Latest news with #TheAnxiousGeneration
Otago Daily Times
6 hours ago
- Health
- Otago Daily Times
Undoing ‘the Great Rewiring'
Smartphones are turning our young people into the anxious generation, Jonathan Haidt tells Tom Faber. The first thing Jonathan Haidt asks when we sit down is my age. I know what he's thinking: he wants to place me, technologically. Am I a member of the "anxious generation", the term he has coined for the young people who he believes have been psychologically harmed by social media and smartphone use at a tender age? Or am I more likely to be one of the concerned parents who are the primary audience for his book? At 33 (the oldest of his anxious generation are currently 28) and child-free, I don't quite fit into either camp. I also don't quite align with either of the two sides that have emerged in response to Haidt's argument. While his book, The Anxious Generation , has undoubtedly made a splash, sparking a heated public debate about adolescent technology use, the science underpinning his thesis has also met criticism from other researchers in his field. So is the book's popularity because Haidt has correctly diagnosed an urgent social ailment? Or because he's spinning parents a story that they desperately want to believe: that there is a simple solution to this complex problem? At 61, with neat grey hair and thick, dark eyebrows, Haidt perfectly embodies the role of affable, credible academic. He currently teaches social psychology at New York University's Stern School of Business. The starting point for The Anxious Generation is the crisis in young people's mental health — in his native US and across much of the West. The proportion of children and young people in the United Kingdom with mental disorders rose from 12% to 20% between 2017 and 2023. The question is: why, and what can we do about it? Haidt says the increase in anxiety and depression among young people is directly caused by their use of smartphones and social media. "Gen Z became the first generation in history to go through puberty with a portal in their pockets that called them away from the people nearby and into an alternative universe that was exciting, addictive, unstable, and ... unsuitable for children and adolescents," he writes. He specifically identifies the period between 2010 and 2015 as a time when smartphones and social media were updated to include addictive and harmful features, corresponding with a marked increase in anxiety and depression for children coming of age during this period. Exposure to these technologies during puberty causes long-term effects on the brain, Haidt argues. He calls this "the Great Rewiring". Haidt outlines four ways in which young people are negatively affected by social media and smartphones: sleep deprivation, social deprivation, attention fragmentation and addiction. Since The Anxious Generation was published, he has come to believe the threat to attention is the biggest concern, both for children and adults. "My argument is that these platforms are clearly, demonstrably, harming children at an industrial scale, by their millions," he says. He offers four simple rules to reverse the course of what he calls the "phone-based childhood". These are: no smartphones before 14; no social media before 16; phone-free schools; and more unsupervised play and childhood independence. The suggestions seem reasonable enough. Even some of his critics agree with them. They all require group mobilisation to avoid the "collective action problem" — it's much harder to enforce a change unless other parents are doing it too. If just one child has no smartphone or social media, they will feel excluded from their peers. As Haidt writes: "Few parents want their preteens to disappear into a phone, but a vision of their child being a social outcast is even more distressing." In the year since the book was published, Haidt says, parental, school and legislative action has taken place at a pace that he describes as "stunning". In the US, Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders sent a copy of the book to every other US state governor as a rallying cry. Haidt is keeping track of each state's actions on his website. There are pushes in various countries to ban phones from schools. In Australia, the wife of a state premier read Haidt's book and told her husband he had to do something about the crisis the author described. Months later: the country passed a bill that will raise the minimum age for opening a social media account to 16. In the UK, there was already momentum to this discussion before Haidt's book. The 2023 Online Safety Act puts more responsibility on tech platforms to ensure they are safe for users, especially children. It is one reason that Haidt calls the UK "the leading country on protecting kids online". Some critics claim Haidt is exacerbating a moral panic. Just as previous generations of adults claimed television, hip-hop, video games and comic books were corrupting the youth, they say Haidt is the latest avatar of the old guard inventing horror stories around new culture and technology they don't understand. Despite his avuncular demeanour and his pleasant habit of murmuring agreement with me while I speak, Haidt has arrived ready to prove every point in his book. "There certainly have been moral panics," he says, "and whatever technology the kids are using, the adults are going to be sceptical of. It's a valid criticism as a starting hypothesis. The obligation