Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has done tremendous work in shedding light on the negative impact of tech on children and youth. When I watch his talks, I nevertheless get always an uneasy feeling. There he is on the stage, the star social psychologist, who has mobilized millions of parents and teachers to get child screen junkies off their addiction. It’s difficult to not agree with his message. Screen addiction is real, shortened attention spans are real, brain rot is real.
In his latest TED talk from April 2026, he refers to biologist E. O. Wilson by describing the human species as being ultrasocial like ants or bees and argues in line with cognitive psychologist Daniel Levitin who wrote in The Organized Mind, that the cost of all our electronic connectedness appears to be that it limits our biological capacity to connect with other people. To start with, I am not so sure if all of us are ultrasocial. Humanity is at least as diverse as bees and E. O. Wilson must have known that there are not only ultrasocial honeybees but also solitary wild bees.
Think about the implications of forcing a wild bee to join a honeybee hive. Take this analogy a step further and think of an autonomous learner being pushed into a school which like most follow an industrial education approach. I challenge Haidt’s assumption that all humans are ultrasocial with psychologist Howard Gardner’s research on multiple intelligence. We are very diverse, not only in how we learn, but also in how we socialize.
In his latest TED talk from April 2026, he refers to biologist E. O. Wilson by describing the human species as being ultrasocial like ants or bees and argues in line with cognitive psychologist Daniel Levitin who wrote in The Organized Mind, that the cost of all our electronic connectedness appears to be that it limits our biological capacity to connect with other people. To start with, I am not so sure if all of us are ultrasocial. Humanity is at least as diverse as bees and E. O. Wilson must have known that there are not only ultrasocial honeybees but also solitary wild bees.
Think about the implications of forcing a wild bee to join a honeybee hive. Take this analogy a step further and think of an autonomous learner being pushed into a school which like most follow an industrial education approach. I challenge Haidt’s assumption that all humans are ultrasocial with psychologist Howard Gardner’s research on multiple intelligence. We are very diverse, not only in how we learn, but also in how we socialize.
Then Haidt tells the audience that in schools which ban smartphones, teachers are pleased to have their students’ attention back and to hear laughter in the hallways again. It’s a beautiful narrative of how the ban of smartphones heals a broken system. I think the narrative doesn’t work. It is built on the assumption that schools were working before the arrival of smart phones, but that’s certainly not true. What is truly broken, is the industrial education system which is embedded in capitalist extraction economies. It a system which pitches students against students and parents against parents. It turns the individual bee into a resource which is farmed for honey – honey being her a metaphor for, you guess it, money.
The wording which Haidt uses reflects in which spaces and dimensions he thinks. He describes “laughter in hallways” instead of laughter in forests – as if ignoring what Richard Loev described before the arrival of smart phones as a crisis in the US education system in his 2005 book The Last Child in the Woods. Haidt wants us to prioritize books over screens and forgets how the focus on books alienated so many children and youth from themselves and deprived them from hands-on learning experiences.
I get the impression that he asks us to go back to where we were before the 2010s, when he should be asking for a revolution in education like Ken Robinson did in 2010 in another highly successful TED talk. Smart phones and screen education took off back then, because education systems all around the world were not working and were sucked into a new era of competitiveness. Digital technology promised a complete transformation of learning, and we went for it without thinking twice. Why did we do so? Was it only because highly competitive nation economies tried to take the next leap into outperforming each other or was there something wrong with how schools operated back then? I guess it was both, but we certainly did not put the well-being of students and teachers first, but the the economic system tried to squeeze even more out of an already exhausted life stock.
The wording which Haidt uses reflects in which spaces and dimensions he thinks. He describes “laughter in hallways” instead of laughter in forests – as if ignoring what Richard Loev described before the arrival of smart phones as a crisis in the US education system in his 2005 book The Last Child in the Woods. Haidt wants us to prioritize books over screens and forgets how the focus on books alienated so many children and youth from themselves and deprived them from hands-on learning experiences.
I get the impression that he asks us to go back to where we were before the 2010s, when he should be asking for a revolution in education like Ken Robinson did in 2010 in another highly successful TED talk. Smart phones and screen education took off back then, because education systems all around the world were not working and were sucked into a new era of competitiveness. Digital technology promised a complete transformation of learning, and we went for it without thinking twice. Why did we do so? Was it only because highly competitive nation economies tried to take the next leap into outperforming each other or was there something wrong with how schools operated back then? I guess it was both, but we certainly did not put the well-being of students and teachers first, but the the economic system tried to squeeze even more out of an already exhausted life stock.
