To the Editor:
Re “I’m a Child Psychiatrist. Screens Are Not the Problem,” by Jonathan Slater (Opinion guest essay, Oct. 13):
As a child and adolescent psychiatrist, I share Dr. Slater’s frustration that arguments about screens obscure the failure to fund mental treatment. But expanding access to treatment raises the question: What do we owe children before they need it?
Dr. Slater names poverty, homelessness, neglect and violence as sources of risk. These deserve more than a place in a patient’s history and medical records. They deserve a policy response. Clinics cannot repair what housing policy, education and public budgets cause children to endure.
That means helping families keep their homes, giving school counselors time to know students beyond a screening score and supporting parents before exhaustion becomes a crisis.
Even within health care, a diagnosis need not be the price of admission. Since 2021, Massachusetts Medicaid has covered preventive behavioral health services for young people who screen positive, without requiring a diagnosis.
We should fund treatment. But children should not have to become patients before the country takes an interest in their well-being.
Kevin M. Simon Boston The writer is a child and adolescent psychiatrist at Boston Children’s Hospital and an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.
To the Editor:
Jonathan Slater rightly exposes the pretense that excessive screen time is the root of youth mental health issues.
While overuse of screens certainly exacerbates mental health issues by causing dopamine overloads, sleep deprivation and less social interaction, there are other factors to consider. In my experience as a student at a competitive magnet school, I noticed how many adults blamed screens rather than the punishing workloads for the often debilitating stress many students experienced.
By attributing student mental health issues strictly to screens, adults were able to avoid confronting unrealistic academic expectations and burnout. For many students, escaping to a screen is one of the easiest outlets when they’re overwhelmed, even if it doesn’t have a positive effect.
As Dr. Slater argues, instead of scapegoating screens for poor youth mental health, we should investigate why young people are so quick to turn to them.
Lia Oxman Philadelphia
To the Editor:
Jonathan Slater says that as a child psychiatrist he sees kids suffering, but sees “screen time as a tantalizing distraction from bigger problems.” In his view, the problem is too few dollars dedicated to child mental health professionals.
But we need to look at how American childhoods were changing before the iPhone: They were becoming an adult-supervised exercise in which kids are allowed almost none of the independence they had in earlier generations.
An Institute for Family Studies survey of 24,000 Americans this year found that the majority of parents of kids up to and including 14-year-olds will not let them leave the block on their own. In my day — a while ago, granted, but still the same species — kids walked to school at age 5. My crossing guard was 10.
A totally micromanaged childhood is as depressing for kids as a totally micromanaged adulthood is for adults.
Let’s try a solution that does not require more funding: opening the door. It works even better if some neighbors let their kids out, too. No drugs or co-pays required, just fresh air and maybe a ball.
It sounds simple, but so do other mental health interventions: exercise, good food, seeing friends.
Give kids back a life, and they might not need a virtual one.
Lenore Skenazy Queens The writer is the president of Let Grow and the author of “Free-Range Kids.”
To the Editor:
Each day, in the subway and on city streets, I frequently witness babies, toddlers and children who are ignored by their parents or caregivers. These adults are often glued to their smartphones and ignore the pleas of children to look at them, talk to them, engage them.
Instead, the adults sometimes thrust smartphones into strollers and into young hands to quiet cries. The immediate, almost druglike effect is silence and the ceasing of tears.
Is it any wonder that vulnerable, lonely young people will grow up unequipped to know their own worth; to look people in the eye; to have a meaningful conversation, make a real connection and understand what is true and what is not?
Adults understand all too well the temptation of screens to provide distractions. But when given to babies and children whose brains are still growing, surely these screens can be problematic.
Ilene Starger Bronx
To the Editor:
As a retired child and adolescent psychoanalyst and psychiatrist, I agree with Jonathan Slater that screens are often masking deeper problems.
Children who came into my office with a cellphone, video game or other device they seemed to be addicted to would eventually share the suffering hidden behind the addiction.
Although parents invariably objected to their children’s bringing the device to our sessions, I told them that, if they allowed it, I would learn what was behind it — as soon as their children understood that I was genuinely interested in them.
Nathaniel Donson East Marian, N.Y.
To the Editor:
Jonathan Slater focuses more on securing funding to treat children’s mental health problems than preventing them in the first place. Surely, psychiatric treatment should not have to become a normal part of childhood.
He tells us that the problem isn’t screen time itself, but addictive use and the activities children engage in. But isn’t that stating the obvious? Surely, nobody seriously believes that the glowing screen itself is the problem.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data show that the percentage of American teenage girls reporting persistent sadness or hopelessness rose from 36 percent in 2011 to 57 percent in 2021 — a period during which smartphones became an everyday part of teenage life. Correlation isn’t proof of causation, but surely this extraordinary overlap deserves serious attention.
Better psychiatric care is essential. But shouldn’t our first responsibility be to protect children from potentially harmful digital environments — and hold the companies profiting from them accountable?
Claus Spanner Elmholt Copenhagen
The post Children’s Problems Today Go Beyond the Screens appeared first on New York Times.
