BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) -- In 1964, the U.S. Surgeon General called for government mandated warning labels on cigarette packages. Now, sixty years later, the current surgeon general wants a similar warning for social media. From products that endanger physical health, and lead to more than 480,000 American deaths each year, to digital platforms that are supposed to connect us, but researchers say are destroying us. Childhood has changed. "I feel like our kids right now are the experiment," Kailan Carr said. It's an experiment she isn't interested in being part of, and she's not volunteering her children as test subjects. Carr is a former teacher turned anti-screen time advocate. She's a mom of two who runs a website offering ideas and printable scree-free activities for kids and families. Carr has also written several childrens' books, including "Screens Away, Time to Play!" "I am on a mission to prioritize play for kids living in a screen saturated world," she said. If our screen-saturated world is the experiment, what's the outcome? The data suggests it's not good. Statistics show that between 2010 and 2021, U.S. teen girls who reported at least one major depressive episode went up by 145%. For boys, it went up 161%. During that same time period, the percentage of young adults reporting high anxiety went up 139%. California becomes latest state to restrict student smartphone use at school Suicide rates for boys ages 10 to 14 went up 91%. Girls that age are now 167% more likely to take their own lives. Mounting evidence ties these terrifying numbers to what may be in your hands right now. Zach Rausch is the research scientist behind the book "The Anxious Generation" by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. They argue that the time period between 2010 and 2015 represents "the great rewiring of childhood." "Something really started to change in early 2010s," Rausch said. "Then I saw the same thing happening in the UK, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, many similar trends across Nordic countries and Western Europe. We started to notice that something fundamentally changed in lives of young people in the early 2010s and this was not just happening in a small pocket in the US. This was happening across income, across race and across culture." In the book, Haidt argues it started with kids being over-protected in the real world, and ended with them being under-protected online. In the 1990s, kids started to lose some independence; they were meeting up with friends less and less. The 24-hour news cycle was making many parents more fearful, and things like TV and video games made it easier to shelter kids at home, according to Monitoring the Future. Then in 2007 something revolutionary arrives -- the smartphone. By 2012, 23% of American teens had one, according to Pew Research. By 2016, 79% of teens carried constant access to social media, games, streaming services, YouTube, even pornography in their pockets. Twenty-eight percent of children ages 8 to 12 had their very own smartphone by this point, according to Common Sense Media. During that same time Common Sense Media found teens reported spending an average of nearly seven hours per day of leisure time on a screen. "The book tells the story of what happened to the generation of kids born after 1995. We call them 'Gen Z,'" Rausch said. "Gen Z is really different than the generations that came before them. Gen Z is really different in terms of mental health outcomes, in terms of learning performance, all these different dimensions. What we were trying to do in the book is understand what happened to this generation." Clinical psychologist Dr. Corey Gonzales agrees that what happened to Gen Z was a phone-based childhood. "That generation was the first generation to have social media in middle school. We found out that was a huge mistake," Gonzales said. "We saw a huge drop in mental health of that population." In "The Anxious Generation," Haidt talks a lot about opportunity cost. Even if what was on the screen was benign, and we know it's often not, what are you losing by those hours every day spent staring at a screen? For kids, it's play. "You're not out in nature, not playing with friends, you don't have a bunch of variables going on. It's two-dimensional. You're not dealing with real risk, you're not falling off a tree, you're not being called out by friends for doing the wrong thing," Gonzales said. Rausch said the promise of making digital connections with one another has come up short. "If social media was a boon to making kids feel more connected with all sorts of friends and all sorts of ideas, maybe we would expect loneliness among young people, would actually get better but in fact we see the exact opposite," Rausch said. Full interview with Zach Rausch "As kids have much more quantity of relationships, the quality is declining. That's the irony, in the technological world, we are are so much more connected than ever with so many more people and yet we feel more alone than ever before." Americans are said to spend an average of 4 hours and 37 minutes every day on a phone, according to the Journal of Consumer Research. That comes to a total of 70 days every year. That number does not include time spent looking at a computer or television. The numbers increase drastically for young adults, teens and pre-teens -- seven, eight, even nine plus hours every day. As the minutes and hours of screen time add up, 4th grade teacher Tangie Piper has seen a shift. "People ask me, have kids changed? Kids haven't, but unfortunately what they're exposed to has and the peer pressure, the screen time, the phones, it's just created this anxiety," Piper said. Even though phones are supposed to be powered off in the classroom, you can't shut off their effects. "They'll tell me, 'I stayed up all night watching YouTube.' I'm like, 'What?! You were supposed to be sleeping!' [...] I often have to make that phone call to parents and say your child is falling asleep in class." The problem is compounded in older grades. More on Digital Addiction "I hear from a lot of friends in junior and high school, kids are attached to their phones, not paying attention, there's nothing teachers can do." These are two of what Haidt and Rausch describe as the four foundational harms caused by the phone-based childhood: sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation, social deprivation, and addiction. Lack of sleep can lead to depression, anxiety, poor learning and lower grades. The attention fragmentation caused by near-constant pinging of notifications means worse concentration and focus. Social deprivation is happening because what is being gained on so-called social media is not as good as what is being lost. Addiction can happen as app developers hack human psychology. They've figured out how to trigger dopamine release, with notifications and likes, which makes you want something more. "It's the tech companies against us. And they are coming out with persuasive design to keep kids on screens as much as possible and it's not fair. It's not a fair fight," says Carr. Dr. Gonzales laments where we are, as well. "These kids are struggling. When you see this research, they're falling off the cliff, we have to do something," he said. So what do we do? In "The Anxious Generation," Haidt recommends four foundational reforms. First, no smartphones before high school. Second, no social media before age 16. Third, phone-free schools. And lastly, far more unsupervised play and childhood independence. Dr. Gonzales is hopeful that new awareness about the harms, and that regulations will help turn back these detrimental effects. "I am worried but I think it's going to come back. The research is so clear, we have to set regulations," he said. There are several movements underway to effect some change. California Gov. Gavin Newsom is urging districts statewide to restrict students' use of smartphones during the school day. In January, the Los Angeles Unified School District's new phone ban will go into effect. KOSA, or the Kids Online Safety Act, under consideration in congress, would require platforms to limit how adults contact minors, limit targeted content recommendations to kids and limit features meant to keep them on for as long as possible. COPPA, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act 2.0 was introduced in congress last year. It would strengthen protections relating to the online collection, use and disclosure of personal information of children and teens; these regulations haven't been revised since 1998. As we know, kids often do what they see, so it's going to take collective action to change this dangerous algorithm, Rausch says. Never miss a story: Make KGET.com your homepage "What we recommend is how do we as adults be good role models and set good boundaries around our technology? Do we look at our phones as the last thing we do before we go to sleep and first thing we do when we wake up? All of us need to reset and ask is this how we want to live our lives?" Or do we want to live them "IRL" in real life? Because the problem, and the solution, is in our hands. If you're concerned, you can take action by starting a recess club at your school, to encourage more free play. The non-profit Let Grow, co-founded by Jonathan Haidt, offers free curriculum for families and schools to help kids become more independent. When it is time to get your child a phone, consider a protected device like the Bark phone, which allows advanced parental monitoring for all of your child's devices.