Tyler Cowen excerpts Peter Gray on children and smartphones. I’ll have to read the book, but the reason I am skeptical of these “anti–moral panic” responses to Haidt et al is that they work from a strange premise: If empirical studies cannot demonstrate that smartphones and/or social media are a mega-mono-cause for child and teen suffering (esp. mental health but other areas as well), then it necessarily follows that we need not be particularly worried about them, they must not be doing much harm, and we ought simply to find a proper use for them. As Gray writes:

Future research should focus on understanding better the ways teens use these tools and how to help them maximize the benefits and minimize the harm.

But why should we make this assumption? We don’t need smartphones or social media to be the mega-mono-cause of anything to see with our own eyes how they are affecting young people. Why treat them as “merely” a neutral tool? Why not still go ahead and restrict them to adults? The burden of proof is on those who presuppose their teen use, not on those who are cautious about a global generational experiment.