Where Haidt Himself Responds to My First Four Blogs

j/k.

Okay, what really happened is today is the one year anniversary of The Anxious Generation, a truly important book imo.

Haidt (or his co-author Zach Rausch, or both) published a reflection.

Serendipity: their reflection format follows exactly my blogs to date, where I ask how the Haidt Change Agenda is going IRL.

Here from The Free Press:

…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 question is why this change is unfolding so quickly—and what this mass movement says about the state of our culture and its prospects for renewal.

Victory lap.

I think Haidt and I diverge a bit on “results so far.” Am I framing things wrong, or him?

(Maybe I’m being curmudgeonly on these claims even as I try to be appreciative of the Paul Revere work! Open to/appreciative of any pushback from my friends here. And I see some random additional readers, how did you even find this, and I’d welcome your thoughts of course).

On Delay Phones Until 14, Haidt writes:

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.

It’s great 300,000 parents have joined a WhatsApp group. Sincerely.

My take a few days ago was: For us to claim progress, isn’t the outcome metric that many kids/parents are actually waiting to 14, or otherwise delaying the date of their first phone?

I mean, there are 4.9 billion smartphone users. So 300k on WhatsApp group might be canary in coal mine of huge social change….or a tiny blip of parents already evangelized against phones, and actually near zero progress.

I haven’t yet seen data along those lines.

On Delay Social Media until Age 16, he writes:

Initially, we anticipated little help from Congress, given the considerable influence of social media companies. We thought parents would have to do this on their own, as with delaying smartphones.

I scrunched up at this a bit. As I wrote, just last summer, here’s Haidt saying precisely that he DID expect help from Congress - he thought a bill was about pass. It’s not Haidt’s fault that Zuckerberg bought the House Speaker.

But then why the revisionism? Why not just: “Hey we thought we were at the finish line with Congress, they bailed, but we’re seeing state by state success.”

Maybe I’m misunderstanding his meaning of “initially.”

I wonder if the Team Haidt mindset is: “We need to play up victories to motivate people to join our tribe.” If true, I disagree tactically. Just play it straight.

Then again, I haven’t started any major social movements, or even minor ones.

Haidt writes:

But the crown jewel of all legislative responses was enacted in Australia, which raised the age for opening social media accounts to 16 and, crucially, put the onus on the companies, rather than on parents, to enforce it. The bill takes effect at the end of 2025. If it goes smoothly, we know that many countries will follow suit, essentially forcing platforms to make it a global standard.

I like this effort - common sense solutions.

Will it work IRL? Well we have a country ahead of Australia on this. China!

They banned phones in school in 2021. Then “Regulations on the Protection of Minors in Cyberspace” effective Jan 1 2024. Platforms need “Minor modes” etc.

Still, I can’t find evidence that this led to reduction in Chinese teen screen time.

a. We see lots of articles (like this one in English) about Chinese teens circumventing various rules.

Students are using disguised water bottles, notebooks, and mirrors to sneak smartphones into classrooms, fueling a booming market for hidden phone gadgets.

Much like our reporting from “Teen Reporter who lives upstairs” - about how his classmates circumvent their smartphone rule, with impunity (phone seemingly “securely in Yondr pouch” is actually fully being used via Apple laptop).

b. We know average daily online time, for all Chinese in Q3 of 2024, was the same as in 2023. (Five hours and 35 minutes). Of course it could be that adult use is rising while teen use is falling. Seems unlikely, right?

Speaking on phones in schools, Haidt writes today:

Then, in 2024, governors from both parties jumped into action.

In Arkansas, Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders––a mom with young children––sent copies of The Anxious Generation to all state legislators and allocated money to encourage schools to go phone-free.

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.

In New York, Governor Kathy Hochul is backing model legislation to make all public schools phone-free, from bell to bell.

It’s only when students are given the full six or seven hours of the school day away from their phones that we hear this universal report from teachers and principals: “We hear laughter in the hallways again.”

As I wrote, this is indeed a great victory. I endorse phone free schools, and am increasingly interested in tech-free schools (no laptops either, kaboom, let’s experiment on that).

Still, I wrote:

When schools put these policies in place, do the smartphone minutes actually go down?

That is:

Lots of schools have dress codes that are (ahem) ignored.

Lots of teachers assign homework that is….never done.

Common Core and many state math standards call for kids to gain automaticity in multiplication, fractions, etc. Doesn’t happen IRL.

Kids are often assigned to do work on edtech products, like Khan Academy, yet we know for sure that…many kids simply don’t do it. There are some high quality RCTs showing this.

Anecdotally, we know that kids are dodging the smartphone bans sometimes. Edweek surveyed educators to find out how.

I would frame it way:

What if, by 2027, smartphone use by teens in schools has dropped from, say, 90 minutes (now) during the school day to 75 minutes per day?

I would call that a win for Haidt.

Would he call it a win? Would he expect a much bigger drop?

*

Overall, I think Haidt has successfully Sounded The Alarm.

Are we seeing big consumption changes from these exhortations, parent groups, and laws? Don’t think so. Hope I’m wrong!

And that’s why I want to dedicate my remaining blogs to parents who:

1. Have heard the Anxious Generation alarm from Paul Revere Haidt, and believe it (like me)

2. Have to face the unpleasant task of doing something about it on their own