Instagram’s new ‘teen accounts’ won’t make social media safe for children

Published September 20, 2024 1:07pm ET



Parents are waking up to the dangers of phones and social media for preteens and teenagers. A whopping 84% of U.S. adults “worry about the effect of social media on the mental health of today’s young people,” according to a Harris Poll that came out in June.

Jonathan Haidt’s book The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness has sparked conversations among parents like few other books. An instant New York Times bestseller, the book features Haidt presenting the case for how the cellphone, and everything on it, has negatively affected almost every measurable mental health marker, increasing sleep deprivation, addiction, loneliness, depression, and more.

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