The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt

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

• 
  Connie Valkema

  5 stars. Extremely well researched book about why we should not give our kids smartphones due to indisputable evidence that it causes mental illness, anxiety and depression. Children are just not equipped for social media and the trade offs they will experience with addictive phone based free time. Kids need play time, outside with other children. This book was very enlightening and I will be recommending it to everyone I know.
• 
  John Lee

  I'm more eager to recommend this book than a preteen Evangelical after watching God's Not Dead.
  
  It's hard for me to think of a single person that would not benefit from reading this book. Especially parents.
  
  Buy and read!
• 
  Wick Welker

  Children should not have smartphones and social media until they are 16.
  
  As a parent of a young child, I read this book with interest and horror. This book is about the tragic great rewiring that was inflicted on Gen Z between 2010 and 2015 that completely upended them from a normal childhood and caused a generational mental health crisis. The author does a good job of explaining himself with good research and makes a compelling case against a phone-based childhood and praises the virtues of a play-based childhood. I think this book was very good and important but I didn’t agree with everything and think some of his reasoning is actually fallacious when it comes to “helicopter” parenting, which I’ll get into.
  
  Depression, self harm and anxiety are undoubtedly higher in Gen Z and have a sharp rise in boys and girls in 2010 and thereafter. One could speculate that these children grew up after the 9/11 era and after the 2008 financial crisis but, as the author argues, every generation has socio-economic upheaval but doesn't typically result in dramatic drop in mental health. The most likely, and obvious, explanation is that their childhood became steeped in toxic self comparisons on social media (affecting girls more) and video game and pornography addiction (affecting boys more.) Social media is a strategic, asynchronous, disembodied interaction with the aims of fostering and protecting an individual's self brand. Social media platforms are the most efficient conformity machines ever invented where a user can literally gauge approval by numerical likes and views. This is really bad for everyone and basically inhumane to expose a child’s brain to this type of thinking. When a child starts doing this around the age of 10, they chase the dopamine hit of views and likes and sink the enormous opportunity of real-life social interactions and development that prepare them for adulthood. Social media doesn’t just correlate with poor mental health, it is causative. I think the author demonstrates this beyond doubt.
  
  Children have “defend mode” and “discovery mode”, both useful but the former gets engaged more with a phone based childhood. Free and unsupervised play foster the discovery mode where children learn how to navigate not only the three dimensional space but relationships and their own feelings. A phone based childhood constantly puts a child in defend mode which spills over to real life and chronic anxiety. Social media inflicts sleep deprivation and social deprivation along with attention fragmentation and addiction. Again, these things are awful on an already socialized adult, imagine the cost on a child’s mind that has many years to go before adult brain development.
  
  According to the author, there are real gender differences between boys and girls which are almost certainly sociogenic (culturally created) and these differences account for the disparate impact of a phone based childhood on boys and girls. Girls strive for communion and relationship building where boys strive for self autonomy and actualization. These culturally programmed desires I believe are functionally very real. Girl aggression is relational which explains why social media impacts them more than for boys. Take all the self comparison to airbrush models on magazine covers from the 70s and now put that on hyperdrive, socialize it over a screen, adding cyber bullying and dopamine addiction, and you will have a very sad, lonely and anxious girl. For boys, video games can fragment their socialization and silo it off into asynchronous relationships that then addict and hamper their growth. The easy access to pornography, while impacting both boys and girls, seems to hit boys harder who consume it at very early ages.
  
  Here’s where I have a problem with this book: the author creates a false dilemma between a play-based childhood and phone-based childhood. These two things are not mutually exclusive and the author likes to partition them off like they are the only two options. As a parent who is very involved with my child’s life, I take umbrage with the term “helicopter parent” which the author uses. This well intentioned author asserts many times in this book that during the 1980s, parents become overprotective and stopped letting their kids have autonomy. My first response is what!?. This overt generalization is overtly speculative and laughably simplistic. In my opinion, having more parental presence, particularly when it comes to safety, is not hampering children’s socialization and growth. I’m not joking here: the author thinks kids should be able to play in junkyards and with fire, unsupervised. Without presenting much evidence, he talks about the statistic improbability of your child being really harmed or kidnapped. Okay, but what about the stakes? They are enormous. I think it's a parents responsibility to protect them from catastrophe, regardless of how unlikely because the stakes are absolutely enormous. The author creates a false dichotomy that you either must let your children roam the streets unsupervised or put a phone in front of their faces. Of course, this is not true. There is an entire spectrum of parenting, one which could involve letting children roam under freeway overpasses while also sticking a phone in front of their noses for 6 hours a day. I found his take on this bizarre and his assertions that parent’s are hampering their children’s development with over supervision mostly unsupported. “Helicopter parenting” has become a term used by parents who don’t actively engage with their children. Anyway, I digress.
  
