What if social media isn’t hurting kids?

如果社交媒体并没有伤害孩子呢？

A new book says modern schooling, not phones, are behind youth mental health declines. Will anyone listen? 一本新书指出，导致青少年心理健康下滑的罪魁祸首是现代学校教育，而非手机。有人会听吗？

Two years ago, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt released his New York Times bestseller The Anxious Generation. The book posits that the rise of social media and smartphone use is largely to blame for the prominent decline in teen mental health since 2010. It quickly became a central rallying cry of the social media backlash. Haidt has been credited with helping inspire Australia’s nationwide teen social media ban. He has joined forces with bereaved parents who are fighting tech companies in court. His name comes up unprompted in conversations with people in power who say his book opened their eyes to an online crisis. 两年前，社会心理学家乔纳森·海特（Jonathan Haidt）出版了《纽约时报》畅销书《焦虑的一代》（The Anxious Generation）。该书认为，自2010年以来青少年心理健康的显著下滑，很大程度上应归咎于社交媒体和智能手机的兴起。这本书迅速成为反对社交媒体运动的核心号召。海特被认为推动了澳大利亚在全国范围内禁止青少年使用社交媒体的立法。他与那些在法庭上起诉科技公司的丧子父母们联手。在与当权者的对话中，人们常会主动提到他的名字，称他的书让他们看清了这场网络危机。

Haidt’s theory has received regular critiques from recognized academics. Candice Odgers, a leading adolescent mental health researcher, wrote a scathing review of Haidt’s analysis in Nature that opened by conceding, “this book is going to sell a lot of copies, because Jonathan Haidt is telling a scary story about children’s development that many parents are primed to believe.” Now, in the wake of that highly accurate prediction, a former colleague of Haidt’s seeks to not only take down his theory, but also offer an alternative. The biggest question may not be whether he’s correct — but whether it’s too late to change course if he is. 海特的理论经常受到知名学者的批评。青少年心理健康领域的领军研究员坎迪斯·奥杰斯（Candice Odgers）在《自然》杂志上对海特的分析撰写了一篇尖锐的评论，开篇便承认：“这本书会大卖，因为乔纳森·海特讲述了一个关于儿童发展的恐怖故事，而许多家长早已准备好相信这一点。”如今，在那番精准的预言之后，海特的一位前同事不仅试图推翻他的理论，还提出了另一种解释。最大的问题或许不在于他是否正确，而在于如果他是对的，现在改变方向是否已经太晚了。

In his new book Restoring Childhood, psychology researcher Peter Gray argues that teens’ mental health declined thanks to decades of steadily reduced autonomy, and after a brief period of reprieve, fell again in the 2010s not — as Haidt argues — because of phones and social media, but because of rigid schooling methods linked to the Common Core curriculum and government pressure to improve children’s performance. And far from being damaging, Gray also argues the adoption of home internet in the 1990s and 2000s actually drove a rebound in teens’ mental health by restoring freedom and connection lost in earlier decades. He fears social media bans aren’t just — as Odgers has argued — a distraction from real solutions, but a new harm in themselves. 在心理学研究员彼得·格雷（Peter Gray）的新书《恢复童年》（Restoring Childhood）中，他认为青少年心理健康的下滑源于几十年来自主权的稳步缩减。在经历短暂的缓解后，2010年代心理健康再次下滑，原因并非海特所说的手机和社交媒体，而是与“共同核心标准”（Common Core）课程及政府提高儿童成绩的压力相关的僵化教学方法。格雷甚至认为，1990年代和2000年代家庭互联网的普及不仅没有造成伤害，反而通过恢复此前几十年失去的自由与联系，推动了青少年心理健康的复苏。他担心，正如奥杰斯所言，社交媒体禁令不仅会转移人们对真正解决方案的注意力，其本身也是一种新的伤害。

“You take a smartphone away from your kids and that study suggests you’ll make them less happy” “如果你没收了孩子的智能手机，研究表明你会让他们变得更不快乐。”

In an interview on The Vergecast, Gray told me that Haidt’s book “completely ignored” dozens of meta-analyses and other research that’s found “not even a meaningful correlation between the amount of time kids are on social media or on smartphones and their mental health.” Where there is some connection, Gray adds, studies suggest that teens may use social media to cope with their depression or anxiety. He references a study in Florida that found 11-to-13-year-olds who owned smartphones were more likely to spend real-world time with friends. “You take a smartphone away from your kids and that study suggests you’ll make them less happy and they’ll have less friends,” he says. 在接受《The Vergecast》采访时，格雷告诉我，海特的书“完全忽视”了数十项元分析和其他研究，这些研究发现“孩子在社交媒体或智能手机上花费的时间与他们的心理健康之间，甚至不存在有意义的相关性。”格雷补充说，即便存在某种联系，研究也表明青少年可能是利用社交媒体来应对抑郁或焦虑。他引用了佛罗里达州的一项研究，该研究发现拥有智能手机的11至13岁儿童更有可能在现实生活中与朋友相处。“如果你没收了孩子的智能手机，那项研究表明你会让他们变得更不快乐，朋友也会变少，”他说。

