Technology addiction and rampant screen time are ravaging America’s youth, and young people are paying the price with their mental health, PragerU Kids Director of Outreach Jill Simonian said during an interview on Breitbart News Daily.
Simonian spoke with host Mike Slater on Monday about how parents have a duty to protect their children from the dangers of unfettered technology use in a world dominated by screens. The topic is also woven into PragerU’s new short documentary called The Void: Finding Happiness in a World of Escapism, which delves into “why is Gen Z the most depressed, anxious, and overly medicated generation in America” and how “detached and lonely, millions of young people are plunging into the void of escapism and social media addiction, only to find themselves more isolated and alone.”
“I do not allow my kids to sit there with a phone, with a screen. We have limits. My daughter is an early teenager, and we got her a phone. There is no internet on it. There are no social media apps. The phone literally lives in the kitchen, in the public place. She’s not allowed to have it in her room. We have time limits on it. It is a communication device … that phone is neutered,” Simonian reflected.
“And that is how I think all parents and teachers — anyone who cares about children — we have to shift our focus to just go back to basics,” she added. “And yeah, they’re going to complain, and yeah, it’s really hard to say, ‘no, I’m not going to let you sit there and watch things on the internet….’ [But] we have to shift our focus to getting back to utilizing technology in a way that’s educational for our kids.”
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Simonian pointed to recent studies showing a correlation between screen time for children and ADHD, and how technology can be as addicting as cocaine.
“I have been shouting from the rooftop for a decade at least to stop giving toddlers, children, pre-teens … their own screens because of the exact reasons we see unfolding now with the mental health crisis,” she said. “This is the most depressed, most detached generation — Gen Z. They’re more anxious than ever. … They cannot fill this void of emptiness because they are flat-out addicted to these screens.”
“I know that there are issues in the education system, but we’re looking at kids with severe behavioral disorders who can’t get through a day of school because they have some sort of mental block, because they have some sort of behavioral disorder, because they’re disrupting the classroom,” she continued. “…Correlation does not equal causation, but all of these things are adding up, and we have to look at what’s in front of us. Parents have been giving kids screens. The schools have been giving kids screens at their disposal with unfettered access. And it’s not healthy. It’s not healthy at all.”
Simonian credited much of the youth mental health crisis to “lazy parenting and education.”
“We have been swooped away thinking, ‘oh, children need access to technology constantly in order to keep up with the world.’ No, they absolutely do not,” she said. “We are parents who need to pay attention to what our children are watching, [and] when they’re watching it. We need to make sure that we preserve human-to-human interaction with kids. Let them be bored. I’m a big believer in letting them be bored — and going back to basics.”
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.
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