The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness
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THE INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A Wall Street Journal Top 10 Book of 2024 • A New York Times and Washington Post Notable Book • One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2024 • A TIME 100 Must-Read Book of 2024 • Named a Best Book of 2024 by the Economist, the New York Post, and Town & Country • The Goodreads Choice Award Nonfiction Book of the Year • Finalist for the PEN Literary Awards 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.“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.” —Shannon Carlin, TIME, 100 Must-Read Books of 2024After 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 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.

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Format
eBook
Street Date
03/26/2024
Language
English
ISBN
9780593655047

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Published Reviews

Booklist Review

Portable telephones were originally celebrated as a way to stay connected to friends and family. But in the early 2010s, with the onset of smartphones and their easy access to the internet, children's brains were being effectively rewired, shifting from "play-based" to "phone-based." Parents, who worked to keep their children safe from outdoor play and predators, now allowed their kids to stroll unfettered through the internet. Excessive phone use can lead to social deprivation, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation, and addiction. For young women, Haidt writes, it can lead to depression; for young men, it can lead to existing in their own separate realities. The author admits to some benefits of online use for children, including lower rates of injury and alcohol use and a measure of intellectual stimulation, but the pluses are overshadowed by the loss of social interactions and life experiences. Academic Haidt (The Coddling of the American Mind, 2018) backs up his claims with scientific studies and graphics, and presents plans to limit the effects of smartphones by large tech companies, schools, and parents. This is a practical look at a vital topic.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
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Kirkus Book Review

A pitched argument against the "firehose of addictive content" aimed at children via technology. Psychologist Haidt, author of The Righteous Mindand co-author of The Coddling of the American Mind, turns to the disaffection of children rendered zombielike by their smartphones and social media. "The members of Gen Z are…the test subjects for a radical new way of growing up," he writes, their sensibilities formed by the instant gratifications and instant peer-pressure judgments delivered by online outlets. Before 2009, writes the author, social media use was largely harmless, mostly a means of keeping up with friends and family, without the toxicity inherent in being constantly subject to opinions given and received--a good way to get locked into "defend mode…on permanent alert for threats, rather than being hungry for new experiences." This corresponds to the shift, beginning in the 1980s, from what Haidt calls "play-based childhood" to "phone-based childhood," one effect of which is to remove children from the socialization they would otherwise have undergone simply by one-on-one play. It wasn't necessarily phones but overanxious parents who took down the sky-high monkey bars. However, coupled with the rapid rise of addictive technology, this drove children indoors and into anxieties and depressions of their own as their lives are "radically rewired." Haidt concludes by advocating a regime of free play and strictly monitored social media use, including not allowing children under high school age to have smartphones and forming parental associations that would essentially police for this kind of behavior. That program may seem draconian, especially to a 12- or 13-year-old, but Haidt argues persuasively that it's an essential defense against the assaults on mental health that social media inflict on unformed young minds. A strong case for tempering children's technological dependency in favor of fresh air and sunshine. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
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Booklist Reviews

Portable telephones were originally celebrated as a way to stay connected to friends and family. But in the early 2010s, with the onset of smartphones and their easy access to the internet, children's brains were being effectively rewired, shifting from play-based to phone-based. Parents, who worked to keep their children safe from outdoor play and predators, now allowed their kids to stroll unfettered through the internet. Excessive phone use can lead to social deprivation, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation, and addiction. For young women, Haidt writes, it can lead to depression; for young men, it can lead to existing in their own separate realities. The author admits to some benefits of online use for children, including lower rates of injury and alcohol use and a measure of intellectual stimulation, but the pluses are overshadowed by the loss of social interactions and life experiences. Academic Haidt (The Coddling of the American Mind, 2018) backs up his claims with scientific studies and graphics, and presents plans to limit the effects of smartphones by large tech companies, schools, and parents. This is a practical look at a vital topic. Copyright 2024 Booklist Reviews.

Copyright 2024 Booklist Reviews.
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Library Journal Reviews

Coauthor of the New York Times best-selling The Coddling of the American Mind, NYU social psychologist Haidt investigates The Anxious Generation, arguing that today's crisis in youth mental health results mainly from excessive supervision and structure by adults. Prepub Alert. Copyright 2023 Library Journal

Copyright 2023 Library Journal.

Copyright 2023 Library Journal Copyright 2023 Library Journal.
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LJ Express Reviews

The advent of smartphone technology has affected the lives and emotional, social, and intellectual well-being of many children and teenagers. Social psychologist Haidt (ethical leadership, NYU; The Happiness Hypothesis) asserts that when children have childhoods based on playing and engaging with others in the real world, they are likely to be more curious, resilient, and independent. He argues that unsupervised internet access, virtual worlds, and phone-based childhoods have replaced that, however, and it's affecting their mental health. For example, his data-backed book explains how social comparisons have led to increased rates of depression, loneliness, deaths by suicide, and more; he says it's impacted their neurological development too. His recommendations to improve the situation include not only restricting social media consumption and technical devices usage but also creating opportunities for more unsupervised and unstructured time away from parents. He says this will develop what he calls "antifragile kids." He also suggests specific ideas for low-interference parenting and practices at school that would make such formative play possible. VERDICT A vigorous contribution to the conversation and discourse about how to protect youths from psychological and neurological damage linked to technology. For parents, educators, and tech decision-makers.—Dorian Gossy

Copyright 2024 LJExpress.

Copyright 2024 LJExpress.
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Citations

APA Citation, 7th Edition (style guide)

Haidt, J. (2024). The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness . Penguin Publishing Group.

Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation, 17th Edition (style guide)

Haidt, Jonathan. 2024. The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. Penguin Publishing Group.

Chicago / Turabian - Humanities (Notes and Bibliography) Citation, 17th Edition (style guide)

Haidt, Jonathan. The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness Penguin Publishing Group, 2024.

Harvard Citation (style guide)

Haidt, J. (2024). The anxious generation: how the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness. Penguin Publishing Group.

MLA Citation, 9th Edition (style guide)

Haidt, Jonathan. The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness Penguin Publishing Group, 2024.

Note! Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy. Citation formats are based on standards as of August 2021.

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