“Harness” (2025)

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2,797 words, 15 minutes read time.

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Science tells us that social media overstimulates a teenager’s reward center in their brains, which leads to increased sensitivity to social feedback, potential feelings of anxiety and depression from social comparisons, and disruptions to sleep patterns. That’s a lot.  

Our brightest minds are researching the topic, and they are doing podcasts, writing books, and giving speeches all over the country and world, performing critical early work trying to understand the impact of social media on the lives of our developing children. 

But there haven’t been enough years gone by to know how the early trends will shape their minds and lives. None of America’s (or the world’s) greatest minds—tech giants, scientists, and policy makers alike—know the long-term effects. They can speculate, theorize, and project, but in terms of how many eons the human brain has evolved, and how sudden and influential social media is, the long-term impact is impossible to know. This is brand new.  

It’s a technology that has advanced so fast that it took only a few years for the science fiction from my childhood to go from “Oh, cool” to “Ho-hum.” When I graduated from high school in 1984, I could watch Star Trek and see Spock on an unknown planet call Captain Kirk on the U.S.S. Enterprise using a handheld device smaller than a deck of cards. Watching them walk around with no cord attached was the territory of never-ever futuristic space shows. Electronics must have cords. It was set somewhere in the Milky Way galaxy between the years 2265 and 2269, so it was never-ever because it was never ever going to happen. Even when we saw rich people on TV driving a convertible, smiling and holding brick-sized cell phones, we couldn’t fathom the capabilities of a flip-phone for everyone, let alone a smart phone. We couldn’t imagine having the ability to walk around the block while chatting with someone in Japan, who could also walk around the block while chatting. We had already stopped marveling at the technology seen on Star Trek because never-ever lasted a couple decades.

By 2010, smartphones replaced flip-phones, the front-facing camera became available, and by 2015, social media was in the driver’s seat. But not without repercussions. Not coincidentally, in 2016, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) reported in a study that “an abrupt increase in the proportion of adolescents getting insufficient sleep after 2011–2013, with more than 40% sleeping less than 7 hours most nights in 2015.” This was before Tik-Tok existed, and Meta and Snapchat hadn’t yet taken advantage of the ensuing decade and spent billions of dollars honing their ability to clasp young people, and most adults, to their phones. 

My first period class contains 28 names, but 12 stayed home or haven’t arrived. Several students will trickle in one at a time between 15 and 60 minutes after class starts. For the past three years, this has been a steady pattern for me and every teacher that I work with, as well as teacher friends I have in other states. 

This is me asking 16 tenth graders to go on the school district’s online platform to find today’s online folder on their laptops. “On Schoology, you’ll find the materials you need for lesson 7 in the purple Week 7 folder. It’s at the top of the page called, ‘Narrative Planning Organizer’.”  

To accommodate all students, I provide the path of folders in my teacher version of Schoology (the district’s online platform) by displaying it on the 55-inch screen: 

English 10 > Unit 2 > Week 8 > Lesson 7 

After a minute or so, Elias isn’t reaching for his laptop, so I direct a question to him: “Elias, what did I just say?”  

“I don’t know.” He was looking at his phone. He still is. He’s a good kid and will eventually complete his work. He might even contribute to a class discussion, but he looks tired and slouches miserably, so it’s possible he keeps quiet today. 

“Would you like me to repeat what I said?”  

“Yes.”  

Before I can repeat it, he reaches for his laptop, and then Andrew walks in 10 minutes late and needs to be told where we are. He’s a tall, lanky, and athletic kid with a black hoody over his unkempt hair, and his eyes are reduced to slits in his face. Later, when I am closer to him, I see that his eyes are slightly swollen. 

I repeat it again and point to the 55-inch screen for his benefit and anyone else who may have been distracted, and then a few minutes later, Layla walks in. She appears like Andrew, except she wears plaid green and red pajama bottoms that she likely got for Christmas, and she is also wearing a hoody, which is tie-dyed. Ten minutes later, Andrew’s laptop is open and humming, and he wants to know: “Mr. Flavin, where do I find the document for today?” 

“The same folder as the reading.” I point to the screen. 

Fifteen seconds later, Nyko, who generally works studiously, nevertheless asks, “Mr. Flavin, where do I turn it in?”  

“The same folder as the reading.” 

It’s just after the holidays, so we’re about four months into the school year. Students repeat the same process for seven other courses, so they’re well-versed in finding assignments and materials. I also organize the folders, which were standardized for all teachers after the pandemic, but they still don’t seem to know. 

