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Why I Traded My Smartphone for an Ax
Why I Traded My Smartphone for an Ax
Isabel Hogben (left) and Caleb Silverberg are the two runners-up in our contest.
Plus: what to do about porn. Meet the two runners-up in our high school essay contest.
By Bari Weiss
08.30.23
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The Free Press
The Free Press
Why I Traded My Smartphone for an Ax

American teenagers aren’t having a good time. They aren’t having sex. They aren’t driving. They are depressed, anxious, and lonely. (Whether social media is the cause or the catalyst is a subject of ongoing and intense debate.)

We’ve done a lot of reporting on Gen Z. Earlier this summer, we decided to ask them to report on themselves. 

More than 400 teena…

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Bari Weiss
Bari Weiss is the founder and editor of The Free Press and host of the podcast Honestly. From 2017 to 2020 Weiss was an opinion writer and editor at The New York Times. Before that, she was an op-ed and book review editor at The Wall Street Journal and a senior editor at Tablet magazine.
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