How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness
Hardcover, 400 pages
English language
Published March 26, 2024 by Penguin Press.
After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged in the early 2010s. Rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rose sharply, more than doubling on many measures. Why?
In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time. He then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults. Haidt shows how the “play-based childhood” began to decline in the 1980s, and how it was finally wiped out by the arrival of the “phone-based childhood” in the early 2010s. He presents more than a dozen mechanisms by which this “great rewiring of childhood” has interfered with children’s social and neurological development, covering everything from sleep deprivation to attention fragmentation, addiction, loneliness, social contagion, social comparison, and …
After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged in the early 2010s. Rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rose sharply, more than doubling on many measures. Why?
In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time. He then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults. Haidt shows how the “play-based childhood” began to decline in the 1980s, and how it was finally wiped out by the arrival of the “phone-based childhood” in the early 2010s. He presents more than a dozen mechanisms by which this “great rewiring of childhood” has interfered with children’s social and neurological development, covering everything from sleep deprivation to attention fragmentation, addiction, loneliness, social contagion, social comparison, and perfectionism. He explains why social media damages girls more than boys and why boys have been withdrawing from the real world into the virtual world, with disastrous consequences for themselves, their families, and their societies.
Most important, Haidt issues a clear call to action. He diagnoses the “collective action problems” that trap us, and then proposes four simple rules that might set us free. He describes steps that parents, teachers, schools, tech companies, and governments can take to end the epidemic of mental illness and restore a more humane childhood.
Haidt has spent his career speaking truth backed by data in the most difficult landscapes—communities polarized by politics and religion, campuses battling culture wars, and now the public health emergency faced by Gen Z. We cannot afford to ignore his findings about protecting our children—and ourselves—from the psychological damage of a phone-based life.
I did not enjoy reading this as sociology often rubs me the wrong way, though I do recognize it's value. However, as a parent of two young kids, I am glad I read this. I hope this book will spark change, so that we can give the future a healthier childhood.
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.
If you combine this book with Pete Etchells' Unlocked: The Real Science of Screen Time, you'll probably find a good balance of information on this subject. There are other books on this subject which will likely highlight other angles, I just haven't read them yet. ;)
Jonathan clearly understands the situation we are in, but appears to have very black and white thinking on this subject, which is an honestly natural and completely human reaction to watching two generations of kids seriously damaged by smartphones, in real time.
We can absolutely pull Gen Alpha back from the brink, but Gen Z will be the most scarred by indiscriminate access to social media via smartphones.
There are a couple of areas I didn't agree with at all, but I will keep those to myself as I think they are important as discussion points, but not to the extent implied.
I didn't …
If you combine this book with Pete Etchells' Unlocked: The Real Science of Screen Time, you'll probably find a good balance of information on this subject. There are other books on this subject which will likely highlight other angles, I just haven't read them yet. ;)
Jonathan clearly understands the situation we are in, but appears to have very black and white thinking on this subject, which is an honestly natural and completely human reaction to watching two generations of kids seriously damaged by smartphones, in real time.
We can absolutely pull Gen Alpha back from the brink, but Gen Z will be the most scarred by indiscriminate access to social media via smartphones.
There are a couple of areas I didn't agree with at all, but I will keep those to myself as I think they are important as discussion points, but not to the extent implied.
I didn't have internet access at all until my twenties, and I agree that the moment we let techbros put smartphones in our hands, we basically sold our souls to Big Tech; forever too distracted by the 24/7 pull of mobile internet to pay attention to what was happening to kids who'd never known anything else, until it had dire consequences.
