The truth has come to light: About half Generation Z wants TikTok (47%) and X (50%) did not exist. And this despite – or perhaps precisely because – they spend four hours a day on social media, because more than half of the respondents a new survey say is their norm.
The results of a nationally representative survey of 1,006 adults of Generation Z (ages 18-27) by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and the Harris Poll offer a sobering snapshot of how young adults are dealing with the Risk of addiction of smartphones and social media.
Haidt, author of controversial bestseller The fearful generation, who advertises four basic rules regarding children and smartphones – none before high school, no social media before age 16, no phones in school and more unsupervised gaming – shares the results in A New York Times Opinion piece on Tuesday.
He finds it “astonishing” how much time Generation Z spends on social media – 60% spend four hours a day and 23% spend seven or more hours a day. This is particularly “astonishing” because 60% also say that social media has a negative impact on society (compared to 32% who say it has a positive impact).
And while 52% say social media has enriched their lives and 29% say it has harmed them, young people from historically disadvantaged groups have benefited less, he writes. This includes 44% of women and 47% of LGBTQ respondents who say social media has negatively impacted their lives. mental healthIn comparison, 31% of men and 35% of non-LGBTQ respondents said so.
As for the wish that a platform “had never been invented,” TikTok and X received the most votes, followed by Snapchat (43%), on facebook. (37%) and Instagram (34%). The lowest values in this category were received by the smartphone itself (21%), messaging apps (19%) and streaming services such as Netflix (17%) and YouTube (15%).
“We interpret these low numbers as an indication that Generation Z does not have strong regrets about the basic communication, storytelling and information-finding functions of the Internet,” Haidt writes. “If smartphones simply allowed people to text each other, watch movies and search for useful information or interesting videos (without personalized recommendation algorithms designed to hook users), there would be far less regret and resentment.”
While only 36 percent of respondents support a social media ban for children under 16, 69 percent support a law that would require social media companies to develop a child-safe option for children under 18.
This is something the House of Representatives is currently considering, Haidt notes, and calls on lawmakers to take action to Children’s Online Safety Act. This would first disable addictive product features and require technology companies to give young users the option to turn off personalized algorithmic feeds. (On Tuesday, Instagram responded to the growing concerns about young people and social media with the announcement that all teenagers’ accounts would be set to private by default.)
Haidt concludes his commentary by asking readers to imagine that walkie-talkies harm millions of young people and that more than a third of young people wish they didn’t exist, “but still feel compelled to use them for five hours a day.”
If that were the case, he argues, “we would take action. We would insist that manufacturers make their products safer and less addictive for children. The same standard applies to social media companies: They must either adapt their products to ensure the safety of young users or stop making them available to children altogether.”
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