Smartphones Are Dumb, by Emmy Griffin

Jonathan Haidt is on a mission to understand what has gone wrong with our school-age children. As a noted psychology professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, Haidt noticed a change in students both socially and academically starting in 2012. Students are lonelier, not as intellectually engaged, and developing mental health problems at an alarming rate.

What happened in 2012? Well, that was when smartphones really took off in the mainstream and flip phones went the way of the rotary dial. Also, that was when Instagram started to garner popularity among young women especially, giving birth to the selfie culture and all the toxicity that comes with the curated social media life. Haidt started researching and studying this phenomenon in an attempt to help these poor kids who were (and are) really suffering. …

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