  The solutions the author offers are very good: no social media or smart phones before age 16 and phone free schools. He also laments the loss of spirituality and suggests we need to engage more in shared sacredness, self transcendence (the literal opposite of social media), be slow to anger and quick to forgive (never happens on social media) and to find awe in nature. Overall, I think this was a very good book that everyone should read.
• 
  Ryan

  The Anxious Generation defines and analyzes an extremely pressing and pervasive problem that seems to have been overlooked and, if not ignored then at least, underestimated up to this point. Most of the book is dedicated to the presentation of mental health data and, in a lot of ways, a kind of expansion upon Haidt's previous book, The Coddling of the American Mind. This, in my opinion, is a good thing. I admire Haidt's stance on these issues, and he has proven to be a powerful voice and advocate for appropriate levels of adversity and freedom in childhood and adolescence.
  
  The previous book focuses entirely on the real world though. Online, things are very different. The internet can fuck you up if you aren't careful. This fact is even more likely if you happen to be an impressionable child/adolescent. Society seems to have vastly over sheltered young people IRL, and largely left them completely vulnerable and exposed online. Contributing, to insane rises in mental health problems across the board for adolescents. I hope this book reaches a wide audience, because I think it has the power to inspire people towards tangible change. A change that we desperately seem to need if the future generations stand any chance of not being a bunch of cynical balls of anxiety and existential dread.
  
  I can't say that I think anyone will be surprised by the findings of this research. Nor do I think the books proposed solutions to the issue are unreasonable or objectionable in any way. The only problem I can find, is that the proposed 'collective action' propositions, I think, will be extremely difficult given that the generational problems at hand are, by nature, predicated upon a general skepticism and cynicism of their fellow humans. Actionable change on a large scale is fuckin hard. We can do it, and this book makes an incredible case for its necessity. Maybe my own cynicism is shining through with this sentiment, but it seems to me like it's gonna be damn difficult process. But nothing worth doing is ever easy.
• 
  John Devlin

  Mandatory reading for any parent…Haidt’s thesis is that social media and smart phones are damaging kids…he’s right and he’s got the receipts…
  
  Huge upticks in depression, anxiety etc as these tech items come on line…add to that the safety culture that parents have embraced and you’ve got a lot of kids that are in a Peter Pan land that exists only on screens but encompasses their lives…
  
  The world isn’t little house on the prairie and our access to ginormous amounts of info has created a catastrophism where we are all too aware of the really bad outcome…humans aren’t good at calculating black swan events so we over protect our kids…guilty as charged…
  
  I’d disagree with his more free play time at school in that yes give kids more free range time but keep it outside of school…otherwise, his prescription seems clear and irrefutable…
• 
  Otis Chandler

  As recommended here:
  https://www.nature.com/articles/d4158...
• 
  Stephen Drew

  “Today I pre-ordered, "The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness" by @JonHaidt. It's out in March. I'm recommending it already. The entire country should read it together!!” - Anthony Bradley
• 
  Mark Ball

  Maybe the most important book I’ve read in the past six months. Evidence-based analysis of the mistakes we’ve made with technology and over protection in the real world during adolescence with practical suggestions on how to improve. A must read for parents, teachers or anyone concerned with our youth.
• 
  Ellen Burstein

  wow this is excellent and made me want to throw my phone out of a window
  I am older Gen Z which I think is an interesting demographic because there is clearly a shift (as Haidt describes) that happens in the early 2010s and my age group experienced both - a childhood largely free of social media / screens and an adolescence / teenage years very heavily influenced by social media
  this is I think both meticulous and thorough as well as honest about what it is like to grow up with these technologies and platforms (at least honest to my experiences), I have often found writing about social media and youth mental health to veer into the sanctimonious / defensive and this book avoids it
  the example of the girl on the Webkinz - Instagram pipeline really got me
  I am going to make all of my friends read this
• 
  Tanner Nelson

  This might be the most important thing you read today (or maybe not, but make that judgment after you read this). Take a second to slow down and consider what I'm about to say: your phone and social media accounts are hurting you and your loved ones. No need to panic or point fingers of blame; we're all in the same boat. But it's time to row this boat safely to shore and re-examine what went wrong and what needs to be done to fix it.
  
