Peter Gray Calls School Pressure a Factor in Teen Mental Health Decline
Psychology researcher Peter Gray argues in his book Restoring Childhood that the deterioration of teenagers’ mental health in the 2010s may be linked not primarily to smartphones and social media, but to stricter teaching methods, the Common Core curriculum, and government pressure over students’ academic performance. The Verge reports on Gray’s arguments.
Gray’s book is a response to social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s work The Anxious Generation. Haidt linked the noticeable deterioration in teenagers’ mental health after 2010 to increased use of social media and smartphones. The Verge notes that his ideas are associated, among other things, with the introduction of a nationwide social media ban for teenagers in Australia.
Disagreements over social media
Gray said that, in his view, Haidt ignored dozens of meta-analyses and other studies that found no significant correlation between time spent using social media or smartphones and children’s mental health. According to Gray, if such a link can be traced, some teenagers may use social media to cope with depression or anxiety.
He also cited a study in Florida according to which children aged 11 to 13 who had smartphones were more likely to spend time with friends offline. In Gray’s view, the findings of this work indicate that taking a smartphone away from a child may negatively affect their life satisfaction and the number of contacts with friends.
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School workload and independence
According to Gray, in studies where children were asked about sources of anxiety, stress, or depression, school pressure most often ranked first. He stressed that this does not mean there is the same cause of problems for every child, but, in his assessment, educational workload prevails among other factors at the level of the group as a whole.
At the same time, Gray and Haidt agree that increasing restrictions on children’s independence and the reduction of unstructured play since at least the 1980s may have weakened their resilience. In 2017, they jointly founded the organization Let Grow, which advocates policies allowing parents to give children more freedom, including to play outdoors independently. After Haidt’s book was published, Gray left the organization’s board to avoid a conflict.
Haidt did not respond to The Verge’s request for comment. Earlier, he told The Atlantic that the decline in teen suicide rates in the 1990s and early 2000s may have been linked to the gradual phaseout of leaded gasoline. He also believed that Gray relies too heavily on the views of a minority of researchers. Some experts interviewed by The Atlantic expressed concern that Haidt overstates the strength of correlational data and assumes a causal relationship where one has not been proven.
Gray does not oppose certain restrictions, including phone bans in schools and age verification for access to pornography. At the same time, he doubts the effectiveness of social media bans because children can circumvent them, and proposes that parents teach children how to use the platforms. The Verge also notes that the United Kingdom and the European Union are considering possible restrictions for platforms, while California and New York have already adopted restrictions on certain social media features.
