We are living and adapting to an increasingly digitized world. Schools have since become more online, chromebooks are now considered commonplace rather than a curiosity, and, according to Common Sense Media, the percentage of children who own phones at age twelve is 71%, and for 14 year-olds, this percentage increases significantly to 91%. However, is this online world beneficial or detrimental to our future?

Jonathan Haidt, the author of the bestselling book, The Anxious Generation (Penguin Press, March 26, 2024) would argue that yes, this increase is detrimental to people, young people in particular. Haidt’s book explores why young people today struggle with anxiety and mental health, and it attempts to answer why these problems have risen significantly in recent years.

Haidt claims that environmental changes in the lives of young people — changes such as the increase in safety-ism, the rapid disintegration of unstructured play and the rise in social media use — have caused younger generations to suffer. Haidt backs up his theory with evidence and examples of kids whose mental health began to disintegrate after these environmental factors became integrated into their lives.

Since the publication and broad reception of his book, many schools have started to enforce social media rules more firmly, my school included. There had already been rules in place meant to restrict the use of phones at school, but they were not significantly enforced.

After the widespread attention to the many problems that phones and social media can cause, however, these rules became stricter. Students were no longer permitted to have their phones anywhere in the school aside from their lockers. Once the bell for homeroom rang, students were prompted to leave their phones behind in their lockers before the first period began. Since I have never owned a cell phone before, this rule did not affect me. At least, not immediately.

Since these rules have been enforced, there has been a change in my peers’ behavior. In the past, field trips, lunch time and even attempted conversations and friendships have been made awkward by the presence of cell phones.

I remember one ninth grade field trip in particular. My class visited a college not far from my school. We toured the grounds and ate lunch there as well. It was then, as we were waiting for lunch to arrive, that the situation grew awkward. Simultaneously, it seemed, all of my classmates pulled out their phones and stared at them, ignoring their friends sitting beside them. I sat on a sofa next to several other students, but the short banter and conversation that had occurred a moment before was cut off abruptly when they were given permission by our class’s supervisors to take out their phones. Suddenly, everything grew silent but for the occasional sniff or cough.

I felt sandwiched between the arm of the sofa and the kids next to me. The conversation had buffered some of the awkwardness that can come with sitting with anyone you don’t know particularly well, but without the sound of voices and laughter, that feeling of being out of place grew in the pit of my stomach. Especially because I didn’t know anyone particularly well. I had only just moved up that year to be with the ninth graders.

I wiggled uncomfortably in my seat, wishing I had a book to distract me. Finally, lunch arrived, and we all lined up to get slices of cheese or pepperoni pizza and foam cups of hot chocolate. But when I sat down again, this time at a table, the other kids still had their attention trained on their phones.

I often felt alone in moments like these. Phones and social media are supposed to connect people, but oftentimes it can make people feel isolated.

Young people are constantly comparing themselves, and when they have near unlimited access to any information or platform they are more likely to compare themselves to various users or influencers. They might feel inferior to other people after seeing pictures or posts online, and this adds to the general feeling of loneliness.

One might also feel pressured to be on a phone more often since phones have become so commonplace. Maybe some of my peers would have preferred to have an in person conversation with their friends, but when everyone started taking out their phones, they just followed along so they didn’t seem out of place.

Social media is supposed to bring us together, but in this situation, we couldn’t seem further apart. Even the closest of friend groups ignored each other despite the fact that a moment prior, they had been laughing and talking. I felt lonely at that moment, but maybe the people around me felt even worse than I did. Maybe I was lucky.

Since our school has become stricter in its rules, the behavior of many of my now-10th grade peers has changed significantly. They seem to be less serious than they were, and it appears to me that they are more open to conversation.

Recently, I overheard a conversation between several other students on the topic of religion. They were debating God and whether there was a heaven or afterlife of any kind. They all shared their different ideas and opinions, but they didn’t argue or become cross in any way. I was so excited to see this. Before, I had only met a select few who I thought would be open to discussing such a controversial concept, and those people became my closest friends. But now, I had seen kids I barely knew talking openly in public about it, without dropping out of the conversation to check their phones.

