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Anxious Generation

How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness

Jonathan Haidt

The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness is a 2024 book by Jonathan Haidt which argues that the spread of smartphones, social media and overprotective parenting have led to a "rewiring" of childhood and a rise in mental illness. Haidt argues that the combination of the decline of play-based childhoods, exacerbated by what he describes as overprotective parents, and increasing smartphone use has been harmful to children since the late 2000s. In an interview during the WSJ's Future of Everything Festival, …

The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness is a 2024 book by Jonathan Haidt which argues that the spread of smartphones, social media and overprotective parenting have led to a "rewiring" of childhood and a rise in mental illness. Haidt argues that the combination of the decline of play-based childhoods, exacerbated by what he describes as overprotective parents, and increasing smartphone use has been harmful to children since the late 2000s. In an interview during the WSJ's Future of Everything Festival, he advocates banning smartphones in schools, arguing for feature phones with limited features instead.

eBook, 395 pages

English language

Published 2024 by Penguin Publishing Group.

ISBN:: 978-0-593-65504-7
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Reviews

Eric Ireland reviewed The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt

The Anxious Generation

4.5 stars

Haidt argues the introduction of smart phones around 2012, with the resulting constant access to social media, has caused the decline in teen girls' mental health around the world, along with the loss of freedom as parents became more worried about "stranger danger". Research seems pretty robust to me, even though it cannot prove causation. I'm old so I grew up without mobile phones or internet, riding my bike around the suburbs. Even if the thesis of the book is wrong, I think a free range, smart-phone free childhood is not going to kill anyone, so why not try it? The only problem is that if your kid is the only one who doesn't have a smart phone or social media, they'll feel left out. So it's good to try and get your kids' friends' parents to ban the smart phones too. As regards letting kids roam the neighbourhood, I …

Haidt argues the introduction of smart phones around 2012, with the resulting constant access to social media, has caused the decline in teen girls' mental health around the world, along with the loss of freedom as parents became more worried about "stranger danger". Research seems pretty robust to me, even though it cannot prove causation. I'm old so I grew up without mobile phones or internet, riding my bike around the suburbs. Even if the thesis of the book is wrong, I think a free range, smart-phone free childhood is not going to kill anyone, so why not try it? The only problem is that if your kid is the only one who doesn't have a smart phone or social media, they'll feel left out. So it's good to try and get your kids' friends' parents to ban the smart phones too. As regards letting kids roam the neighbourhood, I suppose it depends where you live. Haidt let his daughter walk to school in NYC from the age of 9.

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