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As we rebroadcast this conversation, it feels worth saying up front why we hosted it in the first place.
The Sustainable Media Center did not bring Jonathan Haidt, Zach Rausch, and a room full of Gen Z leaders together to stage a debate or score points in the ongoing culture war over phones. We did it because the conversation about youth, technology, and mental health has gotten loud, repetitive, and oddly narrow. Too often, adults talk about young people. Less often, they talk with them. Almost never do they listen carefully enough to be changed by what they hear.
This roundtable was an attempt to do something different.
Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation, and his research partner Zach Rausch from the Tech and Society Lab came in with years of data, patterns, and hard questions about what phones and social media are doing to kids, especially in school settings. Sitting across from them were high school students, college students, filmmakers, organizers, and youth advocates from groups like Design It For Us, the Log Off movement, and Reconnect. The age spread mattered. So did the power dynamics. This was not a panel where adults lectured and young people nodded politely. It was a working conversation.
What emerged surprised some people in the room.
There was far more agreement than disagreement about the core problem. Phones are changing how young people experience attention, friendship, boredom, risk, and belonging. Social media has become a default environment, not a tool. Many students talked candidly about distraction, sleep loss, anxiety, and the subtle pressure to always be on, always reachable, always visible. These were not abstract complaints. They were personal, specific, and often painful.
At the same time, the conversation refused to flatten into a simple moral panic.
Several Gen Z participants pushed back on language that frames young people as passive victims or technology as an unstoppable force. They described moments of agency, creativity, and resistance. They talked about building clubs, movements, and peer networks that support healthier norms. They questioned whether blunt policy tools like bans, especially when imposed without student buy-in, actually solve the underlying issues or just drive behavior underground.
This tension was productive.
Jonathan Haidt has been clear in his research that schools play a critical role in shaping the phone environment, and that shared norms matter more than individual willpower. Zach Rausch added depth by connecting individual stories to broader system-level incentives that reward engagement at all costs. But neither dismissed the youth voices in the room. Instead, the discussion moved toward a more nuanced question. How do we create environments that make healthier choices easier without framing young people as the problem?
That question sat at the center of the conversation.
Participants like Evan Perez, a high school student from Providence, and Katherine Choynowska, a 16-year-old student in Singapore, spoke about what it actually feels like to navigate school hallways, classrooms, and friendships with a phone in hand. Others, like Nathan Ko from Columbia, Samara Gorton from Log Off and Common Sense Media, and Matthew Stevens from Design It For Us, connected those experiences to organizing efforts that aim to shift norms rather than police behavior.
Filmmakers Yoelle Gulko and Lea Despotis, who worked on Our Subscription to Addiction, brought a storytelling lens. They reminded the room that how we talk about this issue shapes what solutions feel possible. Language matters. Framing matters. Fear can motivate, but it can also shut people down.
That insight landed.
Again and again, the group returned to the idea that meaningful change will not come from pitting adults against youth, or parents against schools, or kids against their phones. It will come from shared expectations, clear boundaries, and environments designed with human limits in mind. Not because young people are weak, but because attention is finite and the systems competing for it are very strong.
For us at the Sustainable Media Center, this conversation reinforced why intergenerational dialogue is not a nice-to-have. It is essential infrastructure. When Gen Z leaders like Sean Killingsworth of Reconnect, Nicole Gill of Accountable Tech, Kanika Mehra, Nicholas Plante, Kendall Schrohe, William Berens, and others sit at the same table as researchers and authors, something shifts. The conversation gets more grounded. Less abstract. More honest.
As we rebroadcast this discussion, we invite you to listen for that honesty.
Listen for the moments of agreement that cut through the noise. Listen for the disagreements that are thoughtful rather than performative. Listen for how often the word “ban” gives way to words like “environment,” “norms,” “design,” and “trust.”
Most of all, listen to the young people. They are not asking to be rescued. They are asking to be taken seriously.
That feels like a good place to start.
Participants;
Jonathan Haidt — Author of “The Anxious Generation” and professor
Zach Rausch — Jonathan Haidt’s research partner, leading the Tech and Society Lab
Steve Rosenbaum — Executive Director of the Sustainable Media Center (host/moderator)
Evan Perez — High school student from Met High School in Providence, Rhode Island
Kanika Mehra — Working with Sustainable Media Center and joining the Aspen Institute’s Center of Rising Generations
Matthew Stevens — Representing Design It For Us and the Log Off movement
Samara Gorton — Part of the Log Off movement, works with Common Sense Media, leader of her school’s mental health club
Nathan Ko — Sophomore at Columbia University, from Design It For Us
Katherine Choynowska — 16-year-old high school student in Singapore
Nicholas Plante — Works with the Sustainable Media Center and Design It For Us
Sean Killingsworth — Founder of the Reconnect movement, organizing facilitator for Design It For Us
Lea Despotis — Assistant director for the film “Our Subscription to Addiction”
Kendall Schrohe — Recent graduate from Santa Clara University, with Design It For Us
Yoelle Gulko — Director of the documentary “Our Subscription to Addiction”
Nicole Gill — Co-founder of Accountable Tech and helped found Design It For Us
William Berens — College student