  TL;DR: "The Anxious Generation" is a sobering autopsy of an ongoing problem. In it, Dr. Jon Haidt states that phones and social media are "a cause of anxiety, depression, and other ailments; not just a correlate." He then tells us--in detail--what happened to the rising generation, why, and how to fix it. This book is academic in its rigor, but not its style. (If you, like me, want to dive into the statistics behind his conclusions, he provides pages of them in the appendix and in online supplements.) He also lays out four new norms that we can adopt as a society to solve the collective action problem:
  
  1. No smartphones before high school
  2. No social media before 16
  3. Phone-free schools
  4. More independence, free play, and responsibility for children in the real world
  
  This is not just a book for good parenting. It is a treasure for everyone older than 16--worldwide.
  --------------------------------------------
  I won't rehash the substance of Dr. Haidt's book here except to say that I almost unreservedly endorse it (I have some minor quibbles not worth mentioning here). We must undo the end of the play-based childhood its migration to a phone-based childhood. Putting screens in front of our children (and ourselves) has catastrophically weakened us. While describing the effects of social media and phones on girls, Dr. Haidt writes, "girls who use social media are three times more likely to suffer from depression than those who do not." The effects are not limited to females, either. Young men are less likely to suffer from addiction to social media, but more likely to become addicted to video games and pornography. Both sexes experienced steep climbs in mental illness (bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety, etc.) after the dawn of social media and smartphones, regardless of race, education, socioeconomic status, or nationality. It is a universal problem.
  
  Universal problems like this are called "collective action problems." Nobody is likely to act unless everybody acts. Dr. Haidt alleviates this problem by suggesting several fixes that the government, schools, and parents can implement. (Once again, this book is not just for parents. You should read it regardless of your marital, parental, or societal roles.)
  
  To learn more about the book, order a copy, or join the movement, go here:
  https://www.anxiousgeneration.com
  
  If you're a parent or adult who wants to get involved in resurrecting the play-based childhood, go here:
  https://letgrow.org
• 
  Sarah

  Five stars (despite some repetitive sections) because there is a truly ring-the-alarm urgency to the information in this book. I've noticed lately a very particular swath of denial across gen x, xennials/cuspers and millennials about how bad things are vis a vis gen z (and now alpha's) relationship to their phones and to social media in particular.
  
  There's a seeming reluctance to believe or act on the compelling and growing body of evidence that real harm is occurring in real time, perhaps because it's terrifying to admit that we have been watching (and in many cases, facilitating) a preventable slow-motion car crash, and we shoved all our most vulnerable humans in the car first. I appreciate that Haidt addresses some of that directly (including the all too common "welp, that ship has sailed, nothing we can do now" type thinking) and offers concrete steps we can take as individuals, as well as governments, schools and institutions.
  
  I'd encourage anyone who thinks this is overblown fear-mongering to simply read the book, and try to keep an open mind. I'll admit it's hard to do, for many of us in part because of our own relationship to our phones, or because of a pervasive techno-optimism that's hard to pierce, even with clear data. For that same reason I appreciate the balance in the book that acknowledges the conveniences and advantages of much of this tech. Haidt suggests a path forward that doesn't throw the baby out with the bathwater... but also notes that we also shouldn't be leaving babies alone in the bath. Cause they're drowning. Much like this metaphor. Sorry!
  
  Read the book (or listen on 1.5x or whatever. But engage with the data, the arguments, and some of the solutions. This needs to be a group effort.)
• 
  Yan Castaldo

  i have unironically been saying that all our modern malaise is literally because Kids Be On They Phone. i mean this.
  
  haidt will be hailed as a prophet for ringing these alarm bells long before anyone actually took them seriously. he’s a modern cassandra and people are finally listening and freeing him of his curse!
  
  brilliantly argued and researched, everything presented here is irrefutable. additionally, this is a deeply compassionate book—you can tell he cares deeply about this issue and the mental health epidemic it’s caused. chapter 8 (spiritual elevation and degradation) was particularly beautiful!
  
  finally, haidt actually respects his reader and doesn’t mire down his writing with annoying anecdotes or condescending explanations. the prose is definitely a little hacky but i think that’s a feature more than a bug; he’s trying to spread a message not win a literature nobel.
  
  most important nonfiction to have been recently published.
• 
  Chris Boutté

  I’ll start out by saying that Jonathan Haidt is one of my favorite authors. His previous books like The Righteous Mind and The Coddling of the American Mind changed my life for the better. With that said, this is a great book, but I just disagree with the core argument: social media and technology is ruining our kids’ lives. A few years ago, Haidt and Jean Twenge co-wrote a New York Times article on this topic, and my first Substack piece was actually a criticism of it.
  
  I’ll say this in the most respectful way possible. If you don’t feel like reading an entire book, just go read the New York Times article.
  
  This book is just an expansion of that article with chapters dedicated to different topics, most of which are covered in the article. Haidt provides a ton of stats and statistics, but again, I’m highly skeptical of it for reasons I argued in my original response to the article. I have a now 15-year-old son who has had an iPhone since he was 11 or 12. He’s a gamer like me, and he’s doing incredible. He gets straight A’s, he’s very social, well-behaved, and a genuinely happy kids.
  
