The truth is out: About half of Gen Z wishes TikTok (47%) and X (50%) didn’t exist. That’s despite—or maybe because of—spending four hours a day on social media, as more than half of respondents to a new survey say is their norm. The findings, from a nationally representative poll of 1,006 Gen Z adults (ages 18-27) by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and the Harris Poll, offer a sobering snapshot of how young adults are grappling with the addictive nature of smartphones and social media.
Haidt, author of the controversial best-seller The Anxious Generation, who touts four basic rules regarding children and smartphones—none before high school, no social media before age 16, no phones in schools, and more unsupervised play—shares the findings in a New York Times opinion piece on Tuesday. He finds the amount of time Gen Z spends on social media—60% at four hours a day and 23% at seven or more hours a day—to be “astonishing,” particularly since 60% also say social media has a negative impact on society (versus 32 who say it has a positive impact). And while 52% say social media has benefited their lives and 29% say it has hurt them, young people from historically disadvantaged groups have found less benefit, he writes, including 44% of women and 47% of LGBTQ respondents who say social media has negatively impacted their mental health .
That’s compared with 31% of men and 35% of non-LGBTQ respondents. As far as wishing a platform “was never invented,” T.