is on me to show this time is different. And I can very easily do that." His response to the moral panic accusation is twofold. One: he argues there has never historically been an introduction of new technology followed so directly by a precipitous global decline in youth mental health. Two: in previous generations, if you asked children how they felt about their comic books or video games, they would say they loved them, please don't take them away. But when young people today are surveyed about social media, significant numbers regret how much they use it, find them harmful, and in some cases wish they'd never been invented. So what is the controversy around the data? It boils down to a single, difficult question. Experts agree that mental health problems among teenagers are rising at the same time as smartphones and social media are playing increasingly ubiquitous roles in their lives. But is this mere correlation? Or is the technology causing the mental illness? Several prominent academics have argued that Haidt's claim of causation is an oversimplification; that there is no one simple answer to such a complex sociological problem. A particularly searing review in the academic journal Nature argued that Haidt's central thesis "is not supported by science" and that "the bold proposal that social media is to blame might distract us from effectively responding to the real causes of the current mental-health crisis in young people". Others have argued that the research around this topic is unreliable and ambiguous, or even conducted studies that contradict Haidt's claims. Sonia Livingstone, a social psychologist at the London School of Economics who researches children's lives in the digital age, says we don't know which way the data points: are smartphones causing poor mental health in children? Or are children with poor mental health turning to smartphones for entertainment and escape? Academics have also offered alternative reasons why young people might be struggling, from the state of global politics to the economy, to the environment. Haidt raises a couple of these in his book and claims they don't fit his timeline, but other experts are not so quick to dismiss the other theories. On his blog, Haidt has posted a series of detailed responses to his critics. Ultimately, there's enough doubt to concede that there is no scientific consensus around the topic. So how much public policy and parenting advice do we want to generate from unsettled science? Haidt argues it's better to act before it's too late. He writes: "At a certain point, we need to take action based on the most plausible theory, even if we can't be 100% certain that we have the correct causal theory. I think that point is now." Perhaps part of the reason that Haidt riles up members of the scientific establishment is because of how he positions himself publicly — as part scientist, part crusader. He is adept at self-promotion and has turned his book launch into a global campaign, telling me his goal is to "roll back the phone-based childhood in three years". This campaigning approach has precedent in his career: he has launched a series of non-profits over the years. He has also written books and taught classes that lean into the idea of self-improvement, casting him as something of a lifestyle guru. He tells me he wrote a personal mission statement in 2011: "To use my research in moral psychology and the research of others to help people better understand each other and to help important social institutions work better. That's my mission on this Earth." While this crusading image may work for getting attention and building Haidt's personal brand, it also flattens how his argument enters the public sphere. Critiques of his work often mischaracterise his thesis as a neo-Luddite assault on all screen time, when in fact his book is quite specific about which technology is harmful to whom, even making some — if not abundant — space to discuss where the argument gets tricky or the science unclear. There is also some blurriness around Haidt's politics, which is tricky considering how easily children's issues become politicised. He grew up in a secular Jewish family in Scarsdale, New York, and once identified as a Democrat. But Haidt now calls himself a centrist and uses conservative-coded language — for example describing himself on Joe Rogan's podcast as "an extremely alarmed patriotic American citizen who sees my country going to hell", and later comparing the revolution he's leading in the digital environment to the fall of communism in 1989. The fact that his book does not mention the threat to boys of far-right radicalisation from "manosphere" influencers, as chillingly depicted in the TV show Adolescence , could be because of a reluctance to alienate his engaged conservative fanbase. When I put this to him, he bats away the question, saying: "that didn't occur to me". Reading Haidt's book, I couldn't help reflecting on my own teenage years online. I had many positive experiences and made significant friends on forums and online video games at a time when I felt I didn't fit in at school. When I was coming to terms with my sexuality aged 14, I found vital resources and community on the internet. The Anxious Generation argues that digitally-mediated relationships are inherently less meaningful than their real-life counterparts. This is not true in my experience. Where the book does bring up the benefits that can come from virtual