The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness
by Jonathan Haidt
View on GoodreadsA play-based childhood traded for a phone-based one in the early 2010s: that's the great rewiring Haidt blames for surging teen anxiety, depression and self-harm. Overprotective parenting had already pushed kids indoors, so they lost independence offline as they gained it online. How much of that causal story do the trend lines prove?
Core ideas
- Four foundational harms: Social deprivation, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation and addiction, with girls hit harder by social media and boys retreating into virtual worlds.
- Collective norms: No smartphones before high school, phone-free schools and more free play work only when parents act together.
- The causation dispute: In Nature, Candice Odgers says the book infers cause from parallel trends and that most research finds no, small or mixed associations.
Published2024
Pages400
ISBN9780593655030
ReadDec 2024
