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

After finishing Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation, I couldn’t wait to recommend it to my family, friends, and others. I truly believe this book is a must-read for anyone with a smartphone, children, or, well, a pulse. Smartphones’ impact has been so fast and pervasive in our culture that we are only beginning to understand how they are changing us.Because of that, The Anxious Generation is one of the most important nonfiction books I have read this year, perhaps in several years. While many have expressed concern about the impact of mobile phones and social media on our youth, Haidt has made it his mission to uncover the symptoms, explain the effects, and convince us to change how we raise our kids regarding phones and social media.The insights provided in The Anxious Generation make a compelling case for reevaluating the age at which we give our children phones, the extent of their Internet and social media access, and the value of free play. Haidt argues that smartphones, social media, and helicopter parenting have contributed to a decline in the mental well-being of young people. The book offers practical solutions crucial for fostering the emotional maturity and stability of our children and ourselves.At the book’s center are four cultural norms Haidt argues we must implement to address the mental health crisis among our youth. These norms serve as a framework for his argument and practical solutions.First, no smartphones before high school. Parents should delay children’s entry into round-the-clock internet access by giving them only basic phones (phones with limited apps and no internet browser) before ninth grade (roughly 14).Second, no social media before 16. Let kids get through the most vulnerable period of brain development before connecting them to a constant stream of social comparison and algorithmically chosen influencers, which can significantly impact their self-esteem and mental health.Next, phone-free schools. All elementary through high school, students should store their phones, smartwatches, and other personal devices to send or receive texts in phone lockers or locked pouches during the school day. This policy is crucial in creating a distraction-free environment that allows students to focus on their studies and social interactions.And, last, far more unsupervised play and childhood independence. That’s the way children naturally develop social skills, overcome anxiety, and become self-governing young adults.Some money quotes?“My central claim in this book is that these two trends—overprotection in the real world and underprotection in the virtual world—are the major reasons why children born after 1995 became the anxious generation.”“People don’t get depressed when they face threats collectively; they get depressed when they feel isolated, lonely, or useless.”“The two big mistakes we’ve made: overprotecting children in the real world (where they need to learn from vast amounts of direct experience) and underprotecting them online (where they are particularly vulnerable during puberty).”“While the reward-seeking parts of the brain mature earlier, the frontal cortex—essential for self-control, delay of gratification, and resistance to temptation—is not up to full capacity until the mid-20s, and preteens are at a particularly vulnerable point in development”“In this new phone-based childhood, free play, attunement, and local models for social learning are replaced by screen time, asynchronous interaction, and influencers chosen by algorithms. Children are, in a sense, deprived of childhood.”“We don’t let preteens buy tobacco or alcohol, or enter casinos. The costs of using social media, in particular, are high for adolescents, compared with adults, while the benefits are minimal. Let children grow up on Earth first, before sending them to Mars.”“Stress wood is a perfect metaphor for children, who also need to experience frequent stressors in order to become strong adults.”“Children can only learn how to not get hurt in situations where it is possible to get hurt, such as wrestling with a friend, having a pretend sword fight, or negotiating with another child to enjoy a seesaw when a failed negotiation can lead to pain in one’s posterior, as well as embarrassment. When parents, teachers, and coaches get involved, it becomes less free, less playful, and less beneficial. Adults usually can’t stop themselves from directing and protecting.”“By designing a firehose of addictive content that entered through kids’ eyes and ears, and by displacing physical play and in-person socializing, these companies have rewired childhood and changed human development on an almost unimaginable scale.”“Gen Z became the first generation in history to go through puberty with a portal in their pockets that called them away from the people nearby and into an alternative universe that was exciting, addictive, unstable, and—as I will show—unsuitable for children and adolescents.”“Over the course of many decades, we found ways to protect children while mostly allowing adults to do what they want. Then quite suddenly, we created a virtual world where adults could indulge any momentary whim, but children were left nearly defenseless. As evidence mounts that phone-based childhood is making our children mentally unhealthy, socially isolated, and deeply unhappy, are we okay with that trade-off? Or will we eventually realize, as we did in the 20th century, that we sometimes need to protect children from harm even when it inconveniences adults?”“We are embodied creatures; children should learn how to manage their bodies in the physical world before they start spending large amounts of time in the virtual world.”“One way that companies get more users is by failing to enforce their own rules prohibiting users under 13. In August 2019, I had a video call with Mark Zuckerberg, who, to his credit, was reaching out to a wide variety of people, including critics. I told him that when my children started middle school, they each said that most of the kids in their class (who were 10 or 11 at the start of sixth grade) had Instagram accounts. I asked Zuckerberg what he planned to do about that. He said, “But we don’t allow anyone under 13 to open an account.” I told him that before our call I had created a fake account for a fictional 13-year-old girl and I encountered no attempt to verify my age claim. He said, “We’re working on that.” While writing this chapter (in August 2023), I effortlessly created another fake account. There is still no age verification, even though age verification techniques have gotten much better in the last four years nor is there any disincentive for preteens to lie about their age.”“Our kids can do so much more than we let them. Our culture of fear has kept this truth from us. They are like racehorses stuck in the stable.”“Many of the best adventures are going to happen with other children in free play.“And when that play includes kids of mixed ages, the learning is deepened because children learn best by trying something that is just a little beyond their current abilities— in other words, something a slightly older kid is doing. Older kids can also benefit from interacting with younger kids, taking on the role of a teacher or older sibling. So, the best thing you can do for your young children is to give them plenty of playtime, with some age diversity, and a secure loving base from which they set off to play.“As for your own interactions with your child, they don’t have to be “optimized.” You don’t have to make every second special or educational.“It’s a relationship, not a class. But what you do often matters far more than what you say, so watch your own phone habits. Be a good role model who is not giving continuous partial attention to both the phone and the child.”

