UNLOCK 34.1 Looks Like Jonathan Haidt Did a Moral Panic

Jonathan Haidt recently padded his bestselling career by telling worried parents that their kids' anxiety was caused by smartphones and social media — and that the fix was bans.

I always thought the argument was depoliticized, correlational, and suspiciously convenient for parents who'd rather blame a device than interrogate the world they've handed their children. Now the research is catching up.

Psychologist Jen Lumanlan's challenge in Psychology Today exposed the romanticized and racially selective "golden age" childhood Haidt keeps gesturing toward. A major NBER working paper from Allcott et al. studied over 1,300 US schools using Yondr pouches and found near-zero academic effects. A Dutch study by Vanluydt et al. in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence found that full bans may actually undermine school belonging, especially for girls.

Meanwhile, Pope Leo XIV's encyclical Magnifica Humanitas does what Haidt won't: it plants digital technology inside a structural critique of platform capitalism. That's the conversation I want to have.

Bluesky: matthewremski.bsky.social
Instagram: @matthew_remski
YouTube: @antifascistdad
TikTok: [@antifascistdad]
Patreon: antifascistdadpodcast
Order Antifascist Dad

SOURCES

Jen Lumanlan, "What Research Really Shows About School Phone Bans," Psychology Today, July 2025

Hunt Allcott, E. Jason Baron, Thomas Dee, Angela L. Duckworth, Matthew Gentzkow, and Brian Jacob, "The Effects of School Phone Bans: National Evidence from Lockable Pouches," NBER Working Paper No. 35132, April 2026

E. Vanluydt, R. van den Eijnden, L. Vonk et al., "Disconnect To Reconnect: How Variations between Types of Smartphone Bans Influence Students' Well-being and Social Connectedness in Dutch Secondary Education," Journal of Youth and Adolescence 55 (2026): 551–569

UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report, "Phone Bans in Schools Are Spreading Worldwide as the Policy Debate Rages On," March 2026

Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas (encyclical on artificial intelligence and human dignity), May 2026

Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness (Penguin Press, 2024)

Det här avsnittet är hämtat från ett öppet RSS-flöde och publiceras inte av Podme. Det kan innehålla reklam.

Avsnitt(67)

35. Antifascist Tooth Fairy w/ E.V. Debs

Joining me today is E.V. Debs (not their real name!) an antifascist community organizer from Seattle to talk about their new tabletop game, Antifascist Tooth Fairy, now getting funded on Kickstarter f...

10 Juni 33min

UNLOCK 33.1 Antifascist Body Culture: A Brief History

I wanted to trace the century-old roots of Maren Forsberg's antifascist self-defense work, so I dug into three overlapping histories. First: the German Bund's use of Körperbildung — body education thr...

7 Juni 22min

34. From the Street to City Hall w/ Diana Chan McNally

Diana Chan McNally has been unhoused, a teen mother, a museum curator, a college instructor, a harm reduction worker, a frontline homelessness advocate, and a DJ. Now she's running for Toronto City Co...

3 Juni 53min

UNLOCK 32.1 What Tommy Douglas Knew & What We All Know about Socialized Medicine

In a coda to episode 32, I reflect on what socialized medicine means not as culture or sentiment but as raw material security and the basis for working-class solidarity. I draw on Beatrice Adler-Bolto...

31 Maj 22min

33. Antifascist Self Defence and Rewriting the Body's Response to Violence w/ Maren Forsberg

Norwegian kickboxer Maren Forsberg works as a self-defense trainer focused on building antifascist courage and resilience for women, queer, and trans people. I spoke with her about her path from child...

27 Maj 59min

UNLOCKED 31.1 Kensington Market Palimpsest

In this coda to my conversation with Serena Purdy, I track the layered history of Kensington Market through the metaphor of the palimpsest, the medieval manuscript practice of writing over earlier tex...

24 Maj 28min

32. Smith and Carney May Destroy Socialized Medicine w/ Nikolas Barry-Shaw

I sit down with Nikolas Barry-Shaw, researcher and trade and privatization campaigner for the Council of Canadians, to break down how Alberta's Bill 11 is dismantling Canada's public healthcare system...

20 Maj 1h 13min