COMMENTARY: To get kids offline, let them go outside

Some in Congress want to give teenagers their childhoods back by taking away the last place many of them can gather without adults. That cure may prove worse than the disease.

Reps. Erin Houchin, R-Ind., and Jake Auchincloss, D-Mass., have introduced the 16 &Up Social Media Act. The measure would bar anyone under age 16 from holding an account on a platform with infinite scroll, autoplay, push notifications or personalized feeds — which means nearly every major online platform.

Auchincloss says children “deserve their childhoods back.” He is right about the goal, but wrong about the remedy.

American teenagers report feeling worse than they did a decade ago. In the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 40 percent of high-school students reported persistent sadness or hopelessness in 2023, up from 30 percent in 2013.

Fortunately, the share reporting suicide attempts hasn’t risen appreciably since the surveys began in 1991. Still, the kids clearly aren’t all right.

Is social media to blame? At most, it appears to be a small part of the problem. While many studies find a “statistically significant” correlation between social-media use and poor mental health, meaning the association is unlikely to be random, its magnitude is tiny. In arguably the most robust analysis yet, Amy Orben of Cambridge University and Andrew Przybylski of Oxford University found that technology use explained at most 0.4 percent of the variation in teenage well-being. Bullying had an effect 4.3 times as large. Wearing eyeglasses had an effect 1.5 times as large.

Jonathan Haidt of New York University argues that social media causes much greater harm. Yet Candice Odgers of the University of California, Irvine, wrote in a review of his book “The Anxious Generation” that hundreds of researchers have looked for effects as large as those he describes. They have found “a mix of no, small and mixed associations.”

Instead, the evidence shows that childhood itself has changed far more dramatically. Two-thirds of American middle-school-age children can’t leave their yards without an adult. Among 15- to 24-year-olds, time spent with friends in person fell nearly 70 percent between 2003 and 2020. Homework, car dependence and parental anxiety have crowded out independent play and social freedom.

Peter Gray makes this case in his book “Restoring Childhood.” He argues that children have lost the freedom to explore and take age-appropriate risks, and with it the chance to develop confidence and resilience. Screens fill the resulting void.

Indeed, Haidt devoted much of “The Anxious Generation” to the disappearance of a “play-based childhood.” Haidt, Gray and “Free-Range Kids” author Lenore Skanazy have co-founded Let Grow, an organization campaigning to restore children’s independence.

A blanket social-media ban could deepen the problem. Take away the last place teenagers can meet without an adult, and they won’t necessarily head to the skate park. Many will instead simply become more isolated.

Such bans are also easy to evade. Australia barred children under 16 from social media last December, yet a June study of 436 adolescents found that 86 percent of those under 16 had continued using prohibited platforms. Many browsed while logged out, which means they were beyond the reach of safety settings designed for minors. A University of San Francisco-led review published Sept. 10 found that users commonly circumvent age checks and that proposed biometric and artificial-intelligence verification systems have unresolved problems.

These costs would hit children with the least offline support hardest. A review of 26 studies found that social media can support LGBTQ youths’ mental health by helping them find peers and explore their identities. A ban would serve to further cut off a teenager who isn’t out at home. Autistic teenagers and those with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder also use Discord, Reddit and specialized forums to socialize through text, at their own pace, without the sensory overload of a school hallway.

Congress has a better option. In May, Reps. Blake Moore, R-Utah, and Jennifer McClellan, D-Va., introduced the Promoting Childhood Independence and Resilience Act. It would encourage states to clarify that letting children walk to school, play in a park or stay home alone doesn’t constitute neglect. Thirteen states have adopted such laws since Utah acted in 2018.

Parents needn’t wait for Washington. Evidence suggests that programs that teach teenagers to use social media responsibly outperform strict limits, which are themselves associated with problematic use. Optional speed bumps can also help. The “one sec” app, which asks users to pause before opening another app, reduced openings by 57 percent.

The best antidote to too much time online is a childhood worth logging off for: a walk to the park, a bike ride with friends or a night with no adult in charge.

Julian Morris is a senior scholar with the International Center for Law &Economics. Ben Sperry is a senior scholar with the center. Lura Forcum is a consumer and social psychologist. They are co-authors of the ICLE white paper “The Forbidden Feed: Adolescent Well-Being and the Limits of Social-Media Regulation.” They wrote this for InsideSources.com.