LIKE most other teenagers, I was obsessed with my image: self-conscious, insecure, and anxious about what others thought of me.
What I could not know was that my prefrontal cortex — the area of my brain responsible for social interaction, social-understanding, self-awareness, reflection, judgement, and decision-making — had not matured yet, and would not do so until I was in my twenties. Adolescence is a period of huge social and emotional development. I, like every other young person, was literally in the painful process of inventing my identity.
Adolescent anxiety is as ancient as humanity. What is new is the rise of the internet, smartphones, tech giants, and the 24-hour news cycle. The problem is that we have not yet had enough experience of this new world to understand its full impact on childhood and adolescent brain development.
Homo sapiens has been around for 200,000 years. Those large and complex brains of ours have adapted to life in the small, close-knit, multi-family, multi-generational communities in which we have always lived. These provided the breadth of connections which children need to thrive as they grow. We are social animals. We crave being known; we flourish when we are connected, and we struggle when we are not.
THE first iPhone was introduced in 2007, and the front-facing camera in 2010. Their effect on how we live, communicate, work, and play has been extraordinary. Previously, a mobile phone was primarily for chatting with friends. The idea that the smartphone would become ubiquitous — seamlessly combining a phone, music player, movie camera and editing suite, computer, and a full communications centre — was the stuff of sci-fi fantasies.
Yet, as countless studies reveal, children spend ever less time socialising in person, and more time glued to their screens, sending selfies and seeking “likes” in a desperate bid to avoid online shaming. It is a vortex that preys on their natural insecurities, and can often sway their judgement, sometimes sucking them into a world of depression, anxiety, sexual exploitation, self-harm, or worse.
As the founder of a group of more than 50 schools, I know that safeguarding children is being made harder by social-media companies’ irresponsible behaviour and lack of self-regulation — illustrated in Meta’s recent decision to lower the minimum age for WhatsApp users from 16 to 13 — and the lack of creativity and courage from policy-makers to rein them in and channel the undoubted positives that they bring.
But the real issue is deeper: parents, schools, wider society, or Meta, do not have any real idea about the ages of the children using the app. It is an irony that, as society has become overprotective of children’s physical health and safety, it does so little to protect those same children from online danger.
In his recent book The Anxious Generation, the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt refers to this digital revolution as “the Great Rewiring of Childhood”. Childhood is no longer “play-based”, but “phone-based”, and smartphones are “experience blockers”. Consider how many enriching activities, he asks, are replaced for young people by spending hours online, substituting the richness of real-life friendships with shallow and sometimes dangerous online communication.
Haidt then makes an extraordinary statement: “There’s a God-shaped hole in every human heart. . . If it doesn’t get filled with something noble and elevated, modern society will quickly pump it full of garbage.”
He calls for phones to be banned in schools. On this, though, I disagree. That will not fill the hole — the longing to matter and for meaningful relationship.
THE problem is not about what happens in school buildings. Most schools already have good policies in place. It is about what happens beyond them, when a child heads home. And it is here that the Church has an opportunity responsibly to raise its voice and to take action to create protection and safety for young people.
In terms of campaigning, the only sensible pathway is the introduction of legislation making it illegal to sell a smartphone (as opposed to a mobile phone) to a child aged under 16. This is not the “nanny state”: it is the same wisdom as we employ regarding alcohol, gambling, the vote, and driving licences.
But the opportunity for grass-roots action is this: even if children attend school every day, this amounts to less than 20 per cent of their time. The majority of their time is spent elsewhere. Where are they? What are they doing? Who is with them? What are they learning?
Schools provide “formal education”, but children’s and youth clubs have traditionally served as their hardworking cousin — creating vital support and “informal education” around young people out of school hours. The decline of this vital support, through lack of consistent funding for youth work, both statutory and voluntary, has been a societal catastrophe, which has robbed countless teenagers of safe spaces where they can enjoy being young and have a sense of belonging.
None of this can be disassociated from the mental-health crisis and the sense of isolation and boredom that gets filled with smartphone time, or the quest for meaning, community, and relationship.
Traditionally, the Church has been a great pioneer for children. It is here, alongside our huge and existing commitment to schools, that we should once again be organising ourselves.
The Revd Steve Chalke is the founder of the Oasis Charitable Trust.