive apps like Instagram or Twitter, and very harmless platforms like MySpace or Tumblr, into one giant evil, incuriosity as to how kids actually use social media, etc. There are also his solutions, which tend to both 1) be very stupid, and 2) be things that schools try all the time and that tend to fail for various reasons.
A rare word of criticism for Michael and Peter here: their solutions aren't very useful either??? Like I honestly don't believe cellphone bans work (something that they do admit). I don't think kids should have to be 16 before going on social media—I think that is, in fact, very harmful for queer and trans kids, especially the ones living under oppressive regimes like the US. I think basically every attempt to ban cellphones in schools will fail for the same reason that Prohibition failed, and that the emphasis should be on harm reduction and self-regulation skills. And also I think their debunking is solid but the podcast could be another hour long if they wanted to address some other issues that never come up.
One of the things that I think they do really well is frame the cellphone issue as a moral panic, similar to that involving videogames (which Haidt, of course, now acknowledges as not really a problem) and TV (about which the jury is still out). I think that's good but I want people to consider a thought experiment.
I want you to think about when you went to school. If you're reading this, you likely went to school before algorithmic social media on cellphones existed. If you're as old as I am, you went to school before smartphones existed at all. Now, I want you to think about the dumbest, most disruptive kids* in the class.
If you're very old, these children were probably removed from school. Maybe they'd work, maybe they'd be institutionalized, maybe you lived in a place with an actual social safety net and they'd be provided some bare-bones funding.
If you're a little younger, these children would be placed in a segregated classroom. What they would receive is not the education that you or I would have received, but the main thing is that they would be prevented from disrupting the education of the kids who mattered.
If you're my age or younger, these two approaches were correctly identified as fucking callous and horrible, and efforts would have been made to integrate the kids into a regular classroom. Since this wouldn't have come with additional funding for an EA or anything like that, they would have been allowed to be disruptive to the point that the teacher couldn't take it, and then sent to the office, where they would go because back then the admin wasn't too stressed to deal with them, and parents would instil a baseline respect for school procedures in their kids. If they were simply struggling academically and not disruptive, a student like me would be assigned to tutor them, since obviously I'd already finished my work and had nothing better to do with my time (see: no cellphones).
My point in this nostalgia trip is not that any of these systems are good.** My take is that today, the disruptive and/or struggling student, instead of throwing paper airplanes or passing notes or getting into fights, dicks around on his cellphone. The strong and compliant student also dicks around on her phone, but often in very different ways (writing fanfic on AO3 vs mindless scrolling on TikTok, for example, and only after doing her work). Teachers, parents, and especially administrators like to believe that without pocket slot machines, kids would universally be academically inclined and focused on school, but the truth is that there will always be kids who do not like school and do not want to pay attention and, in fact, are rampantly uninterested in learning whatever it is they're supposed to be learning. And these kids are endlessly creative in finding ways to not learn. We've just made it easier for them and a little quieter for the teacher.
All of this is to say that cellphones and algorithmic social media were a mistake. This is true. They cause genocides. Zuck and Musk should be in prison, not in charge of massive companies that mediate our relationships with each other and shove AI crap down our throats. However, like every social problem, instead of dealing with it at its source, we download the problem onto the individual, especially if that individual is a child or teacher, and that's never going to work.
Which is also to say that TikTok is terrible but the TikTok ban is not because it's terrible but because politicians are afraid that it's making the kids support Palestinian human rights and oppose genocide. Cellphone bans are less about student learning and more about being afraid that social media will trans your child.
Anyway, listen to the podcast; it's very good. If you teach in a school, you will definitely hear your admin cite this book, and the book is hot garbage.
* I'm being deliberately cruel in my phrasing here. Contemporary pedagogy would assert that the kids are never a problem, and these kids are failing to achieve because the teacher is insufficiently engaging or skilled at building relationships with each one of the 35 kids with various types of learning styles in her class. I believe both extremes are in fact quite silly and fail to take into account the structural issues that cause children to struggle in school. However, for the sake of this thought experiment, I'm calling them what they would have been called when you went to school.
** The answer here is small class sizes and adequate funding and staffing. Surprise!
The Anxious Generation is by Jonathan Haidt, the author of The Coddling Of the American Mind, and if you happen to suffer from Imposter Syndrome, one look at this man's career should cure you of it quickly. He is, quite straightforwardly, a man who knows fuck-all about jack shit and yet has made a career opining about it anyway. The Anxious Generation should, in theory, be a much easier book for him to write than Coddling, but it is in fact very bad, sloppily researched, and he didn't talk to any kids, teachers, or psychologists in writing it.
The main question of this book is this: Are social media and cellphones bad for kids or nah? He answers, yes. You would think that the answer is yes, because if you've spend any time in a classroom or around kids who have phones, it is self-evidently bad, and that's why we need teachers to no longer instruct our kids in those old-fashioned things called "subject-matter content" or "critical thinking and research skills" and instead work as the full-time cellphone police. Obviously social media is bad and addictive and it's worse for society to have that accessible in our pockets, distracting kids from important things like school and socializing in meatspace and playing outside. Obviously we shouldn't have let that happen. But now that it has, instead of tackling interesting questions like "can we fix social media to make it less addictive?" or "how do we reduce cellphone use in classrooms without downloading enforcement onto the teachers and destroying relationships between kids and teachers and kids and their families?" or even "how do we break up Big Tech and force them to make their technology less addictive?" it posits that cellphones and social media make kids more depressed and anxious.