communities, they are briefly raised and then tossed aside. In our conversation, Haidt points out that I grew up on a different, less harmful version of the web, before social media companies deliberately employed addictive design features such as algorithmic feeds, conversation streaks and auto-playing videos to juice users for maximum engagement, and therefore maximum profit. This is true — the internet of my formative years was a simpler one. But does that really mean young people can't have positive experiences on today's social media? Haidt concedes that the internet can still be a valuable resource for marginalised groups such as queer people, but he also says that these groups are disproportionately the target of online harassment and abuse. In his view, the cons outweigh the pros. Livingstone disagrees. "Haidt puts these two sides on the scales and says the bullying outweighs the expression and finding your community, but there are some really good things here. We need to work out how to regulate big tech so that the bullying stops and the hate is not amplified." We should try to curtail tech companies' addictive, data-driven business models to make social media platforms better, safer places before resorting to an outright ban, she says, while noting it is very hard to mobilise politicians about children's wellbeing when there are major dollars on the table from big tech lobbying. There are benefits to social media too, she says. "Children are absolutely clear that they love being in touch with their friends. They love that when something bad happens, they can get social support. When they're stuck at home and their parents are fighting, they can go somewhere and say: 'Bloody hell, dad's shouting at mum again'." Livingstone believes that we need to look at the question with a wider lens. "What do we think a good childhood looks like?" she asks. "If we don't let children go on social media till they're 16, what is our plan for them being in touch with their friends? Are we going to let them out after school and let them walk home by themselves and hang out at the bus stop, or are we going to report them as hoodlums and menaces?" We live in a world where we have welcomed technology into every crevice of our work, social and leisure time. Countless services force us to create digital accounts to access them; educational technology is being rolled out across schools; AI is being inserted everywhere. "We have invested in tech across the board," Livingstone says. "It's becoming our infrastructure. And in that context, to say 'kids shouldn't be anywhere near it' — what's the vision in terms of restricting them, and what is the vision in terms of providing something better for them?" "We can ban smartphones," she says, "but we're not going to make kids happy overnight." — The Observer
Atlantic
4 days ago
- General
- Atlantic
Get Your Kid a Landline
When Caron Morse's 9-year-old daughter asked for a smartphone last year, her reaction, she told me, was unambiguous: ' A hard hell no.' Morse is a mental-health provider in the Portland, Maine, public-school system, and she was firmly against smartphones, having seen how social media and abundant screen time could shorten students' attention spans and give them new anxieties. But she wanted her children to have some independence—to be able to call friends, arrange playdates, and reach out to their grandparents on their own. She also needed a break. 'I was so sick,' she said, 'of being the middle person in any correspondence.' So when her daughter turned 10, Morse did get her a phone: a landline. For that gift to provide all the benefits she wanted, Morse had to lay some groundwork. It would be annoying if her daughters—she also has an 8-year-old—were to start calling their friends' parents' smartphones all the time, so she told her neighbors about her plan and suggested that they consider getting landlines too. Several bought in immediately, excited for the opportunity to placate their own smartphone-eager kids. And over the next couple of months, Morse kept nudging people. She appealed to their sense of nostalgia by sharing photos of her older daughter sitting on the floor and twirling the landline's cord around her fingers. She wrote messages: 'Guys, this is adorable and working and important.' The peer pressure paid off. Now about 15 to 20 families in their South Portland neighborhood have installed a landline. They've created a retro bubble in which their children can easily call their friends without bugging a parent to borrow their phone—and in which the parents, for now, can live blissfully free of anxieties about the downsides of smartphones. In the past few years, interest in old-school technology has been rising, driven partly by desperate adults seeking smartphone alternatives for their kids. Fairs peddle 'dumb phones' to parents of tweens. On Reddit, one parent shared that they'd gone 'full '90s,' with a desktop computer installed in the living room, a Nintendo 64, and a landline. In March, after a Millennial mom posted on Instagram about getting a home phone for her kids, she received scores of comments from parents saying they'd done the same—or planned to soon. But these are isolated examples. As Jonathan Haidt, the author of The Anxious Generation (which helped inspire Morse's landline purchase), told me, smartphones are so dominant in part because families are beset by a 'collective-action problem.' Many parents are concerned about how their children might use smartphones, and particularly social media. They're familiar with the research suggesting a correlation between social-media use and high rates of anxiety and depression among teens and especially teen girls. Still, parents can struggle to say no to a child asking for a phone when everyone at their school already has one. 