I agree with Haidt, that we need to be technoskeptics, but the focus on technology conceals a layer of systems awareness which has rendered social media and much of educational technology into a tool for exploitation and oppression. Rather than making technology the scapegoat for dropping test scores, a mental health pandemic, and a cultural crisis, we should be asking what turned technology into such a demon in the first place.
Theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson said that “technology is a gift of God, after the gift of life, it is perhaps the greatest of God's gifts, it is the mother of civilizations, of arts and of sciences. Was he wrong in saying this? If it was not for technology, wouldn’t humanity still live in caves? Psychologist Adam Alter wrote in Irresistible – The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping us Hooked, that tech is not inherently good or bad, yet it seems to mostly turn bad when governments supercharge it with power politics and corporations with profitability.
Culture critic Douglas Rushkoff tries to explain in Survival of the Richest how technology turned from a story of collective flourishing into a story of individual accumulation of wealth. He writes that tech billionaires have succumbed to a mindset where winning means earning enough money to insulate themselves from the damage they are creating by earning money in that way: Digital innovations were no longer about changing the world but keeping the old system firmly in place. […] Money was no longer seen as a way to fund new technologies; new technologies became understood purely as ways of making fast money – as long as you could get out in time.
The layer of systems awareness, which is obscured by a solitary focus on technology, is how economic frame conditions shape technologies. You cannot transcend the system in which you are embedded unless you leave it or transform it for good. Education is no exception. In other words, as long as you run schools within a capitalist economy, they will be subject to the same mechanism which Haidt describes through his lens of technological damage.
Theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson said that “technology is a gift of God, after the gift of life, it is perhaps the greatest of God's gifts, it is the mother of civilizations, of arts and of sciences. Was he wrong in saying this? If it was not for technology, wouldn’t humanity still live in caves? Psychologist Adam Alter wrote in Irresistible – The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping us Hooked, that tech is not inherently good or bad, yet it seems to mostly turn bad when governments supercharge it with power politics and corporations with profitability.
Culture critic Douglas Rushkoff tries to explain in Survival of the Richest how technology turned from a story of collective flourishing into a story of individual accumulation of wealth. He writes that tech billionaires have succumbed to a mindset where winning means earning enough money to insulate themselves from the damage they are creating by earning money in that way: Digital innovations were no longer about changing the world but keeping the old system firmly in place. […] Money was no longer seen as a way to fund new technologies; new technologies became understood purely as ways of making fast money – as long as you could get out in time.
The layer of systems awareness, which is obscured by a solitary focus on technology, is how economic frame conditions shape technologies. You cannot transcend the system in which you are embedded unless you leave it or transform it for good. Education is no exception. In other words, as long as you run schools within a capitalist economy, they will be subject to the same mechanism which Haidt describes through his lens of technological damage.
What other perspectives can be offered? If we agree that the ultra-capitalist system is the root cause of the damage done by tech in kids and youth, then we should consider alternatives to capitalism, no matter how utopian this might sound. The most insightful argument in favor of such an alternative that I have come across in the last few years, came from a neuroscientist. Interestingly, she is very much in line with Haidt’s first rule of technoskepticism: protect brain development through puberty (at least). Kimberly Noble attributes importance to schooling, but she is also aware of the efforts necessary to make education work and how much it is influenced by the experiences beyond formal schooling. She explains that the true game changer is providing children with the economic welfare that entitles them to a life with the same opportunities as their affluent peers.
So, instead of everyone being forced into the hive, how about giving children and their families the economic resources to stay wild?
So, instead of everyone being forced into the hive, how about giving children and their families the economic resources to stay wild?
Continue reading:
https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_why_you_should_be_a_techno_skeptic
https://www.darkmatteressay.org/the-organized-mind-by-daniel-levitin.html
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/294035.Frames_Of_Mind
https://richardlouv.com/books/last-child
https://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_bring_on_the_learning_revolution
https://adamalterauthor.com/irresistible
https://rushkoff.com/books/survival-of-the-richest.html
https://www.ted.com/talks/kimberly_noble_how_does_income_affect_childhood_brain_development
https://www.darkmatteressay.org/the-practice-of-the-wild-by-gary-snyder.html
