The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure

by Jonathan Haidt

One conclusion that future research is almost certain to reach is that the effects of smartphones and social media are complicated, involving mixtures of benefits and harms depending on which kinds of kids are doing which kinds of online activities instead of doing which kinds of offline activities. One factor that is already emerging as a central variable for study is the quality of a teenager’s relationships and how technology is impacting it. In a recent review of research on the effects of social media, social psychologists Jenna Clark, Sara Algoe, and Melanie Green offer this principle: “Social network sites benefit their users when they are used to make meaningful social connections and harm their users through pitfalls such as isolation and social comparison when they are not.”