The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness

Jonathan Haidt

Penguin, Mar 26, 2024 - Psychology - 400 pages

THE ACCLAIMED #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER with over two million copies sold • A must-read for all parents: the generation-defining investigation into the collapse of youth mental health in the era of smartphones, social media, and big tech—and a plan for a healthier, freer childhood.

Named one of the best books of the year by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Time, The Economist, New York Post, and Town & Country • One of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of the Year • Named finalist for the PEN Literary Awards

“With tenacity and candor, Haidt lays out the consequences that have come with allowing kids to drift further into the virtual world . . . While also offering suggestions and solutions that could help protect a new generation of kids.” —Time

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. 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.

Contents

• Growing Up on Mars: 1
• The Surge of Suffering: 21
• What Children Need to Do in Childhood: 49
• Discover Mode and the Need for Risky Play: 67
• Puberty and the Blocked Transition to Adulthood: 95
• Part 3: 110
• Why Social Media Harms Girls More Than Boys: 143
• What Is Happening to Boys?: 173
• Spiritual Elevation and Degradation: 199
• Preparing for Collective Action: 221
• What Governments and Tech Companies Can Do Now: 227
• What Schools Can Do Now: 247
• What Parents Can Do Now: 267
• Bring Childhood Back to Earth: 289
• Acknowledgments: 297
• References: 339
• Index: 369

About the author

Jonathan Haidt (pronounced “Height”) is the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business. He obtained his PhD in social psychology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992 and taught at the University of Virginia for sixteen years. His research focuses on moral and political psychology, as described in his book The Righteous Mind. His latest book, The Anxious Generation, is a direct continuation of the themes explored in The Coddling of the American Mind (written with Greg Lukianoff). It inspired The Amazing Generation (written with Catherine Price), a handbook for tweens. He writes the After Babel Substack.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness
• Author: Jonathan Haidt
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: Penguin, 2024
• ISBN: 0593655036, 9780593655030
• Length: 400 pages
• Subjects: Family & Relationships / Life Stages / Teenagers; Psychology / Mental Health; Self-Help / Self-Management / Stress Management