The best-selling book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, posits that smart phones and social media apps have spiked a "surge of suffering" in the form of mental health problems among teens in the Western world.
Other academics have attacked its author, the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, in one of those egghead research arguments about causality or correlation, but the best that can be said about teenage smart phone use was reported in a U.S. Surgeon General's advisory last year:
"Nearly every teenager in America uses social media, and yet we do not have enough evidence to conclude that it is sufficiently safe for them. Our children have become unknowing participants in a decades-long experiment."
Good times.
So: good on the Santa Barbara Unified School District, which already was a leader in California in regulating students' smart phone use in school, for instituting an even tougher new policy, requiring high school students to deposit their devices in a "cell hotel" during class, as Callie Fausey reports on a new episode of Newsmakers TV.
Josh Molina and Ryan P. Cruz also join this week's panel to discuss the latest twist in the saga of building hundreds of new units of housing at the Macy's site in La Cumbre Plaza, and also break down the policy and political issues arising from an L.A. developer's push to erect an eight-story blockbuster adjoining the Mission, using Sacramento's "builder's remedy" scam, in furtherance of the jihad to overthrow local control over zoning and land use decisions.
Plus: plans for the Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary inch ahead at the Coastal Commission; a who's-on-first comedy of errors at City Hall about how to spend all that new sales tax money they don't have yet; and a local election update,.
Speaking of which, Josh and the genial host next Wednesday will co-moderate two city council election debates, for Districts 1 and 3, that will be livestreamed by TVSB, in partnership with Newsmakers and the Santa Barbara Talks podcast. We'd love to hear from you via email -- newsmakerswithjr@gmail.com -- about any questions you'd like posed to the candidates.
JR
Check out the new episode via YouTube below, or by clicking through this link. The podcast version is here. TVSB, Channel 17, airs the show every weeknight at 8 p.m., and at 9 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday. KCSB, 91.9 FM, broadcasts the program at 5:30 p.m. on Monday.
Image: aboutmybrain.com
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