The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt was the #1 most-read non-fiction book on GoodReads in 2024 and a New York Times #1 bestseller. There’s a good reason for that. It’s a great read, confirming what we might already suspect is going on with our kids and our society. That is, too much time spent online is simply not good for us. What I liked about The Anxious Generation is not just the scientific evidence it presents, but the fact that there are four, simple things we can do to address the situation. Here’s an overview of the book and why I think we would all benefit from reading it.
Play-Based vs Phone-Based Childhoods
In the book The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt makes a convincing argument that the root cause of the current mental health crisis for teens is that children are moving from a healthy play-based childhood to an unhealthy phone-based childhood. Those of us over 40 probably intuitively know this to be true. When we were kids, we would typically be sent outside by our parents for hours at a time to play. What that taught us was a lot about how to interact with others. We learned how to make and keep friends, how to resolve conflict, and many other lessons.
Today, kids have a wealth of things they can participate in online, from games to social media to pornographic experiences. Devices and the software that runs on them are designed to keep kids and adults online. Applications hook you so they can make money off of you. It’s as simple as that. When kids are given phones and other devices, the content is so compelling that it crowds out other activities. Kids choose video games over sports and social media over in-person play dates. And, it’s becoming clear that online interactions don’t teach us nearly as much as real, in-person interactions. So, kids on phones are missing out on a huge chunk of growth and learning.
Why are Teens so Vulnerable to Mental Health Issues?
Haidt explains that adolescence is a critical period for brain development, especially in areas related to social interaction, self-esteem, and emotional regulation. During this time, the brain is highly sensitive to social feedback. This makes teens more susceptible to the pressures of social comparison. The constant validation-seeking and judgment on social media exacerbate this vulnerability. Teens are then more likely to internalize others’ opinions, whether positive or negative.
The Effects of Social Media
Peer approval is one of the most important drivers of behavior. Haidt notes that social media platforms amplify this desire by creating environments where teens can easily compare themselves to their peers. These platforms, designed to generate engagement, often reward content that aligns with idealized versions of beauty, success, and lifestyle. As a result, teens may feel constant pressure to present themselves in ways that are unrealistic, which can lead to anxiety, low self-esteem, and feelings of inadequacy when they perceive they don’t measure up. This is particularly hard on girls who are brought up to focus on social interactions.
The Effects of Gaming & Pornography
Meanwhile, boys get trapped online by video games and pornography. Haidt notes that online gaming can be a form of escapism that is particularly appealing to boys, offering an immersive experience that allows them to avoid the stresses and challenges of real life. While gaming in moderation may not be inherently harmful, Haidt argues that excessive gaming can lead to negative consequences. Boys who become addicted to gaming may withdraw from real-life responsibilities, relationships, and schoolwork, prioritizing their virtual worlds over their actual lives.
And then there’s porn. One of the most significant harms of so much online time, according to Haidt, is how pornography shapes boys’ views of sex and relationships. The unrealistic and degrading portrayals of women in porn can distort young men’s perceptions of what healthy, consensual relationships look like. Haidt explains that when boys are exposed to porn from an early age, they may begin to objectify women. They treat them as mere objects for sexual gratification rather than as individuals with their own autonomy, emotions, and agency. This leads to many problems, including what I wrote about last week, the death of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
How Do We Improve our Kids’ Mental Health?
My favorite part of this book are the four clear suggestions for how to take care of our teens’ mental health.
- No smart phones until high school – Once a student gets their own phone, they tend to spend as much time as possible on the phone instead of outside with friends. Waiting to give kids a phone until high school allows them to have as much time with a play-based childhood as possible.
- No social media until the age of 16 – After 16, kids’ brain development happens at a much less rapid pace and they start to show signs of being able to better handle online social media. The kids that start using social media at or before puberty end up having the worst mental health issues.
- Phone-free schools – Phones are a huge distraction. Even just having a phone on our desk makes us less able to focus on the task at hand. Haidt suggests that schools should not allow phones at all. This allows students to focus while they’re at school. My kids’ high school just instituted a phone-free policy and it seems to be making a big difference already. I couldn’t be more happy that my kids can learn in a phone-free environment.
- Far more unsupervised play and childhood independence – Remember when we had free-reign of the neighborhood as kids? Kids today need that same unsupervised, unstructured time to grow up properly. Haidt suggests that kids as young as 6 go out and buy items at the grocery store. Kids should be playing in-person with friends as much as possible. Experiences like these used to be commonplace and now they’ve almost disappeared. We need to bring them back.
The Anxious Generation Conclusion
This book deserves all the hype it’s getting and that every parent should read it or a summary of it. We have four kids in the house between the ages of 11 and 14 as part of our blended family. What Haidt says rings true to me. Half of our kids were raised without access to a lot of screens and the other half were raised with screens. There is a huge difference between our sets of kids in terms of self-esteem, independence, decision-making and the ability to hold an interesting conversation with adults. If you haven’t yet read The Anxious Generation, go pick-up a copy and check it out. The well-being of your kids or grandkids is at stake and we all need to know what we’re up against.