Matty walks in 10 minutes after instruction ends: “What are we doing today?”  

Now I have a decision to make: Do I explain everything a fourth time, or do I say, “Sorry, kid. You were late. Figure it out”? 

Experiencing this daily in all of my classes makes me wonder. Where will America’s future leaders take our country’s work force, economy, or our collective mental health? Where will they lead crime rates, the formation of families, or their civic and political involvement? Long-term, how does this debilitating device play into the future?  

Nobody knows where the impact of social media will take youth twenty and thirty years from now, but there are people making it their life’s work to begin to understand the shorter-term impacts. 

Anna Lembke—an American psychiatrist, Chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic at Stanford University, and specialist in the opioid epidemic—wrote in her 2021 book, Dopamine Nation, that the smartphone is a “modern-day hypodermic needle.” 

If one looks for counterarguments, there are benefits related to the use of social media, but none of it refutes the impact it is having on 40 million American teenagers waking up for school at six o’clock in the morning. It took barely more than one to sabotage the mental health of our children.  

But let me back up a little. Imagine that in the span of about a decade, we alter the fundamental reality of 40 million teenagers. We take them out of the only analog world that humanity has known since the famous primate Australopithecus afarensis, “Lucy”, traveled the earth 3.2 million years ago. In her world, and ever since, now has always meant now. The people, objects, and terrain in her immediate space constructed her daily experience. Setting aside intelligence for the moment, that daily human experience was the same two million years later, a million years later, a thousand years ago, and for anyone old enough to remember, 20 years ago. The changes in our brains were minutely incremental for 3.2 million years until the smart phone and social media.  

What if the human animal’s brain adapted to Lucy’s framework for all those millions of years with high levels of predictability about what lies ahead, but in no time at all, it shifted to a sedentary life that revolves around a small device 12-15 inches in front of their faces?  

Ninety-five percent of American teenagers own a smart phone, so we’re not having a conversation about a 10% rise in marijuana use or driving while impaired, or even the leading cause of death among teenagers: guns. The smaller percentages of young people engaging in those harmful behaviors matter, but if we listen to our most capable scientists and technological professionals, then the health of most of our children is threatened—with no level of predictability for long-term impacts. 

^^^ 

It’s now nearing the end of first period, and Jimmy reports, “Mr. Flavin, I’m done. Where do I turn it in?” He’s sitting next to Nyko, who recently asked the same question, so I save myself ten seconds: “Ask Nyko.”  

“Mr. Flavin, why did I get a zero on this assignment?” Asks Terrell.   

“You used IA. Don’t do it a second time because I’ll write a referral and contact home.” 

He’s matter of fact: “Can I re-do it?” 

“Please do.” 

Chance wants to know, “Mr. Flavin, what can I do to get my grade up?”  

“Come to class every day, be on time, and do your assignments.”  

“I know, but which assignments do I have to make up?” 

“Go to your grades in Schoology and anything that has a zero, make it up. Everything’s on Schoology.” 

Adrianna is done, too. She always gets her assignments completed, but her work typifies modern high school writing. “Mr. Flavin, how does my paragraph look?”  

“Let me take a look.”  

The paragraph is not indented. Not a name or title is capitalized. There’s one piece of punctuation, and it appears to be a mistaken period obviously in the middle of a sentence and it falls before a word, not .after There are red and blue squiggly lines under several words and phrases, suggesting issues with spelling or grammar, but Adrianna didn’t (and won’t) right-click for automatic improvements. Adrianna knows we capitalize names and titles. Everyone in the class knows this. They’re in 10^th grade, and despite it all, they know. I’m impressed, however, that she wrote a coherent paragraph, and she responded cleverly to the prompt.  

Elias: “Is this due today?”  

“Yes, I’ve’ given you plenty of class time. Maybe if you didn’t spend so much time on your…”  

As a tenth grade English teacher looking for explanations, I have found research on brain chemistry, adolescent mental health, and addiction (among other areas). Their findings manifest in the form of behavior in my classroom. These are my observations. Chronic absenteeism has doubled. The number of kids physically unable to lift their heads from their desks has tripled, and it’s not because of a disability. The same goes for the number of glum, unsmiling, and unresponsive students. Apathy on some days is a tidal wave. They ask questions that were just asked. They think writing one paragraph is a lot until I say, “Would you rather dig holes for an hour?” An essay is like murder. And even after 80 days of using the online platform, they still ask, “Mr. Flavin, where is…”. 

