Sandpoint High School teacher Conor Baranski took a group of students to New York City for a rigorous academic conference.
After a three-hour session, one of his students powered her phone back on. She had over 90 notifications, just from her boyfriend.
That’s not abnormal, Baranski told a group of parents and community members Tuesday evening.
Teens are addicted to their phones and it’s causing a host of problems from difficulties socializing, sleeping, and identifying predators online.
On Tuesday, parents listened to experts at Lake Pend Oreille School District’s second annual safety summit.
The summit covered ideas from the best-selling book The Anxious Generation, along with sextortion, addiction and other online dangers.
Phone-based childhood
When Becca Palmer was a kid, staying busy and entertained was on her, not her parents.
“When we were kids and we were bored, we were expected to make games,” said Palmer, a Gen X English Language Arts teacher at Clark Fork High School. “Now that’s not the case.”
Instead, parents either entertain their children or phones do, she said. This creates disembodied communication, where kids don’t get an immediate reaction from one-on-one communication. Instead, people online respond whenever.
This lack of direct communication can lead to a lack of accountability.
“Our communities are going to hold us accountable for our behavior,” Palmer said.
She and Baranski pointed to studies that showed teens’ social media use has skyrocketed since 2015.
A 2022 Pew research study found that 54% of teens said it would be hard to give up social media.
Nearly all teens, at 95%, had access to a smartphone in 2022 and roughly one-in-five teens said they are almost constantly on YouTube.
All of these factors have led to the decline of a play-based childhood, Palmer said, citing the Anxious Generation.
“Play is the work of childhood,” Palmer said. “This is how they learn their boundaries, this is how they learn what hurts and doesn’t.”
The teachers pointed to four main harms of a phone-based childhood:
- Social Deprivation
- Sleep Deprivation
- Attention Fragmentation
- Addiction
Parents listen to law enforcement officers discuss student safety online at Sandpoint High School Tuesday.
Access to the whole world
Lonie Whiteman, a Kootenai County Juvenile Probation Officer, told parents she sees a lack of resilience among the teens she serves.
“These kids will have a breakdown, a lot of them, if you take their phone from them,” Whiteman said.
Jeremy McMillen, a Post Falls Police detective, said often when law enforcement is called to a home for a problem between a parent and child it’s because the adult took their child’s phone away and the child, in response, battered their parent.
Phones also open up children to dangerous activities, like drugs, pornography and grooming.
“It’s like DoorDashing drugs to your house,” Whiteman said of cellphone apps.
McMillen warned of online groups that popped up during the COVID-19 pandemic and have stuck around that encourage kids to self-harm and film it then upload it online.
They encouraged parents to monitor their children’s phones, set parental controls, and have open and honest conversations about the dangers online.
Most importantly, Whiteman said, parents should wait as long as possible to get their kids a smartphone. Even waiting one extra year until their kids are 16 can make a huge difference, she said.
For some parents in attendance, the event was a chance to start thinking about how to address technology with their young children.
Amy Gunter has a first grader and a child in pre-k. Parenting through technology is “overwhelming,” she said.
She appreciated the district holding the event because they’re looking at the whole child and family.
“This is impacting all of our kids and our families and just looking at it fr0m that step back and that bigger lens is really helpful,” she said.
Kristin Carlson, who has a sophomore and a sixth grader, said she attended the event because while most people know phone culture is a problem, it can be hard as a parent to set aside time to think about it and address it.
Carlson said her 16-year-old has a phone but her sixth grader has a watch that she can text him on. She’s hoping to delay getting her youngest a phone after Tuesday’s presentation.
“This is our kids’ safety,” Carlson said. “It was valuable and it was terrifying.”