'If your child is the only one who is kept away from phones or social media,' Haidt said, 'then you are isolating them.' That's why he encourages parents to band together to reset common norms: 'If you do it with a group, then you're actually fostering more real-world interaction.' When the South Portland landline pod formed, that's exactly what the parents started to see. The phone Morse got her daughter is light pink with a curly cord and sits atop a buffet table outside the family's kitchen. Morse wanted the phone to be in a 'centralized' part of the house, with a cord, so that her daughters couldn't whisk it off to their bedrooms for private conversations or take it with them while they played. 'Very rarely do we ask kids to be still and communicate,' she explained. 'I didn't want my kids to go play with slime when they're on the phone. Communication should be something you're actually focusing on.' Not all of the parents in her pod got corded phones. But everyone I spoke with told me that the devices, corded or not, had helped their children become better listeners and more empathetic communicators. At first, the kids took some time to adjust. Erin Masterson, whose children attend school with Morse's, recalled a time when her 10-year-old son shouted into the phone to a friend, 'ARE YOU HOME?!' And all of the children have had to practice greeting callers, identifying themselves when they place a call, and sometimes asking to speak to someone else. But after a few months, they grew more comfortable. Because audio-only calls tend to come with fewer distractions—no faces to look at, no enticing filters or emoji—Masterson sees her sons 'really tune in to what people are saying.' Mindy Hull, another parent in the neighborhood, has noticed a similar pattern with her 8-year-old daughter. 'The progression from January until now' in the way her daughter 'can engage people in conversation is mind-blowing,' Hull told me. 'She's practicing listening,' and better understands the meaning in subtle verbal cues. Since the landline pod started, the kids have been arranging their own playdates (although they still have to ask their parents for permission). And when an in-person hang isn't possible, they've still been able to connect. Parents told me their children had called friends to ask questions about Dungeons & Dragons, to check on a friend after they were out sick from school, or just to chat on rainy days—all without their parents having to worry about what else the kids might be doing on the phone. The landlines have also given these parents a glimpse into their kids' social lives that they might not otherwise have enjoyed. Recently, Hull listened as her daughter, who uses their phone at least once a day, talked with a friend for an hour and a half. 'They were giggling and laughing and telling stories,' she said. 'I couldn't believe it.' Crucially, parents in the landline pod aren't just banning smartphones; they're giving their children an alternative—a method that's much more likely to make kids happy, Jacqueline Nesi, a psychologist who studies the effects of technology and social media on adolescents, told me. She recommends that parents simply ask their children why they want a smartphone: 'Do they want to be able to communicate with friends? Do they want to play a certain game? Think about what the goals are and then work from there.' The landline solution isn't perfect. Morse told me that when the house phone rings while they're watching a movie, it can be annoying; you can't silence a landline as easily as you can a smartphone. Occasionally, the phone makes a buzzing sound; her daughters have learned to smack it against the table—once, hard—to make it stop. And most of the parents I spoke with acknowledged that, eventually, they would probably get their children a smartphone; they were just trying to postpone that development as long as possible. (Hull is the one holdout I spoke with who thinks her daughter might never need a smartphone while under her roof.) For now, Morse and Masterson are considering limited-function smartwatches as their eldest children head to middle school and begin venturing out more on their own. Masterson wants to get her son a device with only call and text capabilities, so he can arrange rides and activities after school. Morse likes the idea of getting a watch that also has GPS, so she can track her daughter's location. When the time does come for a smartphone—if it comes—the parents hope their children will be better prepared to handle one responsibly. They'll be older and more emotionally mature, and will have passed the age at which experts say a child's brain is particularly vulnerable to the addictive qualities of smartphones. They'll also have communication skills, honed by landline, that could come in handy. After years of practice, they might be quicker to call someone instead of sending a text or leaving a social-media comment, leading to a potentially stronger connection with that person. After all, a smartphone's most basic feature—and, I would argue, its best—is one it shares with a landline: the ability to call a friend and talk.
