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

Haidt, Jonathan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0241647665 ISBN 13: 9780241647660

Publisher: Allen Lane, 2024

Synopsis

THE NO.1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

‘Jonathan Haidt is a modern-day prophet, disguised as a psychologist . . . He points the way forward to a brighter, stronger future for us all’ Susan Cain

'Compelling, readable – and incredibly chilling . . . remarkably persuasive' Telegraph

'Urgent and essential' Guardian

'One of the most terrifying books I have read . . . some of the statistics Haidt quotes are truly shocking' Evening Standard

After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents in many countries around the world deteriorated suddenly in the early 2010s. Why have rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm and suicide risen so sharply, more than doubling in many cases?

In this book, Social Psychologist Jonathan Haidt argues that the decline of free-play in childhood and the rise of smartphone usage among adolescents are the twin sources of increased mental distress among teenagers.

Haidt delves into the latest psychological and biological research to show how, between 2010 and 2015, childhood and adolescence got rewired. As teens traded in their flip phones for smartphones packed with social media apps, time online soared while time engaging face-to-face with friends and family plummeted, and so did mental health. This profound shift took place against a backdrop of diminishing childhood freedom, as parents over-supervised every aspect of their children’s lives offline, depriving them of the experiences they most need to become strong and self-governing adults.

The Anxious Generation reveals the fundamental ways in which this shift from free-play to smartphones disrupts development – from sleep deprivation to addiction – with separate in-depth analyses of the impact on girls and boys. Grounded in ancient wisdom and packed full of cutting-edge science, this eye-opening book is a life raft and a powerful call-to-arms, offering practical advice for parents, schools, governments, and teens themselves.

About this title

About the Author

Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist and the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University's Stern School of Business. He is the author of The Righteous Mind and co-author of The Coddling of the American Mind.

From the Back Cover

Jonathan Haidt has spent his career speaking wisdom and truth in some of the most the most difficult spaces - communities polarized by politics and religion, campuses battling culture wars, and now the perfect storm contributing to a public health emergency for teenagers today.

In The Anxious Generation, Haidt argues that for the cohort that hit puberty around 2009, their sense of self developed as the threads of three dramatic technological and social changes emerged: smartphones and life with the constant companionship of a screen, front-facing cameras and apps that thrive on selfie-culture, and social networks that reduce engagement and affirmation to likes and hearts alone.

This book shows how the ground for the current crisis in teen mental health was seeded by a decades-long shift from play-based childhoods to ones defined by over-supervision, structure, and fear: how adults began to overprotect children in the real world while unwittingly offering scant protection in the brutal online world. Haidt delves into the latest psychological and biological research to show the four fundamental ways in which a phone-based childhood disrupts development - sleep deprivation, social deprivation, cognitive fragmentation, and addiction - while offering concrete and scientifically based advice to parents, schools, universities, governments, and to teens themselves. Drawing on ancient wisdom and cutting-edge research, this eye-opening book is a life-raft and a powerful call-to-arms.

Edition details

• Publisher: Allen Lane
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0241647665
• ISBN 13: 9780241647660
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400