Gray says that in studies through the years, kids consistently identify school pressure, not social media, as their top source of anxiety. “That doesn’t mean it’s the primary source for everybody, but when you’re looking at the population at large, every single study that I’ve been able to find where kids are asked, ‘What’s the primary source of your anxiety or your stress or your depression?’, in every single one of them, school pressure comes out on top,” Gray tells me. “Nothing else comes close.” 格雷表示，在历年的研究中，孩子们始终将学校压力而非社交媒体视为焦虑的首要来源。“这并不意味着它是每个人的主要压力源，但当你审视整个群体时，我所能找到的每一项询问孩子‘你焦虑、压力或抑郁的主要来源是什么？’的研究中，学校压力都高居榜首，”格雷告诉我，“没有任何其他因素能与之相比。”

Gray and Haidt both believe that since at least the 1980s, increased restrictions on kids’ independence and unstructured play have damaged their resilience. While it used to be common for kids to play together unsupervised, that practice has diminished in part due to the rise of “stranger danger” narratives fostered by rare, but high-profile, crimes. In 2017 the pair helped cofound an organization called Let Grow, which advocates for policies that make it easier for parents to let their children play freely, like ensuring they can’t be considered neglectful for letting kids outside by themselves. But the two have split sharply over the impact of the internet. Gray’s book is intended as a deliberate rebuttal to Haidt’s — after The Anxious Generation’s release, Gray resigned from the board of Let Grow to avoid conflict within the organization. 格雷和海特都认为，至少从20世纪80年代以来，对儿童独立性和非结构化游戏日益增加的限制损害了他们的韧性。过去，孩子们在无人监管的情况下一起玩耍很常见，但这种做法因“陌生人危险”叙事的兴起而减少，尽管此类犯罪罕见但备受关注。2017年，两人共同创立了一个名为“Let Grow”的组织，倡导制定政策，让家长更容易让孩子自由玩耍，例如确保家长不会因让孩子独自外出而被视为疏忽。然而，两人在互联网的影响问题上产生了严重分歧。格雷的书旨在对海特的书进行刻意反驳——在《焦虑的一代》出版后，格雷辞去了“Let Grow”董事会的职务，以避免组织内部的冲突。

Haidt did not respond to a request for comment from The Verge, but he told The Atlantic’s Kaitlyn Tiffany in a July article that the 1990s and early 2000s dip in teen suicide rates may be credited to a phase-out of leaded gasoline, since lead exposure has been linked to mental health issues. He also told Tiffany that Gray relied too heavily on a minority dissenting group of researchers. Tiffany writes that many of the more than a dozen tech and child development researchers she spoke to “expressed concern that Haidt overstates the strength of correlational findings and suggests causation where it hasn’t been proved.” 海特没有回应《The Verge》的置评请求，但他曾在7月接受《大西洋月刊》记者凯特琳·蒂芙尼（Kaitlyn Tiffany）采访时表示，20世纪90年代和21世纪初青少年自杀率的下降可能归功于含铅汽油的逐步淘汰，因为铅暴露与心理健康问题有关。他还告诉蒂芙尼，格雷过于依赖少数持异议的研究人员群体。蒂芙尼写道，她采访的十几位科技和儿童发展研究人员中，许多人“表示担心海特夸大了相关性研究结果的力度，并在尚未证实因果关系的地方暗示了因果关系。”

Gray accuses Haidt of stirring a moral panic over technology that isn’t, on the whole, harmful. Looking across research, he says, Common Core is the clearest explanation for the sudden decline in teen mental health. And at the population level, the impact of social media “balances out. Some kids are doing better, some kids are doing worse because they’re on social media.” 格雷指责海特针对技术煽动了一种道德恐慌，而这种技术总体上并无害处。他说，纵观各项研究，“共同核心标准”是对青少年心理健康突然下滑最清晰的解释。而在人口层面，社交媒体的影响“相互抵消了。有些孩子因为使用社交媒体而变得更好，有些则变得更糟。”

“We need to stop treating kids as if they’re idiots” “我们需要停止把孩子当成傻瓜来对待。”

Gray says he’s not opposed to all guardrails, including school phone bans and the concept of age verification for accessing pornography. But he questions the effectiveness of bans on social media, knowing… 格雷表示，他并不反对所有的防护措施，包括学校手机禁令以及访问色情内容的年龄验证概念。但他质疑社交媒体禁令的有效性，因为他知道……