While Jonathan Heidt writes of Zoomers, the enticement of social media affects us all. Reading an article by Amelia Butler-Gallie in The Spectator on the 100th anniversary of the publication of The Great Gatsby, I was reminded of this. The green light at the end of Daisy’s dock symbolized Gatsby’s hopes and dreams – the unattainable. We see that same lure in today’s social media. Ms. Butler-Gallie wrote: “…the digital glow of our smartphones, beckoning us toward the ever-elusive ideal that, if we only keep scrolling, we will find what we were always searching for.”Social media is not going away nor will its powers of seduction; so it becomes incumbent on each of us to make it our servant, not our master. For young and old, I believe you will find this book important.Sydney M. WilliamsThe Anxious Generation, Jonathan HaidtMarch 22, 2025“There is no one right way to be a parent;there is no blueprint for building a perfect child.”The Anxious Generation, Jonathan HaidtProfessor Haidt’s book speaks to Generation Z (Zoomers), those born between 1997 and 2012, a grouping that includes our ten grandchildren. For a grandparent of Zoomers, Haidt’s findings are sobering; for a parent they must be alarming. Since 2010, depression among boys and girls is up 161% and 145% respectively. Mental illness among college students has surged, has have emergency room visits for self-inflicted harm and suicide rates for younger adolescents.Since the onset of the Industrial Revolution, children have grown up in worlds foreign to their parents. They have access to goods and services unknown to their parents at the same age. My parents grew up with the telephone, automobiles and planes, all unknown to their parents at the same age. My generation grew up with the radio, television, talking movies and parkways. Our children grew up with space exploration, hand-held calculators, cassettes, and cordless electric games. However, the technologies available to generation Z are more dramatic. They have come of age with violent video games and “smart” phones. The iPhone was introduced in 2007, the App store in 2008 and, most concerning to Professor Haidt because of its consequences for young girls, the iPhone 4 with its front-facing camera. Facebook was launched in 2004, YouTube in 2005, WhatsApp in 2009, Instagram in 2010, and TikTok in 2014.As a father of two children of the “anxious generation,” Professor Haidt seeks answers, knowing that, as he writes in the epigraph, no one has all the answers. He writes easily and well, and supports his arguments with graphs, tables and figures, and concludes: “…we have vastly and needlessly overprotected our children in the real world. At the same time, we have underprotected our children in the virtual world…”It is the virtual world that has overtaken the real world, in terms of time consumed: For preteens, it is close to 40 hours per week – an adult’s average work week. “For teens aged 13 to 18, it’s closer to 50 hours per week.” He does not see the internet as harmful. “We need,” he writes, “to develop a more nuanced mental map of the digital landscape…I’m not saying that 11-year-olds should be kept off the internet. I’m saying that the Great Rewiring of Childhood, in which phone-based childhood replaced play-based childhood, is the major cause of the international epidemic of adolescent mental illness.”Professor Haidt concludes his book with suggestions for parents: less screen time – turn off phones during meal time and remove them from bedrooms an hour or so before bedtime – and provide more play time. He admits that he and his wife used the TV show Teletubbies to “mesmerize and calm our children from infancy through the toddler years.” He adds, however: “But if we had to do it over again, we’d do less of it.” He believes schools should increase recess times with lighter supervision, and parents should not micromanage their children; they should encourage sleepovers and after school free play.His statistics are alarming, but there is wisdom in his recommendations. The primary purpose of parenting is to raise a child to become a productive and happy adult. This book helps illuminate that passage, a passage that should be joyous, but one that has become difficult to navigate.

I found this book to be very enlightening, particularly because it presents real-world data to support its claims. Most of us are aware of the negative effects of social media and the constant use of digital devices, but the data-driven discussions in this book truly emphasize these points for the reader. However, I noticed that some chapters were repetitive. While a few examples clearly illustrated the main ideas, the author's extended prose sometimes made the content feel redundant. Overall, a good book club discussion book.