How Children Became Guinea Pigs

By Madeleine Kearns

Sunday, May 05, 2024

 

We know from detransitioners — those who once identified as trans but now accept their sex — that the internet presents many dangers to unhappy, lonely children.

 

This theme appears multiple times in the Cass report, the recent independent review commissioned by NHS England to investigate what went wrong with its main gender youth clinic.

 

Hilary Cass, the senior pediatrician commissioned to write the report, noted that there is considerable evidence suggesting that social-media use contributes to mental-health problems in young people. She also noted that girls spend more time on social media than boys do. And highlighted the need for “more investigation into consumption of online pornography and gender dysphoria.”

 

Many of Cass’s concerns echo those expressed in Jonathan Haidt’s seminal work The Anxious Generation. Though Haidt discusses gender dysphoria only briefly (and does so in a characteristically measured way), he nevertheless paints a picture of a generation in distress — the critical context for understanding why so many youths today rebel against their own bodies.

 

The thrust of Haidt’s argument is that the transfer of American teens’ social lives “onto smartphones with continuous access to social media, online video games, and other internet-based activities” is “the single largest reason for the tidal wave of adolescent mental health that began in the early 2010s.”

 

Haidt notes that the ill effects of this “great rewiring of childhood,” as he puts it, have been exacerbated by a parenting culture that exhibits “overprotection in the real world and underprotection in the virtual world.” The result is that children regularly encounter hardcore pornography, cyberbullying, new and aggressive forms of social and peer pressure, and even communication with adult strangers online.

 

By “real world,” Haidt refers to experiences that are “embodied” and “synchronous,” that involve “one-to-one or one-to-several” communications, and that occur in communities “with a high bar for entry and exit.” Whereas by “virtual world,” Haidt is referring to experiences that are “disembodied” and “asynchronous,” that involve “one-to-many communications,” and that take place where there is “a low bar for entry and exit.”

 

Each of these when applied to the transgender phenomenon is worthy of study.

 

Consider “disembodied” experiences of sexual initiation: hardcore pornography instead of the age-appropriate rites of passage like asking someone out (or being asked out), holding hands, or a first kiss.

 

This is a theme in Detrans, a new book by Daily Signal reporter Mary Margaret Olohan, which documents “true stories of escaping the gender ideology cult.” Olohan writes, “Pretty much every detransitioner I spoke with was exposed to pornography at a very early age.”

 

One detransitioner, Helena, told Olohan that, with pornography consumption, “the very idea of being a ‘woman’ becomes repulsive.” Helena continued: “Ideally, a girl should be able to explore sexual ideas in a safe way, when she’s old enough to choose it herself, in ways and with people that are age appropriate for her. . . . Today, that developmental pathway has been hijacked.”

 

Moreover, that children are being socialized in primarily “disembodied” ways also helps explain why some young people do not consider how they will be harmed by the bodily changes brought about by so-called transition drugs and irreversible surgeries. Real-world consequences may appear less daunting when you’re immersed in the virtual world. What does loss of sexual function mean to a young person whose idea of a sexual relationship was formed by violent, degrading pornography?

 

That a large proportion of communications are “asynchronous,” referring to text-based posts and comments (not video calls, which are synchronous) allows for anonymity, rumination, and a constant state of anxiety and distraction. Rather than picking up on social cues in a real-world, live conversation, many young people feel the need to constantly check what is being said, and they mull over how to reply. All of this, again, can contribute to feelings of loneliness.

 

Here I am reminded of a trans-identifying teenager I know of who sadly killed himself. When I interviewed his local community, I discovered that he had essentially been leading a double life. To the people he interacted with in real life, he was a gay teenage boy. To the trans activists he met on the internet, he was a young trans woman.

 

Asynchronous experiences also distort a person’s sense of self, as she comes to rely on the dopamine hit of someone “liking” her post. And she can feel utterly crushed in the absence of a “like” or, worse, when she gets a negative response. Many trans youngsters describe a sense of “euphoria” that when they “come out” as trans, the sense that the whole world embraces their new identity. But in the real world, most people do not embrace the new identity, since sex is an immutable (and usually observable) fact of life.

 

Then there are communities with a “low bar for entry and exit.” As many detransitioners learn the hard way, it is not trans activists who offer unconditional love and acceptance — generally, it is their parents and families.

 

We will look back on this period and see two overlapping experiments: first, in giving children unfettered online access; second, in allowing mentally fragile adolescents drugs and surgeries that result in permanent bodily harm. The results from both are disastrous and ongoing.