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Malia Politzer is the executive editor of piqd.com, and an award-winning long-form journalist based out of Spain. She specializes in reporting on migration, international development, human rights issues and investigative reporting.
Originally from California, she's lived in China, Spain, Mexico and India, and reported from various countries in Africa, Europe and the Middle East. Her primary beats relate to immigration, economics and international development. She has published articles in Huffington Post Highline, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Vogue India, Mint, Far Eastern Economic Review, Foreign Policy, Reason Magazine, and the Phoenix New Times. She is also a regular contributor to Devex.
Her Huffington Post Highline series, "The 21st Century Gold Rush" won awards from the National Association of Magazine Editors, Overseas Press Club, and American Society of Newspaper Editors. She's also won multiple awards for feature writing in India and the United States.
Her reporting has been supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, The Institute For Current World Affairs, and the Global Migration Grant.
Degrees include a BA from Hampshire College and MS from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where was a Stabile Fellow at the Center for Investigative Journalism.
Have Smartphones Destroyed A Generation?
Is too much screen time bad for teens? Short answer: Yes. Very much so. In this Atlantic feature, psychologist Jean M. Twenge delves into the lives of iGen — the name she's given the generation after millennials — and finds them to be "on the brink of a mental health crisis".
According to Twenge's research, while today's teens are physically safer than they've ever been, many suffer from serious mental health issues — which correlate directly to how much time they spend on social media.
She writes: "Teens who spend more time than average on screen activities are more likely to be unhappy, and those who spend more time than average on nonscreen activities are more likely to be happy.There’s not a single exception. All screen activities are linked to less happiness, and all nonscreen activities are linked to more happiness. Eighth-graders who spend 10 or more hours a week on social media are 56 percent more likely to say they’re unhappy than those who devote less time to social media. Admittedly, 10 hours a week is a lot. But those who spend six to nine hours a week on social media are still 47 percent more likely to say they are unhappy than those who use social media even less. The opposite is true of in-person interactions. Those who spend an above-average amount of time with their friends in person are 20 percent less likely to say they’re unhappy than those who hang out for a below-average amount of time."
But that's not all — suicide rates among screen-using teens are also spiking. Luckily, this trend has a (relatively) easy solution: Get kids off their phones, and into the real world! Twenge's research found that pretty much any activity apart from connecting with others via device led to improvements in mental health.
Getting teens off devices might be an uphill battle, but it's one well worth fighting:
"What’s at stake isn’t just how kids experience adolescence. The constant presence of smartphones is likely to affect them well into adulthood."
