Parents managing addictive scrolling

In today’s Sunday Times, Charlotte Ivers laments “GenZ is paying for our dire social experiment.” Her concern has resonated through the conference halls kf major edtech events I have attended since 2024.

“Twenty, even ten, years ago we were not to know that social media would rewire our children’s brains, that short-form video and addictive platforms would make it harder for them to focus, to read, to think, to enjoy traditional activities which do not involve constant dopamine hits.

“Even if we take out the extremes - leaving aside the content that promotes eating disorders, the self-harm advice, the violence, the hate speech - we were not to know that social media, once lauded as the ultimate triumph of the open society, would expose our children to a degree of social comparison unrivalled in any generation previously, and that this would make many of them small and scared and sad.

“And now we do know. I do not think it is unreasonable to compare what has happened in the past decade or so to the trajectory of the tobacco industry, or the use of leaded petrol which reduced cognitive ability and increased behavioural problems throughout a generation in some areas. As happened in the case of both those examples, we are now coming to know the full consequences. We no longer have the excuse of ignorance.

“It is astonishing to me that the main concern of most of the young parents I know is how to prevent their offspring from becoming addicted to screens. How remarkable that such a question would not have even occurred to my parents 25 years ago. It just wasn’t a problem. In the space of a generation and a bit we have created an entirely new challenge, which nows seems to be the biggest source of anxiety among many parents and may prove a generationally devastating source of inequality based on which families have the time and resources to tackle it, and which families do not.

“On a political, societal and individual level, we must do what we can to fix the terrible damage we have inflicted on the present generation of young people. Then we must ensyre we do not repeat it with the next.”