Jonathan Haidt: An Update on Efforts to Take Childhood Back from Phones and Social Media

Jonathan Haidt’s book The Anxious Generation came out a year ago. In 2023 I wrote a lot about his theory, presented in the book, that smart phones and social media were harming children. Today, the Free Press published an update written by Haidt on how his campaign to change minds and eventually rules has gone a lot better than he expected.

The book catalyzed a movement around the world. Most spectacularly, schools, states, and entire countries implemented phone-free school policies, and Australia raised the age for opening social media accounts to 16.

This went well beyond our wildest expectations of what could happen.

The rest of the update is broken up into four proposed norms or areas of focus, starting with the push to limit smartphones to high school aged kids.

At lightning speed, we’ve seen parents of younger kids commit to delaying smartphones, and parents of older kids set new boundaries, swap smartphones for flip phones, and have meaningful conversations with their kids about the risks of online life. To take just one example: Smartphone Free Childhood began in early 2024 with a simple post by two British moms to a WhatsApp group. They were looking for other parents who shared their desire to delay smartphone access. By the end of the first week, they had 10,000 people, organized into 75 WhatsApp communities. In March 2025, they have over 300,000 parents and 29 offshoot groups in countries around the world.

The next proposed norm was limiting social media to 16 or older. Again, it’s going better than expected.

We thought parents would have to do this on their own, as with delaying smartphones. But what surprised us was the degree to which leaders and legislators from both parties sprang into action. Governors and legislators from red states (Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, North Dakota, South Carolina, Utah), blue states (California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Vermont) and purple states (Virginia) reached out to us to discuss their plans. Many began proposing and enacting policies supporting phone-free schools and safer social media design, and raising the age for opening social media accounts (as Florida did). It turns out that politicians in both parties are usually parents, too. Many saw the problems firsthand, and they could see the passion for this cause among other parents.

In Australia, the government made 16 the new minimum age to open a social media account for the entire country. That law takes effect at the end of this year. Haidt is hopeful other countries will follow Australia’s lead.

Another goal is to have phone free schools, including high schools. In other words, kids who have phones can check them at the door. In the US, both California and New York are embracing the idea:

In California, the L.A. public school district, the second-largest in the country, announced last June that they were going phone-free, and soon after that Governor Gavin Newsom announced that the entire state would go phone-free by July 2026.

But Haidt notes that several countries are doing the same:” Brazil, Denmark, Ireland, Greece, the Netherlands, and Hungary.”

The bottom line is that many parents around the world see the negative effects of smart phones and social media on their kids and school rules and laws are changing. Haidt concludes that while the progress is encouraging, another big technological change is just around the corner. Once AI becomes part of smartphones and social media, we’ll have another reason to keep them out of schools and out of the hands of young kids.