Title: The Anxious Generation
Author: Jonathan Haidt
Publisher: Penguin Press
Publication Date: March 26, 2024
ISBN: 9780593655030
Synopsis:
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 (pronounced “height”) 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.
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What an incredibly thoughtful and ever-more poignant book. The Anxious Generation has been on my radar for the last couple of years, having made its way through my social circle, and for good reason. Author Jonathan Haidt presents a compelling case for the ties of the rise in social media and smartphone usage among teens and children with a concurrent rise in anxiety and depression, and a decline in mental health amongst young people. With the spread of AI, and the ongoing prevalence of social media platforms and smartphones, there is more need than ever to evaluate when our kids should and will be exposed to the devices that keeps us all in constant connection, and how that will affect their development and perception of the world.
As a parent, the topic of access to devices and the Internet are common at play dates and birthday parties. Though Little Worn Pages has not yet asked after when they will receive their first device, the discussion of screen time and access to the Internet and he’s omnipotent algorithms informs a significant part of how we decide to parent, and the conversations about what forms of tech we do or don’t choose to have in the house is a constant point at the dinner table.
It brought me joy to know that Haidt has partnered with Lenore Skanazy, another author who speaks out for free-range parenting and independent, unsupervised play amongst the younger generation. These are two thought leaders who are making (great) noise to create change in what children of today are exposed to. The online world is a relatively lawless place, particularly for children who can gain access to adult content with very little effort. But both Haidt calls for governments, schools, and parents to advocate for a play-based childhood, and the reintroduction of childhood freedoms that allow kids to build the confidence, imagination, perspective, and interpersonal skills that they are losing when their world becomes centred around the online activity confined to a handheld screen.
There isn’t a single book I’ve read in the last year that’s resonated with me in such a strong way. The world Haidt researches is the world where I’m raising my own young reader. Our own parenting choices align strongly with the choices that Haidt advocates for, and I can only hope that the foundation we are working to build today will to build a strong, confident, and thoughtful young person who is curious about the world beyond their screen.
If you haven’t ready this one yet, it’s a fabulous exploration of what it means to be parenting in the digital age. Founded in over a decade of research, Haidt’s observations can guide us towards a healthier and less screen-reliant world.
Happy reading!
Worn Pages and Ink 