To the editor: “Fear-mongering” is bad, but the opposite can be much worse. An example of this is the recent opinion piece that debates the cause of our country's mental health crisis. (“Do social networks rewire children's brains? This is what science really says”, Opinion, April 26)
Rates of depression, suicide, and psychiatric hospitalization among “hockey-playing” youth increased around 2012 and continued to rise. New York University social psychologist Jonathan Haidt's recent book corroborated what we all felt: smartphones and social media are the main culprits.
The Times op-ed, written by a USC postdoctoral psychology researcher, questioned the theory and noted that scans have not yet shown that social media causes harmful “brain rewiring” in children. But the absence of one type of evidence cannot invalidate a mountain of corresponding deductions.
Haidt's argument is simple: Children's mental health problems skyrocketed the moment social media became ubiquitous. It is clear that screens are robbing children of the attention and time they devote to real-world play and the interpersonal connections necessary for emotional development. So far, no one has proposed a reasonably competitive theory, including the author of the paper.
Discovering psychological distress without brain scans is not fear-mongering. It's science warning everyone about what is damaging our children's psychology.
Brent Giannotta, Pasadena
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To the editor: In 1992, I wrote a paper in graduate school titled “Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? Nobody.” My hypothesis was that young children of that time did not learn to communicate because they had little practice. Families did not sit together at the table, exchange information, ideas, argue and laugh.
I asked parents (both single and “traditional”) to complete a questionnaire about their mealtime routines. I also conducted ethnographic studies in restaurants and cafeterias observing how families interacted, or did not interact, during meals.
What my small study showed was that almost no families regularly sat down to share a meal. I felt like there were real consequences for these kids: They weren't learning or practicing how to have a conversation.
I had no brain scan studies, just my own observations of many young children and their families. These children entered preschool with smaller vocabularies, fewer social skills, less ability to concentrate, and little ability to delay gratification.
Since there are only 24 hours in a day and toddlers are awake for 10 to 12 of them, when do they have meaningful interactions with real people if they are preoccupied with screens? Brain development suffers.
Op-ed author Anthony Vaccaro is right that increased activity in internally focused thinking is not a bad thing. But what is it displacing? Parents should make sure their young children have concrete, real-world experiences, such as eating with people who are important to them.
Genie Saffren, Los Angeles
