This is Your Brain on Youth Sports
Guess what, that's a good thing.
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I’ve now badgered my husband to listen to a recent episode of the Huberman Lab podcast titled, How Smart Phones and Social Media Impact Mental Health so many times it’s basically his white noise. When any form of art or information moves me, be it a book, a new song, a TV binge-fest or a 2.5 hour science-based podcast episode, I’m the scream-it-from-a-mountaintop-and-incorporate-it-into-daily-conversation-as-much-as-possible type of person. Totally passionate and not at all annoying, right?
This particular episode of Huberman Lab, a popular wellness podcast hosted by Stanford neuroscience and ophthalmology professor Andrew Huberman, gave me the scream-from-a-mountaintop vibes. On the surface, the episode’s title which again is, How Smart Phones and Social Media Impact Mental Health doesn’t move the needle. Yeah yeah, smartphones cause myopia, expose kids to a bunch of creepers, and make them antisocial weirdos. We’ve heard it before and know it’s toxic for mental health. Yet as a parent, it often feels like a nearly impossible fight to win. But 15 minutes into this pod episode, I was riveted and even had a dash of hope.
Before we begin, I’d like to acknowledge that Huberman himself has fallen under scrutiny for allegedly being both a shitty boyfriend and pushing a few ideas not wholly accepted by the scientific community. But due to a deep love of science (-y enough)-based wellness and Huberman’s compelling show topics, I still listen so long as the guest is legit.
This legit guest and the topic at hand especially hit home given the honing in on the ages 9-13, the traditional start of puberty. (My boys just turned 10 and 13.) Guest Dr. Jonathan Haidt, NYU Social Psychologist and author of several books including, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness makes a number of salient and alarming points in regular person vernacular. Haidt explains how dopamine spikes and drops emanating from the internet (for example, a TikTok post going viral for a day and then getting no more views or yes, porn) are especially toxic for the pubescent child.(Dopamine is the neurotransmitter hormone responsible for pleasure and motivation.) How this particular period and whether dopamine is regulated is one key component of mental health maintenance. But the pull of the smartphone and all its options for mindless scrolling is real for kids and adults. Yet it’s the Gen Z kids and their still-forming brains who are most impacted. Essentially, how well a kid can survive a modern childhood of smartphone usage will go a long way toward framing their future success.
Here, in an op-ed for The Guardian, Haiti lays out the bleak reality, pointing the blame at the tech companies and societal collision that started in 2007 as smartphones became commonplace:
When faced with growing evidence that their products were harming young people, they mostly engaged in denial, obfuscation, and public relations campaigns. Companies that strive to maximise “engagement” by using psychological tricks to keep young people clicking were the worst offenders. They hooked children during vulnerable developmental stages, while their brains were rapidly rewiring in response to incoming stimulation. This included social media companies, which inflicted their greatest damage on girls, and video game companies and pornography sites, which sank their hooks deepest into boys. By designing a slew of addictive content that entered through kids’ eyes and ears, and by displacing physical play and in-person socialising, these companies have rewired childhood and changed human development on an almost unimaginable scale.
If this isn’t terrifying enough, Haidt presents disheartening data including how the self‐harm rate for young adolescent girls nearly tripled from 2010 to 2020. The rate for older girls (ages 15–19) doubled, while the rate for women over 24 actually went down. Similarly, the suicide rate for young adolescents increased by 167% from 2010 to 2021. On the podcast, Haidt noted the rise in hospitalizations for boys related to self-harm also increased but at a steadier pace vs. the spike for girls. For non-white kids and teenagers, especially those that identify as LGBTQ+, the self-harm and suicide data is even more terrifying.
What does all of this have to do with youth sports, you might be wondering. Everything. For all its ills, youth sports is an incredible antidote to the crushing impact of smartphones and social media. Essentially playing sports is the opposite of opportunity cost, it’s opportunity lost. The opportunity to NOT be on a phone and NOT have the young impressionable brain corroded with the Internet’s maggots.
If a kid spends, say, 10 hours a week between practices, warm-ups and playing games, that’s 10 less hours of smartphone usage. (If your kid is on a team where checking Snapchat during water breaks is the norm, please find a new team.)
At a deeper level, youth sports provides a crucial skill smartphones and video games strip away: conflict resolution. The example Haidt offers is a kid playing a video game alone where there is no flexibility. You win or lose. You pass a level or you die. You learn ZERO. Whereas a group of friends hanging out might start kicking a soccer ball around. One friend takes the lead and turns it into a game of Rondo where players form a circle and pass to each other with one or more defenders in the middle trying to steal the ball. How many in the middle vs. the edge? How long are they playing? What happens when an argument ensues over which player was responsible for an errant ball? The kids probably want to keep playing so, guess what, they have to talk it out and come to an agreement.
Organized youth sports come with a side of learning to communicate with peers and adults, with various personalities, in the flesh. Not filtered up behind a screen. This form of navigating a system with moving parts is key for essential skills like give and take or basic independence. And for athletes playing individual sports, you get to breath and think about your views on life and wherever else your mind takes you. Depth of thought, not something a kid is likely to find on social media.
None of this is surprising but I just really appreciated how Haidt presented his information. And while I yell at my kids about 40 times a day to get off the phone or stop playing video games, I’m thankful that their insane jam-packed schedule of sports, organized and not, is a welcome break from worrying about their brain development.
For the record Dr. Haidt recommends the following in The Anxious Generation:
No smartphones until age 14 (flip phones before then are fine)
No social media until age 16
Phone-free schools
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