> No, those other devices are not attached to your hip every waking moment, they don't interrupt your regular thought patterns and daily activities, they don't track your movements through physical space and people you physically associate with, and people mostly don't take them to bed and use them before sleep and first thing after they wake up.
And yet, there are plenty of people who have smartphone and don't use them in the way you describe it. So my question is: how do you explain that, according to you, all over the world, people ended up reacting to smartphones in a way that is similar, but, according to you, it is unrealistic to say that maybe, all over the world, people ended up reacting in the same way faced with other recent worldwide changes?
That's my point: smartphones is used the same way around the world shows that people around the world adopt similar behavior in similar circumstance, which is a counter-argument to your idea that it is not possible.
> 1. Prove the existence of this global shift in attitude against globalization.
It is not to me to prove it. You are saying "the _only_ change is the smartphone", and I'm saying "are you sure? from what I see, I really feel like there are others, for example X or Y. Sure, maybe I'm wrong, but you are the only claiming there is only one, so, surely, you have number demonstrating X and Y is not a change", and you answer "I have no proof that X or Y was not a change, but I have decided they are not"
> . Again, the trends are among teens and pre-teens. Prove that this cohort knew or even cared about these issues. There is no trend of parental well being decreasing, therefore your claim that this would not apparently affect parents but would somehow affect children is bordering on the absurd.
Well, if these teens and pre-teens watch TV, or even watch TikTok videos made by young adults, then, yes, they are directly feed by the tone that people directly concerned by these problems (unless you pretend that TV is made by pre-teens).
Honestly, you seems to have a very naive and simplistic vision of sociology. Sociology is hard, social interaction and influence between groups are very very very very complicated. It's very ridiculous to pretend that pre-teens are not influenced by adults: the majority of the content they are feed is directly from adults and the rest is from teens trying to imitate adults.
> Not the algorithmically curated feeds optimized to drive engagement. Not phones with self-facing cameras.
And globalization existed for ages, but not with the algorithmically optimised information exchange, not with the mass tracking and recording of human resources.
If you pretend that this argument for the change of context for social media is enough to induce the change, then change of context for globalization is also enough.
> All technological gadgets that had dramatic social effects.
Where did I say the opposite? I've said "is as simple as ....". They had dramatic social effects, but they were not simple. The impact of printing press, for example, was strongly modulated by the pre-existing graphs. For example, European press had a big impact because they printed a best seller: the Bible, with roman characters that made the pages look as good as hand-written. In Muslim countries, the printing press boom was strongly affected by the fact that, by chance, arabic script is way more tricky to decompose in movable type. The result was that they did not print religious text because it would have been ungodly to diffuse it with simplified characters. The printing press dramatic social effects was not the results of a technological gadget, it was the results of social interactions and circumstances. In a parallel universe where all graphs were as complex as arabic script, you would have introduced the printing press and this "dramatic effect" would not have happened. So, no, simply introducing a technological gadget like the "printing press" is not enough to have a dramatic social effect.
No, whatever you are saying, depression did not just pop out just because we gave piece of plastic and metal to teenage girl. There were a lot of social interaction and social trend involved too. As long as you have a naive and simplistic grip on those, all your conclusions on "how to solve it" are based on "proverbial wisdom" (which is fine), not on "science".
And as I've said before, I'm myself 100% for banning smartphone in school, I think it will be very good for mental health. Yet, it is dangerous to reducing this complex problem to one easy and comfortable enemy.
> Not "showed", "claimed", and poorly at that. They're wrong. Everyone who has ever quit social media for any extended period has reported improvements in well being. Those are direct interventions that test the dose-response hypothesis.
It's hilarious that you say "they are wrong" and then say "everyone who has ever quit social media has reported improvements" as you stupidly think experts who questioned Haidt logic don't agree with that.
> Those are direct interventions that test the dose-response hypothesis.
Well, you should go to the end of your experiment then: if the smartphones are the problem, it means that someone who has quit social media but still kept a smartphone should not have reported improvements in well being. Is it the case?
On top of that, how do you count the number of people who don't go out of social media and are not unhappy. Or the one that are more happy with social media. This is a typical survival bias: of course people who feel better after quitting will say it out loud. People who don't feel better or even feel worse don't come to you to say "yeah,you know what, I stop social media and it did not change anything". And what about the fact that people quitting social media decide also to "not care anymore" which means they are less affected by non-social-media stress? All you see is that some people are stressed when on social media, which is a consensus that nobody denies.
All you are saying is that you are unable to fathom that 1) smartphones cannot be used differently than in a toxic way, 2) social media can only be used by smartphones
>> showing how those trends in these articles have been cherry-picked
> They're wrong.
I don't understand that. What these experts are showing is from the articles that Haidt used, they are parts that Haidt "forgot" to mention.
How can they be wrong? How is that possible to show some paragraphs showing that the article was way more nuanced as Haidt is saying it is? Either they are wrong and those paragraphs don't exist, either they are legitimate.
But you don't care about the reality, don't you? You decided that these authors are wrong, you don't even need to read their articles to know it's the case. I personally don't care if Haidt is wrong or not, I don't understand why people like you are so invested. It is not difficult: blaming all on smartphones is just not scientific. It does not mean we should not ban the smartphones. But it means that all blaming on smartphones is dangerous and will have bad consequences (mainly because we are not going to fix the problem, just hide it and pretend it's fine while it's not).