Links to Consider, 3/1
Jonathan Haidt on the intrinsic harm of phones; Dancing away depression; Larry Summers, Yascha Mounk, and higher ed; recent sessions with paid subscribers
Let me be clear: there is no way to make social media safe for children by just making the content less toxic. It’s the phone-based childhood that is harming them, regardless of what they watch. Kids need to be freed from the grip of smartphones and social media, especially through early puberty. This is why two of the four norms I propose for solving our collective action problems are about delaying children’s complete immersion in the virtual world. Here are those four norms:
1) No Smartphone Before High School (give only flip phones in middle school)
2) No Social Media Before 16
3) Phone Free Schools (all phones go into phone lockers or Yondr pouches)
4) More independence, free play, and responsibility in the real world, at an earlier age
A new, large-scale analysis of different treatments for depression found that by far the best was simply dancing.
My wife and I dance in the evening Sundays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. We also walk almost every day, which is another activity that outperforms every form of therapy. But the rest of the time I spend reading stuff online, which I am sure more than counterbalances the benefits of exercise.
Interviewed by Yascha Mounk, Larry Summers says,
I think one would find for any Ivy League school that the federal government was ten times as large a donor, at least, as any other donor. And I think it's fair to say that the universities have thumbed their nose at what is by far their largest donor.
I would say that with their lobbying and gifts to congresscritters, the universities have successfully bought off the largest donor.
Jerry Muller and I discuss Jews and Communism. As we review the history, Jews were mostly non-Communist or anti-Communist. But the Jews who were Communists achieved some prominence in the movement. I was rather “off” during the discussion (I took my temperature afterward, and it was close to 100), and I only remembered to record the second half.
And here is the discussion a few weeks ago with Moshe Koppel. We talk about the contrast between the silly young left in America and the more sober, focused young people in Israel.
Substacks referenced above:
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“Kids need to be freed from the grip of…” TV, Elvis Presley, Rock n’ Roll, the Beetles, etc. We all need to be freed from prodnoses who have solutions to all ills, who want to control our lives and tell us what we should be doing.
Reading Haidt one is tempted to think of Hannah:
“Also she vowed a vowe, & said, O Lord of hostes, if thou
wilt loke on the trouble of thine handmayd, & remember me,
& not forget thine handmayd, but give unto thine handmayd
a manchilde, then I wil give him unto the Lord all the daies of
his life, and there shal no raser come upon his head.
And as she continued praying before the Lord, Elí marked
her mouth.
For Hannáh spake in her heart: her lippes did move
onely, but her voyce was not heard...”
-Samuel I, 11-13
There are the minor thematic coincidences, of course, living in a dark age, childlessness, voicelessness, and a “Razer” being a type of smart phone, but importantly, the question of which culture a parent chooses to give their child, a traditional culture or the dominant digital culture.
Of course simply liberating a child from cell phone dependency is not the same as giving the child their cultural birthright. Leaving a phone-less child planted in front of the television or a child-marriage to a laptop can hardly be reckoned a gift, but ensuring, as Haidt recommends, the child enjoys opportunities to experience life beyond screens is an important step. However, it is not fully the same as creating the conditions under which a child will mature into an individual who can choose to either enter the dominant digital culture or enter into and maintain the traditions of their birthright culture. That choice requires education and exposure to the traditional culture.
Reasons for sparing a child the dangers of the dominant digital culture can be as simple as safety, both from online dangers as well as the negative consequences threatening online speech. We see where in Canada life in prison is being considered as a punishment for online hate speech, and another proposal to outlaw the promotion of internal combustion engines. And in the US we see endless litigation related to online speech. Online speech seems to have many negative consequences and very few positives. Avoiding those traps by nonparticipation may be beneficial in avoiding these potential liabilities as well as by avoiding the compliant thought grooming the system engenders. The blessings of liberty require freedom of thought, not the compulsion to participate in the dominant digital culture.
Hannah’s gift of Samuel at the temple was emulated by many affluent parents in the middle ages who gave their sons to monasteries which they felt to be a sacrifice to God. Chapter 59 of The Rule of St. Benedict addresses this phenomenon: https://ccel.org/ccel/benedict/rule/rule.lxi.html These children often obtained good educations and training in crafts, however, unfortunately, there was no guarantee that as an adult, the oblate would be permitted to leave monastic life if they so desired. This of course produced some miserable cases. Although monasteries abolished the practice in the 12th century, parents still must decide if they will present their children to a god or tradition, or if they will gift them to the dominant digital culture. A young life free of digital culture is a gift of immeasurable value, not just to the child but to humanity, for, as history has shown, the preservation of culture through dark ages has been the seed of human flourishing.
Perhaps one of the silver linings of covid hysteria may have been the birth of the concept of educational pods. This model might offer a new form of screen-free monasticism outside the grip of digital dominance and coerced conformity and offer a light to lead human flourishing forward.