TREND WATCH
Is Facebook the new Big Tobacco? Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff thinks so. He recently said that the social network is addictive like cigarettes and should be subject to similar regulation, making him the latest tech executive to raise alarm over technology’s effect on society. Once universally hailed for their success, Facebook and other Silicon Valley companies are under fire, accused of hijacking people’s time and attention at the expense of their physical and mental health. Concerns about digital overexposure are increasingly focused on children, with some linking the ubiquity of mobile phones and social media with rising rates of anxiety and depression among young people. Conclusive evidence that technology is the culprit is lacking—but it’s likely that this means little to the rising tide of parents urging their kids to put their phones down.
Big Tech has faced a barrage of criticism over the past year. Facebook and Twitter are taking heat for their role in spreading “fake news” and propaganda. They’re being grilled for facilitating Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and the violence against the Rohinyga people in Myanmar. In June, Google was hit with a record $2.7 billion fine for abusing its market power. All of this threatens to slow the earnings growth and deflate the valuations of Silicon Valley’s info-tech giants.
In recent months, the scrutiny has come to focus on their business practices. Benioff joins a chorus of critics claiming that these companies engaged in psychological manipulation and built their products to be addictive. Chamath Palihapitiya, a former Facebook executive, said in November that he felt “tremendous guilt” about helping to build the site and that it’s “ripping apart the social fabric.” In an interview with Axios, Facebook’s founding president Sean Parker said, “God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains.” And Apple has been asked by two major shareholders to study the effects of overuse on mental health and to develop tools to make it easier for parents to limit time on mobile devices.
In Parker’s interview, he described Facebook’s driving principle from day one as determining how to “consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible” by providing occasional rewards at variable intervals, which produces a dopamine rush. This strategy echoes those described in an essay by Tristan Harris, a former Google design ethicist, titled “The Slot Machine in Your Pocket.” In today’s media landscape, attention is the most important currency. Whether it’s through likes, push notifications, infinite scrolling, autoplay, or “Snapstreaks,” apps and gadgets encourage users to linger and return sooner.
The anxiety surrounding children and technology has grown as screen time has hit staggering levels. According to the latest Monitoring the Future data, 12th graders spend an average of six hours a day with new media, a category that includes texting, surfing the Internet, gaming, and video chatting. For 8th graders, the total is five hours a day. Another Common Sense Media study looking at children age 8 and under found that since 2011, the amount of time spent on mobile devices per day has jumped from 5 to 48 minutes.
The last large-scale, publicly available study quantifying teen media use was released in 2015. But assuming teenagers mirror the trend among adults, usage keeps climbing: According to Nielsen, the time adults spend online and on mobile devices nearly doubled in the past two years alone. Other individual data points for teens also show an upward trend. Since 2008, the share of 12th graders who visit a social networking site “almost every day” has risen from half to around 80 percent. 12th graders in 2015 spent twice as much time online per week as 12th graders in 2006. And 78 percent of 12- to 18-year-olds check their phones hourly. Half say they feel addicted to their mobile devices.
Many of the critics, most notably psychology professor Jean Twenge, have tied recent negative trends in young people’s mental health to growing screen time. Over the past decade, rates of depression and suicide—particularly among teenage girls—has soared. Between 2009 and 2015, 58 percent more girls reported depressive symptoms and 14 percent more suicide-related thoughts or actions. More teenagers report feeling lonely and that they struggle to make friends. Meanwhile, the number of college students reporting symptoms of anxiety has grown steadily; it’s outpaced depression as the top complaint of those who visit counseling centers. (See: “The Young and the Anxious.”) In a just-released study published in Emotion, Twenge and other researchers assert that the less time teenagers spend in front of screens, the happier they are.
It’s difficult to prove that screen time directly affects mental health. But in a climate where protectiveness toward children is high, proof doesn’t matter. Parents and the public have already drawn a conclusion: Two-thirds of parents feel their teens spend too much time on their mobile devices, and 52 percent of teens themselves agree. Seemingly everyone—children and adults alike—has a story about these devices interrupting or distracting from quality time. Worries about digital burnout have been building for years, fueling interest in mindfulness and other “grounding” behaviors. (See: “Meditating on Mindfulness.”) Now the alarm is being raised by the very people who profited from these technologies. That Apple would receive such a request from investors who normally only press for higher ROI is remarkable. It may reflect the perception that ignoring the health of young users poses a long-term problem for their business model.
Skeptics still caution that correlation is not causation. The handful of studies that examine screen time and well-being are inconclusive and often conflicting. There are dozens of unrelated factors that could also be affecting mental health, like economic stressors or increased pressure to succeed academically. Last year, researchers from the Oxford Internet Institute and Cardiff University suggested that heavy computer and smartphone use lower teenagers’ mood far less than skipping breakfast or not getting enough sleep. Amanda Lenhart, deputy director of the Better Life Lab at New America, told The Washington Post that tech is “the culturally easy scapegoat right now…it’s new, it’s scary, it’s changed our lives, it’s changed our kids’ lives.”
But try telling this to parents whose kids are perpetually hunched over their screens. When calling for digital detox, many detractors highlight a particular irony: Tech leaders often keep their children away from the innovations they created. They’re enrolling them in low-tech schools and banning devices at dinner. In The Guardian, psychologist Adam Alter noted, “They will get up on stage, some of them, and say things like: ‘This is the greatest product of all time,’ but then when you delve you see they don’t allow their kids access to that same product.” Setting limits, the critics say, is only following their example—and it’s time the public caught up with Silicon Valley heads in understanding that these products can do more harm than good.
TAKEAWAYS
A tech-lash is growing against Silicon Valley companies accused of making their products addictive, with some arguing that excessive screen time is hurting young people’s mental health. Though scientific evidence linking the two is scant, the sheer amount of time kids spend with screens is raising a new level of alarm.
- Tech companies are facing calls to design less addictive products. The nonprofit Time Well Spent, which is composed of former tech insiders, is leading the push for new options that look out for users. Some suggestions include offering people a weekly report breaking down their total screen time, more control over notifications, or even a toned-down color palette. But do any companies have an incentive to take on tech addiction? The best positioned to do so is Apple, because its business model—unlike, say, Facebook’s—relies on selling devices, not the time users spend with them. So far, however, Apple has only announced it will strengthen parental controls.
- Tech usage among kids is similar by social class. According to Monitoring the Future, teenagers from different socioeconomic backgrounds spend roughly the same amount of time online and on social media per day. If anything, there’s a “reverse digital divide” in which the less privileged spend slightly more time online and with electronic devices than their more affluent peers. Yet this doesn’t necessarily reflect less parental monitoring: A 2016 Pew survey found that lower-income parents are more likely to talk to their kids regularly about how to treat others online and what kinds of content are appropriate to share and view.
- Critics are also charging that digital-induced “semi-attention” is sapping productivity growth. Though divided on the effect of excessive screen time on mental health, experts largely agree it hurts physical health: disrupting sleep, causing eye strain, and keeping us sedentary. Mobile devices are also a temptation to multitask (which is less efficient than single-tasking) and literally tire out the brain. One Harvard Medical School study found that students performed best on cognitive tests when their smartphones were in another room and worst when next to them, even when turned off. The implications for focus in daily life are enormous, giving the worried yet another reason to urge Americans to cut back.