Yahoo
13-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
To The Good Dads on Father's Day: You're the Gift
Father's Day is upon us. And like every year, I'll play it safe by letting my husband choose a gift he actually wants (I can never narrow it down), and I'll consent to going on our annual family Father's Day camping trip without (too much) griping. But even sacrificing an indoor restroom and exposing myself to hordes of hungry mosquitoes for an entire weekend doesn't seem like enough — because I don't think anything I could ever do would feel like it truly reflects the depths of my gratitude for all the things he does for our kids. Not even close, really. I know the importance of a good father because mine left our family when I was 9, and parts of me have always been a little bit broken because of it. No matter how well-adjusted I turned out, I can't ignore the sadness — grief? — I feel every Father's Day for what I missed out on as a kid, and am still missing out on today. I may no longer be a child, but every once in a while I still feel a twinge of sorrow at the smallest thing. Just a couple weeks ago, it was a flyer for a father-daughter dance at my kids' school, the fatherless daughter in me involuntarily surfacing again as a reminder of all the things I never got to experience. So to simply thank my husband for being a good dad to our kids seems woefully insufficient, because the gift he has given them far exceeds any level of admiration I could humanly express. More from SheKnows 'The Anxious Generation' Author Jonathan Haidt Says 'Fear' & 'Risk-Taking' Are Vital for Kids - & Challenges Dads To Take an Active Role Kids with good dads never have to feel the sting of thinking about their father and wondering if he'd pick up the phone, if he'd pick them up when they fall, if he would even care. They know that Dad will be there the second they need him, whether it's for help with a broken toy or a broken-down car or a broken heart. Most importantly, they know that even if they mess up — even if their dad is 'mad' at them — he would still go to the ends of the earth to make sure they're happy and safe. A good father isn't just someone who shows up for soccer games or pays for college. He's a guiding light, a steady hand in a storm. He's the one who loudly and triumphantly celebrates your victories and whispers encouragement when you stumble. To have a good dad is a treasure, shaping who you are and who you can become, all with a love that's fierce and unwavering. It's a value beyond measure to have such a man in your corner. I watch my husband with our kids and know in my heart that nothing they could ever do would diminish the love in his eyes when he looks at them. When he says he would do anything for them, he unequivocally means it — and their ability to take confidence in that is a blessing which, at this point in their lives, they still take for granted. Our children don't yet understand the depths of how lucky they are … but I do. There's never enough to say to the man who makes your kids feel loved and protected and whole without them even realizing it. I guess I owe a grudging thanks to my own dad for his paltry contributions to my upbringing. You only notice something when it's missing, and if he hadn't been so absent from my life, I might have taken for granted a man who gave my own kids a priceless gift. Maybe it takes having a crappy father to truly appreciate a good one. My husband showed me what a good dad is supposed to look like, and it's a beautiful thing. When I think about my kids having what I never had, the overwhelming level of gratitude that I feel nearly brings me to tears every time. Happy Father's Day to the good dads … and to the children of good dads, hug yours extra tightly today, because his steady presence in your life means more than you could ever know. Best of SheKnows Make Dad Melt With These Adorable Free Father's Day Printables These Hot Famous Dads Are Making Fatherhood Look Finer Than Ever 27 Times Katherine Schwarzenegger Proved She's the Sweetest Mom
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
A New Study Found That Parents (Especially Dads!) Aren't Talking to Their Teens About What Happens After High School
It's graduation season, and while your teen probably has the perfect outfit planned to get their high school diploma — and maybe even plans for a post-graduation party — have they thought about what happens next? There are way more options for after high school than the standard 'go to college or get a job,' but a new study found that teens are unaware that these exist. Parents (and dads especially) are to blame as they aren't broaching the subject with their teens. A new Gallup poll published June 10 surveyed over 1,300 Gen Z high school students (ages 16-18) and their parents. It found that a lack of knowledge about post-high-school options and infrequent discussions of the future between parents and teens 'is leaving many students feeling unprepared for life after graduation.' More from SheKnows 'The Anxious Generation' Author Jonathan Haidt Says 'Fear' & 'Risk-Taking' Are Vital for Kids - & Challenges Dads To Take an Active Role The study, which was done in collaboration with Walton Family Foundation and Jobs for the Future, revealed that while over half of parents of Gen report knowing 'a great deal' about working at a paid job (60 percent) and earning a bachelor's degree (52 percent), they are severely less knowledgeable about any other options. Only 15 to 37 percent of parents say they are well-informed about these options: associate