Here is a thought. Perhaps phones are not the root issue. Look at the state of society right now. So many of us are ideologically divided to the point where people are afraid to be themselves. This is not an environment where the youth flourish.
Our inability to collectively get along ramped up exponentially as smartphones took off. Phones, and the platforms within that people have become dependent upon, are the root.
Edit: Instead of getting to know people at a deep level, understanding what shapes their core views and how they view the world, and constructively communicating with them to shape their worldview over time for the better, we prefer to yell and scream at each other in 140 characters for the sake of upvotes.
Real change and progress takes time and effort, but for some reason we're collectively deluded into thinking that it'll happen via upvotes in 45 seconds and without ever having looked one another in the eye.
We're absolutely fascinated by them. Gobsmacked.
And many people blindly believe what they see on their screens because they don't know any better. They trust the article they read without thinking too deeply about it or looking for alternative perspectives. They gobble up the reel they just watched and are irate about whatever it told them to be irate about. But this isn't anything new, just look at how easily grandma and grandpa gobbled up whatever Fox News fed them in 1998, or what heavily edited images designed to manipulate their thoughts and opinions they were exposed to in the 70s, the 80s when they turned the television on.
Screens have always, and will always, be used to manipulate people, and that's been incredibly amplified over the past 15-20 years.
Yet if you take the screen away and spend time connecting with people on a deeper level, really spend time getting to know them, life feels a hell of a lot different than what the screens show you. Understanding one another is a hell of a lot easier. Everyone can see exactly the same thing as the other person - the analog, meatspace world around them that isn't being manipulated and twisted in an effort to get them to think a certain way.
It's the screens.
I also raised two children. My eldest is 18 and only now has a phone. When your children are adults you may no longer feel that phones, or screens, are the root cause. But, the whole world will have changed by then, so time will tell.
> Yet if you take the screen away and spend time connecting with people on a deeper level, really spend time getting to know them, life feels a hell of a lot different than what the screens show you.
I am not disagreeing with you here. My point is that the reason society is divided is not fundamentally because of phones or screens and removing them does not magically remove our ideological differences.
Differences of opinion are okay, but it's harder to get along when our lives are lived in spaces that silo us off and encourage distrust and anger. Screens do that to us, meatspace doesn't.
But there are plenty of places in the world that don't seem quite as negatively affected to me, and even where screens are not the main culprit behind government/corporate manipulation and control.
You're never going to get people to stop using social media, but maybe it ought to be possible to regulate better.
We're literally allowing people with bad intentions have a direct contact with children. It's insane.
Not to mention that I learned that nowadays lying for some benefit on social media is completely normalized.
Lying used to be off-putting in western society, and would be a clear red line.
I keep seeing this crop up in the id verification discussions. The same psychological processes that social media companies exploit in children exist in adults and have the same result. The problem isn't manipulating children, it's that they're manipulating everyone.