Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, professor at New York University and an international reference in mental health studies in the digital age, opened the 2025 season of the borders of thought in Sao Paulo on Monday (19). The lecture had a blunt warning: childhood is being radically transformed – and not for the better.
According to Haidt, children and adolescents who grew up in the age of smartphones face a “new and radical way of growing”, marked by less social interaction, more physical inactivity and a growing difficulty of concentration. “Humanity is getting darker just as the machines are getting smarter than us,” he said.
During the lecture that brought together more than 1,000 people at the Ruy Barbosa Auditorium at Mackenzie Presbyterian University, the researcher highlighted the difference in development between generations. Only five years separate a child born in 1995 from another from 2000. The first one had a first phone without internet access and lived part of adolescence without social networks. The other, on the other hand, grew up with a smartphone in active hands and social networks: a watershed, according to the expert.
Haidt presented data showing a sharp drop in time that teenagers spend with friends outside the school, from the popularization of smartphones. The chart, he said, recalls the social isolation curve observed during the Covid-19 pandemic. “Childhood was once synonymous with playing on the street, encounters with friends. Now she has become lonely. Each child goes home with her own screen,” he said.
Although the best known effects of hyperconnection are increased anxiety and depression among young people, Haidt drew attention to another less discussed impact: the drop in the ability to maintain attention. “Children can no longer focus. Tiktok and Instagram completely absorb their attention. It’s an unequal dispute,” he said.
During the lecture, Haidt argued that governments adopt measures to protect new generations. Among them, the ban on the use of social networks for children under 16 and the postponement of access to smartphones until 14. “I hope that here in Brazil you also ban social networks until 16,” he said.
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This content was originally published in hyperconnection in childhood: “Humanity getting stupier,” warns psychologist on the CNN Brazil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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