Innovating with Eyes Wide Open
Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness is a cultural lightning rod, a truth bomb that's exploded at the top of the bestseller list. It lays bare a truth many of us in Gen X might have missed in our digital dawn: every tech marvel comes with a shadow. We who cheered the Web's arrival didn’t quite predict its ripple effects on democracy, our relationships, or our kids’ innocence.
Social media, that digital campfire we thought would gather us all, does keep me looped in with loved ones in ways yesteryear couldn't match. Yet, it's also a playground for darker forces: cyberbullying, disinformation, propaganda, isolation, and an epidemic of FOMO. And smartphones? Who knew these pocket-sized universes could make us slaves to the ping, transform dating into a market transaction and isolating us even as we sit around the same table alone together?
Back in 2010 at the Institute of Design, I did a project with T-Mobile that upon reflection in light of Haidt’s book, made me question our headlong rush into innovation. In the first few weeks, nearly all of my classmates (most in their 20's) presented designs that positioned the smartphone as a learning tool that could be used in the classroom. As one of the older students in the class, I thought back to my own 10-year old son, and the struggles we were having regulating his screen time. I did some informal research and found that universally my son's teachers were horrified at the thought of having to police a class full of middle-school students with an unregulated distraction-engine in their hands. They were already confiscating phones and complaining to parents.
Bandit: Our wearable for kids
We ended up realizing that kids really didn't want a phone (the only people they called were their parents), they wanted a messaging device they could use to connect to their friends. My partner and I designed something that was very close to the Apple Watch (which Apple would announce five years later) - a wearable that used voice recognition to transcribe messages that could not be used surreptitiously in class, and would be hard for the kid to lose, since it was worn.
Upon reflection, I wonder if in our quest for progress, were we blindly stoking the very issues Haidt spotlighted? Maybe. But here's the pivot: even vape pen inventors aimed to curb smoking. Intentions matter. But all too often the creator of an innovation is not the exploiter of innovation. Oppenheimer had great intentions, only to later reflect, “I am the destroyer of worlds.”
Why reflect on this? Because the innovation train isn’t stopping, only accelerating, and AI is its next frontier. And I'm not sure those who say "AI will not replace you," have fully thought it through. Adult sites are now peddling "The perfect AI companion," and it's just the beginning. (The porn industry, for better or worse, seems to be the canary in the coal mine when it comes to new technology adoption.) What happens when AI becomes the BFF we can't live without, twisting our ability to connect with other humans, empathize, or even think for ourselves?
This is more a call to action than a critique. The youth who catapult tech forward — think Steve Jobs, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg — all of whom became tech giants in their early 20's, may not see the pitfalls, but their energy is crucial. They push boundaries, but older, wiser minds bring wisdom, and together we balance creation and caution.
The exploiters are waiting in the wings, twisting innovation for shady gains. Spam, catfishing, cyberbullying, deepfakes, and emotional manipulation — the digital Pandora's box is wide open. And fixing the problems? We must recognize that sometimes the solution to the ills of technology is not more technology. Mindfulness apps, pharmaceuticals and wearables soar as band-aid for the anxiety epidemic Haidt talks about. But are they solutions or just sedatives?
If you are an innovator, disruption is fun. We want to change the world for the better. "Move fast and break things," they say. But now we know: some things are too precious to break. We learn, we iterate, yes, but we also must pause and reflect, and pay attention to the shadow, not just the light. And today’s challenges? We're already developing Ethical AI, and digital wellness movements — these are signs of our learning curve, not just our fails.
But this is a call for us to start paying attention to second-order effects across the innovation landscape. Human nature exploits, but it also innovates with purpose. For every spam email, there’s encryption; for every deep-fake, there's digital literacy education. It’s a dance of advancement and adaptation.
Am I a Luddite? Far from it. I'm an advocate for all that technology promises — efficiency, connection, the spark of AI. Haidt's insights are a compass, helping us navigate the tech landscape with awareness and hope. Ahead, I’ll dive into ways in which innovation will change society in ways we can only start to imagine. Let's, explore the paths that let us harness tech’s power without being overpowered by it. Let’s get excited about that.