The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt

The Anxious Generation

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

Author: Jonathan Haidt

Genre: Nonfiction

Publish Date: March 2024

Read: December 2025

Favorite Quote: Prestige-based social media platforms have hacked one of the most important learning mechanisms for adolescents, diverting their time, attention, and copying behavior away from a variety of role models with whom they could develop a mentoring relationship that would help them succeed in their real-world communities.

Synopsis: What happens when you give teens and adolescents unfettered access to social media? Their brains rewire to focus on all the wrong things and eschew communities, mentors, and in-person relationships. After more than a decade of minimal mental health concerns among teens and adolescents, the mental health of this group plunged in the early 2010s. The cause: social media and smartphones. Not correlation. Causation. The Anxious Generation provides multiple reasons why society, culture, and even parents have failed Gen Z and Gen Alpha by overprotecting kids outside and underprotecting them online.

Why does this book beguile? I am not a big fan of how smartphones have infiltrated day-to-day life. What should be a valuable tool for productivity and connection has now usurped human connection and time. How often do you go to a restaurant and see an entire group looking at their phones and not interacting? People are on their phones at concerts, theme parks, and weddings. Events that should require one’s full mental and physical presence now get exceptions for phones. I could rant about this for a long time, but I understand these apps have hijacked our brains. Even with conscientiousness, the addiction to the phone is ever-present. Now, we know why. And as adults, we have the power to help future generations have valuable, skill and play-based childhoods with real friendships and connections instead of superficial online interactions. This book is a MUST READ for everyone with a phone, especially parents.

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