degrees, certificate and certification programs, experiential learning opportunities such as internships and apprenticeships, military service, or starting a business. Parents aren't familiar with these options, so it makes sense that Gen Z are even less aware. According to the survey, only 32 percent of Gen Z high schoolers 'know a lot' about working at a paid job and only 33 percent about earning a bachelor's degree. That percentage plummets to under 20 percent for the remaining options: earning an associate degree (19 percent), completing a certificate (16 percent), enlisting in the military (12 percent), starting a business (10 percent), completing an internship (11 percent). Part of the reason? Parents aren't talking to their teens about this nearly enough. Only 53 percent of parents of Gen Z high school students talk to their kids about their options 'frequently,' and broken down by gender, it's 60 percent of moms and only 44 percent od dads. Researchers recommended parents initiate 'early, frequent, and well-informed' conversations with their teens, as they found fewer than 3 in 10 high schoolers feel 'very prepared' to pursue any postsecondary options they are interested in. SheKnows Parenting editor Rita Templeton previously wrote that when she was younger, she felt pressured to go to college. 'College wasn't presented as an option; it was a non-negotiable,' she said. 'The next box to check, a necessary step on the conveyor belt of achievement. So I went. Not because I had a plan, not because I wanted to, but because I didn't know how to explain — much less defend — the fact that I didn't want what everyone else seemed to want for me.' Now, she supports whatever post-college options her four sons want to pursue. 'I make sure they know that college is one tool in the toolbox — not the toolbox itself,' she said. Having these convos with teens doesn't have to be hard. It might mean researching other options together or reaching out to the community to hear from people with different career paths. Helping them discover their options and choose the right one for them is the greatest graduation gift you can give as a of SheKnows 27 Times Katherine Schwarzenegger Proved She's the Sweetest Mom 32 Celebrities Who Froze Their Eggs or Embryos From Free-Range to Fully Offbeat, These Celebs Embrace Unconventional Parenting Styles
Boston Globe
22-05-2025
- Health
- Boston Globe
4 key takeaways from a new White House report on children's health
The report provides little in the way of specific solutions to address these issues, though the commission is also expected to release recommendations later this year. What the document does offer is the clearest articulation yet of Kennedy's 'Make America Healthy Again' movement and what the broad coalition hopes to accomplish in the coming months and years. Here's what the new report tells us. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up The report paints a bleak picture of American childhood. Advertisement The report presents today's children as stressed, sleep-deprived and addicted to their screens. It describes rising rates of conditions like obesity, diabetes and mental illness as a crisis that threatens the nation's health, economy and military readiness. 'Today's children are the sickest generation in American history in terms of chronic disease,' the report says. And it lashes out against technology companies and social media platforms that it says have helped create a 'technology-driven lifestyle.' It cites Jonathan Haidt, whose bestselling book 'The Anxious Generation' links the rise of smartphones and social media to worsening mental health among children -- a theory that some researchers have criticized for relying on inconclusive research. The report also notes that rates of loneliness among children have risen over the past several decades, a concern that researchers and public health experts have also raised for years. Advertisement It takes aim at vaccines. The report reiterates many of Kennedy's frequent talking points about vaccines -- with one notable exception. It does not suggest, as he has for decades, that childhood vaccines may be responsible for the rise in autism diagnoses among American children. But it implies that the increase in routine immunizations given to children may be harmful to them, which many scientists say is based on an incorrect understanding of immunology. The shots administered to children today are more efficient, and they contain far fewer stimulants to the immune system -- by orders of magnitude -- than they did decades ago, experts say. Vaccines are also largely responsible for the sharp drop in deaths among children younger than 5. 'The growth of the vaccination schedule does reflect the fact that we can prevent a lot more suffering and death in children than we could generations ago,' said Jason Schwartz, an associate professor of health policy at the Yale School of Public Health. 'Rather than celebrating that, it's often seen as a reason for skepticism or concern,' he said. The report also repeats Kennedy's assertion that childhood vaccines have not been tested in clinical trials involving placebos. In fact, new vaccines are tested against placebos whenever it is necessary, feasible and ethical to do so. Advertisement Some European countries, including Britain, do not mandate vaccinations as most American states do, the report notes. While that's true, misinformation and mistrust have led to record numbers of measles cases in Europe and have cost Britain its measles elimination status. The report notes correctly that surveillance systems in the United States for detecting side effects related to vaccines have serious shortcomings. But detection of rare side effects requires huge amounts of data, which is difficult to collect from the nation's fragmented health care system. The report urges federal agencies to 'build systems for real-world safety monitoring of pediatric drugs' -- which presumably include vaccines -- but it is unclear how those initiatives would differ from the systems already in use. It puts a major emphasis on ultraprocessed foods. The report says that 'the food American children are eating' is causing their health to decline. 