What's Social Media Doing to College Students? 'An Academic Community Is Weakened by Technology,' Warns Jonathan Haidt

My daughter will head off to college next year. And while I’m mostly some complicated mix of excited for her and sad for me, I am also very worried by a haunting image in my head: her in bed in her dorm, snuggled up with her phone, scrolling, while her roommate does the same. I hope that it’s an exaggerated vision. But still, I think about my own tech-free, super-social dorm experience, and I worry.

I wonder a lot about how Gen Z college students — the first digital natives and the kids who got pushed into even more screentime and less isolation during the COVID pandemic — fare when go away to school, with no one around to help them monitor their technology addiction.

Turns out I’m not alone in with that concern. And wouldn’t you know it, but social psychologist and Anxious Generation author Jonathan Haidt is now a leading voice in trying to address it. He’s already had a heavy hand in igniting a revolution of awareness and pushback around the mental-health dangers of screen technology and social media for kids and teens — and between countries putting age limits on social media and the landmark social media court case unfolding in Los Angeles right now, the tide is turning.

Now, through his work at New York University, where he’s a professor, Haidt is expanding the conversation to include college students, too.

“Can you imagine coming from wherever you come from in the world, to NYU in New York City, and what do you do? You go to classes and you sit and scroll. What an incredible waste of opportunity,” Haidt told an audience of over 100 at kick-off event for NYU IRL, a university-wide initiative designed to help students disconnect from their devices and reconnect with one another.

NYU became the first major U.S. university to roll back device use this past fall, prompted by Haidt’s research on how smartphones contribute to isolation and disconnection among young people. And now the effort will continue with dedicated phone-free spaces and events on campus. Haidt is hoping the movement spreads to universities across the country.

“An academic community is weakened by technology, because suddenly everyone is connected to everyone,” he said. “All over, when students are sitting in class, most of them are on their phones or their computers. They’re still communicating with everybody, everywhere.” He quoted the powerful observation of MIT tech theorist Sherry Turkle, who has said that “we are forever elsewhere” because of our devices.

“We are never fully present in what we’re doing. And that is an incredibly dehumanizing effect of technology, especially on an institution like the University,” Haidt said. “The whole reason that American universities are so great is that it’s really fun to come here, and you grow a lot, and you have a sense of school spirit and a sense that you have this new identity. And all of that has been weakened by technology.”

It’s only been since Haidt’s book came out in 2024 that he’s had that epiphany, about people of all ages. “However horrific the mental health damage is, the bigger damage is actually the destruction of the human ability to pay attention,” he said.

After his remarks, the professor was joined onstage for a chat with three former “star students,” who took his Stern Business School class, “Flourishing,” which discusses addictive technology and helps the young people to curb their own use of it.  

Everett, a sophomore business and finance major, shared how his own excessive social media use — averaging 10 hours a day — tanked his academic performance freshman year.

“Every morning, I would wake up, I would scroll. I would scroll walking to track practice. I would scroll after track practice. I would scroll in between classes. I would scroll and scroll and scroll every time before bed,” he said. “And what this did was it limited the opportunities for me to do deep work. Whenever I would study, I’d have to take breaks every 20 minutes because I couldn’t focus, because the phone called to me every time. As a result, my grades suffered.”

Ella, a sophomore business and political economics major, said she got her first device at the age of 7. She has fond memories of using the Video Star platform with her best friend, dressing up and making music videos, but said her relationship to the technology took a turn when, at the age of 8 (and without her mother’s knowledge), she followed in her big sister’s footsteps and got onto Instagram.

“It’s very strange when you’re so young to be suddenly so acutely aware of what things you could post that would get likes,” Ella said. She became skilled at curating her online image — something that continued through middle school and high school.

Now, she said, “It’s just so embarrassing to me. I’d be on vacation and be obsessed with, like, making my parents take hundreds of photos of me. It was so important to me to make sure that the people back home could see that I was having this awesome time, which is awful.” From there, with the rise of short-form media, she said her attention was “stolen,” and blames the algorithms for targeting her deepest insecurities.

By freshman year, she said, “I would rather look at Instagram reels than be around people.”

Eva, sophomore business major, shared that she grew up attending Montessori schools, which were ahead of their time in having phone lockers, and in going to phone-free summer camps and playing outside. During the pandemic, everything changed.

“Coming to NYU,” she said, “I had very poor screen time habits. I was staying up late, scrolling. I was waking up scrolling.” Throughout the day, she felt “controlled” by her phone and its “400 notifications.”

All three students then described, in what Haidt joked were “revival-style” pronouncements, how they cut back their social media addictions through taking his class. They learned, slowly, to replace scrolling with meditation. They deleted apps.

“When I go to the library, I’ll leave my phone at home,” said Eva. And though it was scary at first, “It’s just not possible to be productive and really focus on what you’re doing when you have a phone on you.” She’s now reduced her screen time use to the point of returning to “who I was before COVID, and before I was really scrolling nonstop.”

What College Kids — and Teens Heading to College — Can Do Right Now

Both Haidt and the students shared practical steps for curbing phone use — something they all agreed had changed their college lives for the better.

Replace the Dopamine Hit With Something Else

Eva turned to taking up hobbies, like playing Catan with friends, and listening to podcasts, which scratches her itch for what she called “the auditory response.” Haidt pointed out that podcasts are “slow dopamine,” unlike the “quick dopamine” of TikTok, and provide the hit “at a slow, steady level,” making it a great way to withdraw. “It’s really like methadone for heroin,” he said, prompted laughter from the audience.

Remove the Apps From Your Phone

“If you say that you can’t delete Instagram or deactivate your account because, like, you need to be in group chats and need to be able to still communicate with these people, then there’s no reason why you can’t just keep it on your computer,” suggested Ella. “Then you can access it there, and you don’t have it on you physically all the time, where you can just pull it out anywhere. That was a big game changer for me.”

Added Eva, “Turning your phone back into a communication device is really the key.”

Turn Your Phone to Black-and-White Mode

The other game changer for Ella was turning her phone display to a black-and-white setting. “What’s really beautiful about that is the world, the real world, is quite literally in color, and your phone is entirely in black and white. It’s insane how much less interested I am in my phone when it’s not in color,” she said. Haidt called the idea “powerful.”  

Turn Off Notifications

“A really big, obvious, easy thing is to shut off the great majority of notifications,” said Haidt. That means no notifications when an email arrives, and no news notifications.

“Don’t let things interrupt you,” he said. “I promise you, if there is a huge emergency, everyone around you is going to be freaking out, so you’ll find out. Please shut off. Yes, follow the news. But do you want to follow the news 20 times a day?”

Stop Looking at Your Phone at Least an Hour Before Bedtime

“If you scroll before bed, you’re kind of flooded with all of these videos, and all these thoughts kind of enter your mind immediately,” said Everett. “You’re not in a state of rest.”

There’s science behind the recommendation, too, showing that restricted phone use before bedtime improved sleep length and duration. “And I know this might be hard, especially during midterm season,” when you may find yourself staying up super late to study, he said. “But if you manage your time wisely, that won’t be the case. If you can limit yourself not looking any screens before bed, it’ll do wonders.” Now, instead of scrolling, Everett listens to a guided meditation before bed. “It gets me a state of calm. It rests my mind,” he said. “And I don’t think about what happened during the day