Peter Gray thinks smartphones for kids are just fine, thank you very much. He is 82, a research professor of psychology at Boston College, the author of a textbook now in its eighth edition, and the person Jonathan Haidt’s bestseller “The Anxious Generation” was, in a sense, written at. “I read some of his research and I said, ‘Jon, these are not that convincing.’”
Both men agree that something changed for the worse in American childhood around 2010. Haidt says it was the iPhone. Gray, in his new book “Restoring Childhood,” says it was the Common Core curriculum, rolled out in most states the same year. His exhibit: a 2009 American Psychological Association survey in which 44% of students reported worrying about doing well in school, and a 2013 survey in which 83% called school a significant source of stress. When you ask teenagers what makes them anxious, he says, school comes out on top, then college admissions, then jobs. He also cites a 2024 National Academies consensus study that “did not support the conclusion that social media causes changes in adolescent health at the population level.”
Where they agree
Gray is not a libertarian about screens. No phones at the dinner table. Places where kids are physically present and outdoors. Certain pornography and online gambling should be illegal for everyone, he says, not just for children. Where he breaks with the current movement is on play: videogames, by every definition, are play — creative, autonomous, social — and he notes that the 1990s moral panic about them coincided with falling teenage violence and, among kids with computer access, improving mental health.
The deeper argument is about freedom. The restraint of children outdoors began around 1980 with a few horrific stranger abductions, “which generated a wild panic that we are still in the throes of today.” A Virginia mother was recently convicted of contributing to the delinquency of a minor for letting her 5-year-old walk to a pond in a gated community. “It’s not that the world has become more dangerous. It’s our perception of the danger.” His parenting model — trustful, autonomy-supportive — is chores, no doing their homework, kids cooking dinner. “It frees you up.”
Our read
We include this in a financial paper for two reasons. The first is that the pattern is one we see every day: two credentialed experts arguing hard about the cause while agreeing almost entirely about what to do. Investors do this constantly — a fierce debate about whether the Fed or the deficit or Japan is pushing the 10-year to 5%, while everyone in the room would give the same advice about how long your bonds should be. Argue about the forecast if you enjoy it. Act on the habits, because the habits are what both sides recommend.
The second reason is that Gray’s prescription is a money prescription in disguise. Chores, a kid cooking dinner, a 5-year-old walking to school — these are how competence gets built, and financial competence is built the same way: an allowance with real consequences, a teenager’s first Roth funded from a summer job, a college student handed the budget rather than the card. The children Gray describes as over-scheduled and over-protected become the 25-year-olds we meet who have never made a financial decision alone. The fix starts earlier than 25.