Nearly half of Gen Z wishes social media ‘had never been invented’

The findings, from a nationally representative survey of 1,006 Gen Z adults (ages 18-27) conducted by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and the Harris Poll, offer a sobering picture of how young adults are grappling with the addictive nature of smartphones and social media.

Haidt, author of the controversial bestseller The fearful generation, which advocates four basic rules regarding children and smartphones – no rules before high school, no social media before age 16, no phones in schools and more unsupervised play – shares the findings in a New York Times opinion piece on Tuesday.

He finds the amount of time Gen Z spends on social media – 60% four hours a day and 23% seven or more hours a day – “astonishing,” especially since 60% also say social media has a negative impact on society (versus 32 who say it has a positive impact).

And while 52% say social media has improved their lives and 29% say it has harmed them, young people from historically disadvantaged groups have seen fewer benefits, he writes, including 44% of women and 47% of LGBTQ respondents who say social media has had a negative impact on their mental health. That’s compared to 31% of men and 35% of non-LGBTQ respondents.

When it came to wishing a platform had “never been invented,” TikTok and X received the most votes, followed by Snapchat (43%), Facebook (37%), and Instagram (34%). The lowest scores in this category went to the smartphone itself (21%), messaging apps (19%), and streaming services like Netflix (17%) and YouTube (15%).

“We interpret these low numbers as an indication that Gen Z doesn’t have many regrets about the internet’s basic functions of communication, storytelling, and information seeking,” Haidt writes. “If smartphones only allowed people to text each other, watch movies, and search for useful information or interesting videos (without personalized recommendation algorithms designed to hook users), there would be far less regret and resentment.”

While only 36% of respondents support a ban on social media for children under 16, 69% support a law requiring social media companies to develop a child-safe option for children under 18.

That’s something the House of Representatives is considering now, Haidt notes, and he’s urging lawmakers to take action on the Kids Online Safety Act. That would, for starters, disable addictive product features and require tech companies to let young users turn off personalized algorithmic feeds. (On Tuesday, Instagram responded to growing concerns about young people and social media by announcing that all teen accounts would be private by default.)

Haidt concludes his op-ed by asking readers to imagine that walkie-talkies are harmful to millions of young people, and that more than a third of young people wish they didn’t exist, “yet feel compelled to use them for five hours every day.”

If that were the case, he argues, “we would take action. We would insist that manufacturers make their products safer and less addictive for children. Social media companies should be held to the same standard: either modify their products to ensure the safety of young users, or stop providing them to children altogether.”

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