The real crisis in schools is social media addiction and like teen smoking, it’s possible to curb it. That’s the finding of Nova Scotia Education Expert, Paul Bennett who will be presenting at the 94 annual Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, Canada’s leading academic gathering, taking place May 30 to June 6 at George Brown College in Toronto.
“We’re attempting to control the wrong thing,” said Paul Bennett, education reformer, policy analyst, adjunct professor at Saint Mary’s University and senior fellow at Laurier-Macdonald Institute. “School smartphone bans alone won’t fix teens’ social media addiction. Until we address the fundamental problem, we’re not going to succeed and we need a concerted, public health-led initiative to do so.”
Bennett will share why he believes smartphones are the new cigarettes, presenting “frightening and immediate mental health risks” to children and teens, and why the issue is much bigger than just education.
Drawing from the UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report (2023) on the harmful effects of mobile technology, and Jonathan Haidt’s international bestseller, The Anxious Generation (2024), Bennett illustrates the magnitude of the social media addiction problem and the shortcomings of current approaches to limit smartphone use among kids and youth.
While smartphone bans in schools are an important step in breaking the cycle of addiction, Bennett sees them as little more than a band-aid solution that is exhausting to implement and nearly impossible to sustain. Instead, there needs to be a shift in strategy to focus broader public health and community resources on a concentrated social media cessation campaign, similar to the way smoking was targeted successfully dropping the rate of smoking among teens from 48 per cent to 12 per cent in just over a decade.
Bennett observes that currently the only form of technology addiction that’s acceptable is gaming so he is advocating for change, including excessive and harmful use of mobile devices as a public health priority.
“It’s time for public health authorities, pediatricians and children’s hospitals to step forward with an official diagnosis and the resources to tackle it,” said Bennett. “So far, they’ve allowed school systems and teachers to carry the ball. We need to change the dialogue from controlling devices to cessation of addiction.”
Bennett points out that smartphones were thought to be a distraction that impeded academic performance when in fact, there’s a growing understanding this is a growing mental health emergency that needs to be addressed.
Barriers to meaningful connections
Shantambi Wamunyima has been researching what happens when online dating turns relationships into commodities that affect our ability to make meaningful connections.
What actually happens when someone ghosts you? Wamunyima has found that although it’s easy to feel like the victim, the complex dynamics at play aren’t that simple.
Social media and dating platforms are designed to prioritize efficiency and control over meaningful connections and that leads to more impersonal romantic relations in online spaces.
“When you have to swipe left or right, or pay for a subscription to date someone, you fall into the trap of commoditizing relationships,” said Wamunyima, a Master’s student at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Wamunyima will present early findings from her analysis of the underlying implications of ghosting to raise awareness and help people detect warning signs.
The normalization of ghosting behaviour affects people’s ability to form and maintain deep relationships, preventing people from developing critical social and communication skills because they don’t have to tackle tough subjects in order to avoid conflict.
Yet, contrary to popular opinion, Wamunyima is discovering that a ghoster doesn’t always have malicious intent when it comes to ghosting the other person.
“We tend to think of the ghoster as the perpetrator and the ghostee as the victim, but normally when someone reaches a point where they’re ghosting someone else, it’s because they don’t see a future or there’s a lack of compatibility,” she said.
Wamunyima found the ghoster may just be trying to dissolve the relationship and technology makes that easier and can be considered a normal evolution in modern dating. Conversely, the ghostee doesn’t have to pay attention to why the relationship is ending like they would in an in-person relationship – which may be seen as a benefit.
“There are a thousand reasons why someone might ghost someone else and obviously we can’t address each individual reason, but we can understand the patterns and see how this behaviour is manifesting in society so that we can help people to be aware and reduce the pain that comes with ghosting,” she said.
Loneliness amongst seniors
Meanwhile, Fahimeh Mehrabi, leading sociologist researcher, is tackling the growing loneliness crisis among seniors by helping them make friends with social robots.
“One-third of seniors around the world are experiencing loneliness and it’s only getting worse,” said Mehrabi, a PhD student at University of Calgary. “If we’re going to solve this crisis, we need to look beyond providing short-term interventions like community-based programs, pet therapy and social skills workshops, because the evidence shows the most effective companionship for seniors is going to come in the form of a social robot.”
Mehrabi explores why social robots are proving to be the best option to combat loneliness for seniors of all cognitive abilities, whether they live alone or reside in a retirement community or care facility. Her analysis included pet-like, humanoid and virtual, voice-based robots comparing the effectiveness of each across countries.
Based on her research, Mehrabi believes social robots could play a complementary role in supporting senior well-being, similar to mobility aids, fall detection devices or hearing aids. She’s calling on businesses to be as transparent as possible about the technology so that privacy concerns and social stigma can be better addressed.
Social robots are most widely and effectively used in Japan where there’s a stronger culture of technology acceptance. Surprisingly, U.S. studies suggest lower levels of effectiveness in reducing loneliness while Mehrabi found limited evidence in Canada.
“The data is clear that social robots can make a difference, especially as our population ages and care gaps grow, so I think it may be time for Canadians to rethink what a companion can look like,” said Mehrabi, whose research is focused on mental health in aging populations.
Seniors feel lonely for a variety of reasons, but ultimately the main reason is loss of companionship. Even when they are living in a group setting surrounded by peers, they can still experience isolation because they don’t necessarily get to choose their friends.
“A talking robot may seem strange until it’s the only voice a senior hears,” Mehrabi said. “Sometimes seniors are so lonely, they just need a companion and the results show that social robots are proving to be their future friend.”
Billed as a leading conference on the critical conversations of our time, Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences — themed “Reframing togetherness” — serves as a platform for the unveiling of thousands of research papers and presentations from social sciences and humanities experts worldwide. With more than 7,000 scholars, graduate students and practitioners expected to participate, the event will challenge attendees to model togetherness by working across differences, questioning hierarchies, and bridging divides in knowledge and experience to tackle the world’s most persistent challenges.
Organized by the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences in partnership with George Brown College, Congress 2025 is sponsored by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Universities Canada, Colleges and Institutes Canada, University Affairs, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, Sage, and The Conversation Canada.Registration includes 100+ keynote and open Congress sessions with virtual attendance options for many presentations. Visit Congress 2025 to register for a $30 community pass and access the program of events open to the public.
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