The Kids Aren't all right, But its not the phones, Its the world.
On phone bans (previously written as a bsky rant)
My town has been overrun by discussion around cell phone bans, mostly by elementary school parents, which... insane. But I’m reminded of how Taylor Lorenz has worded it. This is a moral panic, but it is also parents looking for someone to blame. The world Gen Z and Gen Alpha are growing up in is incredibly scary. Climate change is real and terrifying, the threat of school shootings is constant, an entire genocide is livestreamed to our phones, our democratic institutions are collapsing, and we lived through COVID during FORMATIVE years.
The kids aren’t all right, but it’s not because of phones. We aren’t all right because ALL of the people in power have failed us. Over. And over. Over. On gun control, On climate, on Palestine, and every other fucking issue. Young people don’t have a voice, so all we get to do is stress. All we get to do is wait for our leaders to fail us, with no say. They don’t listen to us. And the people meant to protect us when those leaders fail, our parents, are misinformed by people like Jonathon Haidt, who is simply pushing a reactionary agenda.
All of this combines to create no benefit to children, but an additional stressor in a fucked up world. The problem with kids isn’t cell phones, it’s capitalism and the failure of our governments, of our defenders, to protect us, to defend us.
Have any of you actually thought about asking the kids?
Or are you just deciding how kids feel, and how they should feel. Advocating for something.
None of the people making these decisisons have been in high school post iphone. Thats a problem
The young people of America are ignored
We, the youth, of America need a voice and thats why I’m founding a youth activism group focused on just that, and you can subscribe to hear more about that soon