Of course, this conversation might have happened even if our school had stayed the way it was before they began enforcing cell phone rules; but I would argue that a conversation like that would not have occurred in the classroom if the students had access to their phones; they would have been too distracted. Had those rules not been put into place, I doubt that such a topic would have been discussed, or at least not so thoroughly.

Being one of the only students my age in my school who doesn’t own a cell phone can be awkward at times. One example of this is when I first tried to get involved with Key Club. There was a table set up just outside the cafeteria advertising key club. There was a QR code available for students to scan with their phones, which would automatically give them any information they needed. Because I didn’t have a phone, me and my Key Club director had to use an alternative plan. Everything turned out fine, and I became a member without much difficulty, it was just an uncomfortable situation.

Another example is one assignment in ninth grade English where we were instructed to write a Tweet from any one of the characters in the book we were reading. I raised my hand.

“Yes?” My teacher asked.

“How do you write a Tweet, exactly?” I asked. “Like, is there a specific format you’d like us to use?” I don’t have a Twitter account, and to be honest, the only concrete fact I knew about Twitter was that the news was always saying something about an incident involving Donald Trump and his various statements on Twitter.

“No, there’s no specific format,” My teacher replied with a smile. One of the boys then remarked with a gibe about my cluelessness and our teacher responded by saying that it’s fine to not have social media.

I receive questions from many students about my strange phonelessness. They are always particularly shocked by the length of time in which I will remain phoneless.

“Not until you’re 18!” They say, a little incredulous.

“Yup.” I reply, rocking on my heels. Sometimes they comment on how strict and annoying my parents must be, which is in itself, annoying.

One conversation I had involved a boy (not the one who made fun of me) coming up with various situations in which I might need a phone.

“What about sports?” He asked. “What if practice ends early, you have no way to tell your parents to pick you up.”

“Well,” I replied. “I can always borrow a phone since I’m pretty much the only person without one.”

“What if you had to be at home alone for a while while your parents went out and then someone broke in, you wouldn’t be able to call for help.” He sat back with a kind of triumph, as though he had finally come up with a situation in which I had no escape unless I owned a phone. I shrugged and smiled.

“My parents generally take me wherever they go, but if they do leave me alone for any reason, they usually leave one of their phones with me just in case. I don’t think anyone will break in though.”

It was a pleasant conversation. He wasn’t interrogative or mocking, just curious as most people are. Curious, as though they couldn’t imagine life without a phone. It is for that very reason that I have no interest in them. I’m not jealous of my friends or peers for having snapchat or TikTok. I think that any relationship, whether it be with a person or a nonliving thing like a phone, that makes one party feel as though they can’t imagine life without it is often unsafe.

We are adaptive animals, and we need to be able to imagine life without technology as a metaphorical crutch we need in order to walk. Yet we still must also be able to adapt to an inevitably more technological world, particularly with AI coming into the picture and only growing more advanced. Still, I believe that we have to continue to remember our past and our roots, like the days when we had to survive in the wild. We still have our old instincts and live our lives guided by them. We will always be haunted by past fears and dreams, even if they no longer fit in the domesticated world we have today.

One of the biggest reasons I think that we need to be able to remember life before we had technology like phones is because with a rapidly evolving digital world, digital warfare is also a threat that is becoming more developed.

If we suddenly did not have access to common and everyday technology, we would quickly have to adapt and work to collaborate with each other to survive. We would have to use books or libraries for information, or simply learn by experimentation. We would have to learn how to consistently start and build a fire, how to track animals and how to find and cook edible plants, roots or mushrooms. Not only would we need to relearn forgotten skills essential to survival in the wild, we would also need social skills to build a community.

Technology can make us feel isolated and can cause us to become more withdrawn. We struggle with social issues and anxiety, but if we no longer had access to social media, we would be forced to collaborate and work with other humans to survive and find a solution.

If one day, all the lights went out and we were left in the darkness with only the stars and the moon and the night, we would be forced to live in –rather than imagine and contemplate — a world without phones.

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Clara Parsons is a 10th grader from Ellenburg Center. This is her first publication.