Stern professor and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt said today’s political scene might be a consequence of how screens affect young people during a Friday fireside chat at the African Grove Theatre — one of the first major events for NYU IRL, the university’s new device-free initiative.

Haidt, who’s known for his criticism of phone usage during adolescence in his book “The Anxious Generation,” said unrest on college campuses and the rise of populism are consequences of young people’s use of smartphones. He was introduced by President Linda Mills, who recently cited Haidt as inspiration for NYU IRL in an interview with The Chronicle of Higher Education.

“John has established himself as the most consequential scholar of this time,” Mills said. “John has built a groundswell of support for a simple but very serious idea: ‘Turn it off, lock it up, sign out.’”

Haidt spoke about his experience teaching before and after the proliferation of smartphones, noting that as Generation Z began to enter college in the mid-2010s, students increasingly viewed ideas they disagreed with as threatening. Students’ mass use of screens during the COVID-19 pandemic, Haidt said, exacerbated this issue as it made them more anxious and depressed.

He also thanked NYU for funding The Anxious Generation Movement, which advocates for phone-free schools and age restrictions on social media, and includes Haidt’s Tech and Society Lab at the Stern School of Business.

For the last hour of the event, Haidt called up three students from Flourishing, a business course he teaches at the university. Stern sophomore Ella Wisdom told the audience about her experience struggling to focus in school because of apps like TikTok.

“Around 2019, with the rise of short-form media, was probably when my attention was the most stolen, and I started to see the worst effects on my performance academically,” Wisdom said. “ NYU was very specifically vulnerable to the effects that we see because we don’t have a traditional campus. It’s so easy for you to not be around people all the time.”

Stern sophomore Eva Shapiro, another student speaker, asked Haidt how to reclaim attention from technology. He advised students to set up morning and evening routines to improve sleep, and uninstall video games and gambling apps, which hook users by offering rewards on random schedules.

The event was originally scheduled to kick off NYU IRL on Feb. 23, but was postponed due to a severe blizzard warning. The initiative — the first of its kind at a major U.S. university — offers resources for faculty to make their courses device-free and launched The NEST, a device-free space in the Kimmel Center for University Life that hosts events like game nights and mindfulness workshops.

“We’re gonna fight to make universities great again,” Haidt said. “We’re gonna fight to restore that real sense of academic community. We’re gonna strengthen community here at NYU despite the anti-communitarian ravages of technology.”

Contact Grace Marshall at [email protected].