That is the short list, of course, and it has turned every learned and natural skill I have into useless parts. It’s as if I am starting my 20-year teaching career all over again. 

^^^ 

The constant repetition of the instructions by teachers, the amount of time it takes smart kids to do simple tasks, and their ability to focus has been pulverized by constant notifications from social media. It isn’t a secret. This, according to the Stanford Medicine Blog, Scope: 

“Dopamine, the main chemical involved in addiction, is secreted from certain nerve tracts in the brain when we engage in a rewarding experience such as finding food, clothing, shelter or a sexual mate. Nature designed our brains to feel pleasure when these experiences happen because they increase our odds of survival and of procreation. 

“But the days when our species dwelled in caves and struggled for survival are long gone. Dopamine Nation explains how living in a modern society, affluent beyond comparison by evolutionary standards, has rendered us all vulnerable to dopamine-mediated addiction. Today, the addictive substance of choice, whether we realize it or not, is often the internet and social media channels, according to [Dr. Anna] Lembke, MD.” 

When students feel their phones vibrate or see them flash, the dopamine burst provokes a pleasure response. “What could it be!?” has their attention, and the teacher is a distraction. We will never be more important to them than a notification that is neurologically attached to their social, emotional, and sexual needs. It was designed by the world’s most brilliant tech wizards who stand to earn billions of dollars.  

I will never again have their attention like I did in the first 14 years of my career, before social media, until there is a complete restructuring of our educational system to accommodate this new reality. Our models of education have timed out.  

^^^ 

In 2024, Yale Medicine writes on their Family Health website, “According to Dr. Murthy’s report, on a typical weekday, nearly one-third of adolescents report using screen media until midnight or later.” 

I asked a classroom full of students how many kids they thought stayed up too late looking at their phones. “Thirty percent? Fifty? More? Less?”  

“Eighty percent,” said a level-headed boy named Al-ameen.  

I looked to his left and asked Morgan, “Do you agree? Higher? Lower?”  

“I agree, about eighty,” she said.  

“What about the rest of the class? Raise your hand if you think it’s more or less than that.” No one raised their hands, so to confirm they weren’t avoiding the possibility of having to explain themselves out loud, I pointed at kids and waited for individual responses. “Michael?” 

“Eighty.”  

“Kaleb?” 

“I agree.”  

“Kyira? More? Less?”  

“No, that sounds about right.”  

^^^ 

Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at New York University, author, and frequent contributor to The Atlantic, is a key writer and researcher trying to understand the crisis as I have watched it play out in my classroom. He’s taken a hopeful and proactive lead position on the impact of social media on teenagers, saying in his 2024 best seller, The Anxious Generation, that, “We rewired childhood and created an epidemic of mental illness.” Haidt adds, “After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged in the early 2010s. Rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rose sharply, more than doubling on many measures.” 

When I call, text, or email home, the conversation usually begins with missing assignments or absenteeism, the latter of which the Brookings Institution tells us has doubled nationwide since the pandemic. But since missing assignments and absenteeism are symptoms of the problem, we end up talking about the child’s mental health. This is Joseph’s grandmother and guardian in her first email: 
 

“Hello. I was just wondering if you were Josephs homeroom teacher? … On December 6th Joseph was absent because we were at a funeral. His Aunt passed away. I really didn’t want him to miss but this couldn’t be helped. Thank you have a great day. 
 

Joseph looks sad every day. He wants to be on his phone, and when he can’t, he puts his head down and sleeps. His phone, sleeping, and subsequent missing assignments are the reasons I contacted his guardian. Here she is by the fourth correspondence: 
 

I am also extremely worried about him! He says he wants to graduate and he’s thinking about going into the military when he graduates. I don’t understand it … He is not allowed to take his phone to school. He has snuck [it] a couple times but he got punished for it … His mom and his dad both struggle with addiction and they are literally both in rehab right now … Please don’t tell him I told you this stuff. He literally cried last week when my husband and I got on him. He told me that he wants to do good. He’s really struggling and he doesn’t feel like doing anything. He sees a therapist and I asked him if he had been talking to her about it. He said that he hadn’t and he was telling her he was fine. So I sent her a message and let her know what was going on. … I was getting all kinds of messages that he was on his phone from other teachers … If you have any ideas I am up for anything. I’m just at a loss and I don’t know what to do.  

 
Teachers spend 180 days a year, five days a week, six hours a day observing this population, and like Spock’s communicator becoming a reality, I have seen things I never dreamed possible the first 14 years of my teaching life, and it isn’t the marvels of modern technology.