'It's terrific to see such a clear, direct admission from the government that we are failing our children's health -- and that our food is one dominant driver,' said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, the director of the Food Is Medicine Institute at Tufts University. Nearly 70% of the calories consumed by children and adolescents in the United States come from ultraprocessed foods. These industrially manufactured foods and drinks, like sodas, chicken nuggets, instant soups and packaged snacks, have been linked with a greater risk of obesity, Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and other conditions. The report appropriately calls out an excess of ultraprocessed foods and not enough fruits and vegetables as problems with children's diets, Mozaffarian said, but it 'misses the massive problem of high salt,' which can cause high blood pressure in children. He also said he wished it had focused more on the 'many other severe deficiencies in the American diet,' like a lack of legumes, nuts, minimally processed whole grains, fish, yogurt and healthy plant oils. Advertisement Marion Nestle, an emerita professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University, said that overall, the report 'did a phenomenal job' describing how ultraprocessed foods are harming children's health. The question, she said, is how the administration will fix the problems that are articulated in the report. 'In order for them to do anything about this, they're going to have to take on corporate industry,' including agriculture, food and chemical industries, she said. Food manufacturers, for example, could make healthier foods and stop marketing 'junk food' to children, she said. Such changes would most likely require federal regulations, she said, because historically, companies have resisted making them voluntarily. The report highlights a lack of government funding for nutrition research as part of the problem -- a point scientists have been making for years. The situation has worsened during President Donald Trump's second term, however, as many diet researchers have had federal grants abruptly terminated. Kevin Hall, whose research on ultraprocessed foods is prominently cited in the new report, left his post at the National Institutes of Health in April, citing censorship. The report points a finger at synthetic chemicals but pulls some punches. The commission's report accurately describes worsening health among American children, said Dr. Philip Landrigan, a pediatrician and epidemiologist who directs the Program for Global Public Health and the Common Good at Boston College. And it notes a number of synthetic chemicals, like pesticides and microplastics, that may play a role. 'The first 18 pages of the report are brilliant,' Landrigan said. Advertisement But he said it understated the known risks of many chemicals. For example, the report's authors downplay the hazards of phthalates, used to make plastics, and of certain pesticides that have been deemed dangerous to children's health but remain widely used. 'They mentioned correctly that phthalates can trigger hormone dysregulation, but they could have also said that phthalates produce birth defects of the male reproductive organs and can lead to infertility,' Landrigan said. While the report mentions concerns about crop-protection tools such as pesticides, 'that's really an understatement,' Landrigan said. He noted that studies of the widely used insecticide chlorpyrifos show 'clearly that it causes brain damage in kids and reduces children's IQ and causes behavioral problems.' The pesticide was banned from household use 25 years ago because of the risks to children, and banned from use on all crops three years ago. But the Environmental Protection Agency recently permitted its use on fruits like apples and oranges because of lawsuits brought by the manufacturer and growers' associations. The report also stopped short of calling two common pesticides used on many food crops, glyphosate and atrazine, unsafe after pushback from farmers, industry lobbyists and Republican lawmakers. Landrigan and colleagues from the Consortium for Children's Environmental Health recently advocated in The New England Journal of Medicine for a national approval process for all existing and new chemicals. Independent scientific assessments would be required to show the chemicals were not toxic to anyone, especially children, and postmarketing surveillance would be required. Yet the federal agencies that could regulate chemical exposures have been gutted in recent layoffs. Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, pointed out that the report called for 'gold-standard research,' even as the administration had drastically cut funding for science and halted payments to universities like Harvard and Columbia. Advertisement 'They're not walking the walk,' he said. 'They're just talking.' This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
