Young artists & activists lit up a dark year

Feast your eyes on the work and wisdom of Gen Z-ers in Homeschool Musical: Class of 2020 and a virtual conference about youth & technology

Remember that headline in The Atlantic three years ago asking whether smartphones were “destroying a generation”? I hope not. But if you do, there’s plenty of evidence to the contrary — even in 2020, believe it or not. Young people are using smartphones and other technology to heal themselves and the planet. I’m going to share some beautiful anecdotal evidence with you in a moment, but let’s zoom in on the research evidence for one paragraph:

2020, youth & mental health

First, many researchers pushed back almost immediately. I cited nine scholars’ comments here, and a year later, Erin McAweeney and Mary Madden, researchers at Data & Society wrote here that “the threat of tech addiction as a disorder is not widely accepted in the research community. Instead, researchers generally agree that our relationship to smartphones is not fundamentally good nor bad.” They cited psychologist Amy Orben telling NPR: “A teenager’s technology use can only explain less than 1% of variation in well-being.” Then came Covid, and our attention rightfully shifted to mental wellbeing, not…