Jonathan Haidt has been making the talking head circuit with his new book about the affect of social media and phones on kids.
Popular use of the internet is shaped by catastrophe and trauma and, in this case, it’s Sandy Hook.
In late 2012, a kid murdered a bunch of kindergartners in cold blood. These were the prototypical “blameless victims”, white, children, of country club Republicans in suburban Connecticut. The reaction of the American body politic was to sit on its hands. And do nothing.
Generation Trauma
That year was 5 years after the iPhone was released.
That year was the first generation of kids entering middle school who had no living memory of 9/11. They were born into fearful, terrified, and traumatized society and country.
While browsing real estate listings on Zillow or Redfin, even in the nicest areas, where the elementary and high schools are rated highly, the middle schools will typically have a lower score.
This isn’t a reflection of the school quality, it’s a universal truth about middle schoolers.
Middle schoolers are notoriously awful people. Not just to their parents and teachers, but to each other.
Around 2012, they received their first smartphone as they were entering middle school, which was already a psychological gauntlet, especially for girls.
The term “ostracize” comes from Ancient Greek. Around the Mediterranean, roof tiles and clay pots would break and then be swept into piles on the streets. A fragment of pottery was known as ostrakon. The practice of ostracism was a democratic procedure intended to protect the state from individuals who were perceived as threats to its stability. When society voted someone off the island, a mob of people would gather ostrakon, and write that person’s name on the pot shard. Ostracize means “to banish by voting with pot shards.” The mob would then tear the offending person to pieces with broken pieces of pottery. That is what it meant to “ostracize” someone.
Kid have been ostracizing each other for millennia, and then we adults put a digital ostracon in their hands. Unsurprisingly, the kids began to digitally ostracize one another. Especially girls.
This form of bullying (i.e. psychological abuse) prompted many children to seek counseling.
That is why many young girls, who are now young adults, gained a vocabulary for mental health, psychology, and the practice of identifying and labeling bad people. They learned words and terms to describe the psychologically maladjusted.
Children who learn that adults are dangerous are built different.
Training
The kids spent a generation training for active shooter drills at their schools.
The protocol is “ABCD”:
Get (A)way
(B)arricade yourself
(C)onfront
(D)isarm – or, more likely, (D)eath
They know Bad Men™ when they see them.
We trained them, put digital ostracon in their hands, and now we’re surprised when they are motivated to confront bad men to disarm them, like that was not part of the conditioning to sacrifice for constitutional rights.
Inani Ludibrio 