Which.
Okay.
Michael Hobbes sets out believing that the error that he'll have to correct has to do with Haidt not understanding correlation and causation, which in fact he doesn't. Are kids depressed because they're on social media more, or are depressed kids more likely to spend more time on social media? Or did, in fact, adolescent mental health care funding become more accessible due to Obamacare during the exact period of time that Haidt is examining, leading to a jump in teen depression diagnoses before social media use was as ubiquitous as it is now? Those are some very interesting methodology questions but if it were just that, the episode wouldn't be two hours long. In fact Haidt is wrong about everything, and, I must stress again, did not speak to any actual kids (which Hobbes, bless his heart, actually did). There's a lot to debunk, including the initial process of data collection, the timelines, the collapsing of all social media, including pre-algorithm Facebook, addictive apps like Instagram or Twitter, and very harmless platforms like MySpace or Tumblr, into one giant evil, incuriosity as to how kids actually use social media, etc. There are also his solutions, which tend to both 1) be very stupid, and 2) be things that schools try all the time and that tend to fail for various reasons.
A rare word of criticism for Michael and Peter here: their solutions aren't very useful either??? Like I honestly don't believe cellphone bans work (something that they do admit). I don't think kids should have to be 16 before going on social media—I think that is, in fact, very harmful for queer and trans kids, especially the ones living under oppressive regimes like the US. I think basically every attempt to ban cellphones in schools will fail for the same reason that Prohibition failed, and that the emphasis should be on harm reduction and self-regulation skills. And also I think their debunking is solid but the podcast could be another hour long if they wanted to address some other issues that never come up.
One of the things that I think they do really well is frame the cellphone issue as a moral panic, similar to that involving videogames (which Haidt, of course, now acknowledges as not really a problem) and TV (about which the jury is still out). I think that's good but I want people to consider a thought experiment.
I want you to think about when you went to school. If you're reading this, you likely went to school before algorithmic social media on cellphones existed. If you're as old as I am, you went to school before smartphones existed at all. Now, I want you to think about the dumbest, most disruptive kids* in the class.
If you're very old, these children were probably removed from school. Maybe they'd work, maybe they'd be institutionalized, maybe you lived in a place with an actual social safety net and they'd be provided some bare-bones funding.
If you're a little younger, these children would be placed in a segregated classroom. What they would receive is not the education that you or I would have received, but the main thing is that they would be prevented from disrupting the education of the kids who mattered.
If you're my age or younger, these two approaches were correctly identified as fucking callous and horrible, and efforts would have been made to integrate the kids into a regular classroom. Since this wouldn't have come with additional funding for an EA or anything like that, they would have been allowed to be disruptive to the point that the teacher couldn't take it, and then sent to the office, where they would go because back then the admin wasn't too stressed to deal with them, and parents would instil a baseline respect for school procedures in their kids. If they were simply struggling academically and not disruptive, a student like me would be assigned to tutor them, since obviously I'd already finished my work and had nothing better to do with my time (see: no cellphones).
My point in this nostalgia trip is not that any of these systems are good.** My take is that today, the disruptive and/or struggling student, instead of throwing paper airplanes or passing notes or getting into fights, dicks around on his cellphone. The strong and compliant student also dicks around on her phone, but often in very different ways (writing fanfic on AO3 vs mindless scrolling on TikTok, for example, and only after doing her work). Teachers, parents, and especially administrators like to believe that without pocket slot machines, kids would universally be academically inclined and focused on school, but the truth is that there will always be kids who do not like school and do not want to pay attention and, in fact, are rampantly uninterested in learning whatever it is they're supposed to be learning. And these kids are endlessly creative in finding ways to not learn. We've just made it easier for them and a little quieter for the teacher.
All of this is to say that cellphones and algorithmic social media were a mistake. This is true. They cause genocides. Zuck and Musk should be in prison, not in charge of massive companies that mediate our relationships with each other and shove AI crap down our throats. However, like every social problem, instead of dealing with it at its source, we download the problem onto the individual, especially if that individual is a child or teacher, and that's never going to work.
Which is also to say that TikTok is terrible but the TikTok ban is not because it's terrible but because politicians are afraid that it's making the kids support Palestinian human rights and oppose genocide. Cellphone bans are less about student learning and more about being afraid that social media will trans your child.
Anyway, listen to the podcast; it's very good. If you teach in a school, you will definitely hear your admin cite this book, and the book is hot garbage.
* I'm being deliberately cruel in my phrasing here. Contemporary pedagogy would assert that the kids are never a problem, and these kids are failing to achieve because the teacher is insufficiently engaging or skilled at building relationships with each one of the 35 kids with various types of learning styles in her class. I believe both extremes are in fact quite silly and fail to take into account the structural issues that cause children to struggle in school. However, for the sake of this thought experiment, I'm calling them what they would have been called when you went to school.
** The answer here is small class sizes and adequate funding and staffing. Surprise!
