@theatlantic: The evolutionary psychologist Peter Gray is challenging the popular understanding of kids and technology, Kaitlyn Tiffany reports. Gray believes “children’s need for unstructured play and exploration (guided by some safety rules and common sense) applies not just to vacant lots and city parks and backyards in the suburbs,” Tiffany writes. “It now extends to the wild spaces of the internet.” In 2023, Gray first read a prepublication copy of Jonathan Haidt’s book “The Anxious Generation.” “Its argument seemed to fit the moment: Children were reporting that they didn’t like how much time they spent on social media and didn’t feel like they were in control of their habits; some were truly suffering,” Tiffany writes. Haidt’s book “gave them—and their parents—language to describe what was happening.” But when Gray first read the manuscript, he was appalled. “I think it’s unethical,” he told Tiffany. She explains his view: “As he sees it, the analysis improbably suggests that taking away phones would prompt kids to run around exploring as their grandparents had done.” And the book wrongly implies that “the internet is too dangerous for children—too full of scary strangers and powerful temptations—much in the same way that parents and pundits had decried the perils of the physical world generations before,” Tiffany writes. Gray believes that the mental-health crisis affecting children is real, but he argues it has nothing to do with what he describes as the “moral panic” over smartphones and social media. The real problem, he says, has to do with schools. Read more at the link. 📷: The Atlantic

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Saturday 11 July 2026 17:00:00 GMT