The class divide on smartphones in schools

Plus: kids playing in the street, the saddest friend machine, and more

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A take I haven’t written elsewhere

The class divide on smartphones in schools

(via)

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s first-of-its-kind executive order for “establishing phone-free education,” signed this month, announced itself as a fulfillment of the will of the people—in particular, the parents. But if they accept that premise, officials tasked with carrying out the order may be in for a shock. When they start talking to Virginians, they’ll discover that most American parents reject phone-free schools.

American parents want a phone-based childhood

That may be hard to believe if, like me, you’re convinced by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s widely disseminated anti-smartphone arguments. It may also come as a surprise if you tend to read prestige media, for Haidt-style skepticism has become a consensus position among technological, journalistic, and political elites in the post-pandemic years. You can find exceptions, of course, but the tilt of the scales is sharp.

Silicon Valley venture capitalists and software engineers were, as ever, early adopters. By 2018, many technologists who “know how phones really work” had “decided they don’t want their own children anywhere near them.” Six years later, that stance is in evidence across The New York Times's opinion stable. The Atlantic speaks with a similarly consistent voice, and so does The Washington Post, where the editorial board has endorsed phone-free schools. Haidt himself is widely published and runs a popular Substack (After Babel), and his claims echo all through elite discourse.