  While Haidt acknowledges that social media has its benefits, he doesn’t really try to answer why kids like my son are fine. That’s the most important question so we can really figure out what’s going on. It’s kind of like PTSD: why is it that traumatic experiences affect some people negatively while others experience post-traumatic growth? Is there something we can do so kids can use social media in a healthier way…if it’s even the cause for the mental health crisis?
  
  Haidt never dives into the socioeconomic factors that are affecting kids, and that’s another issue I have with his arguments. Mental illness, suicide rates, and addiction have been on the rise long before smartphones. I’m 12 years sober from alcoholism and drug addiction, and I didn’t have a smartphone, and neither did the many of the other people who die each year.
  
  The majority of the people dying from Deaths of Despair (you should read that book by the way) are in my age group, which means they’re the parents. With so many children growing up in households where parents are depressed, anxious, alcoholics, drug addicts, suicidal, or a combination of all of these, getting rid of social media isn’t going to help these kids much. The authors of Deaths of Despair argue that our terrible state of capitalism and the growing wealth gap are the primary causes, and it’s hard to disagree.
  
  A Nature article came out arguing against Haidt’s book. I don’t know how much of it is accurate when talking about the studies, but I do agree that the problem is far more complex than smartphones and social media. Also, Robby Soave wrote a great book called Tech Panic, which argues against a lot of Haidt’s points as well. There’s a debate between Haidt and Soave on YouTube that I highly recommend watching.
  
  With this review, I mean no disrespect to Jonathan Haidt. I love his writing, and he’s a lot smarter than me, but I think we need a more holistic approach.
  
• 
  Juny Pagán

  Jonathan Haidt nos ofrece una gran cantidad de datos sobre la debacle mental de nuestra juventud, que marca un alarmante deterioro posterior a 2010. (Por ejemplo,
  aquí pueden ver algunos gráficos). Este libro, sin duda, es una herramienta importante para cualquiera que desee comprender la actual crisis. Sin embargo, Haidt cae en la trampa de simplificar el problema, atribuyendo esta crisis exclusivamente a los smartphones y a las redes sociales. Aquí reside mi desacuerdo.
  
  Reconozco el papel de estos dispositivos y estas plataformas como posibles contribuyentes al problema, pero rechazo la idea de que sean la única o la principal raíz del mismo.
  Las críticas de Candice Odgers, en particular su argumento de que la correlación no implica necesariamente causalidad, resuenan en mí. De hecho, a pesar de las afirmaciones de Haidt sobre los efectos negativos de la tecnología en los jóvenes, la investigación —incluidos metanálisis y estudios a largo plazo—, según muestra Odgers, no apoya la idea de que el uso de los medios sociales cause problemas de salud mental.
  
  
  En su defensa, Haidt, entre otros argumentos, invoca el número de estudios que apoyan su teoría como si fuera una votación (16 de 22 encontrados…; 8 de 9 encontrados…; 64 de 79…). Pero, como bien
  señala Stuart Ritchie, la ciencia no es una democracia de votos. Aunque esto sea importante, la acumulación de estudios no garantiza necesariamente la veracidad. Es la calidad, el rigor y la magnitud de la investigación lo que realmente cuenta. Por supuesto, existe el pilar de la replicación. Pero, aunque la replicación es fundamental, no es infalible. Por ejemplo, repetir un método defectuoso puede conducir a la misma conclusión errónea, engañosa o falaz y/o a los mismos resultados. ¡Se ha replicado! Sin embargo, la aplicación de un método de mayor calidad y más riguroso podría refutar o desmentir el hallazgo original. La calidad siempre estaría por encima.
  
  A pesar de mis críticas, el libro de Haidt destaca por su rica recopilación de datos y por su valiosa información sobre la buena infancia, algo importante para los padres. Si se confirma su teoría, varios consejos finales del libro son valiosos (aunque también lo son para otras cuestiones, independientemente de su teoría). Por el momento, es prematuro emitir un veredicto definitivo. Al fin y al cabo, la ciencia avanza mediante el cuestionamiento constante, no mediante conclusiones precipitadas. Si tuviera que definir el libro en una frase breve, sería «buen libro, teoría cuestionable».
• 
  Maher Razouk

  تأثير وسائل التواصل الاجتماعي على المراهقين!!
  .
  .
  بفضل العمل الرائد الذي قام به عالم النفس الاجتماعي جان توينج، نعلم أن ما يسبب اختلاف الأجيال يتجاوز الأحداث التي يمر بها الأطفال (مثل الحروب والكساد) ويتضمن تغييرات في التقنيات التي استخدموها كأطفال (الراديو، ثم التلفزيون، وأجهزة الكمبيوتر الشخصية، الإنترنت، الآيفون).
  
  بدأ أكبر أعضاء الجيل Z (الجيل الذي ولد بعد عام 1995) سن البلوغ في عام 2009 تقريبًا، عندما تقاربت العديد من اتجاهات التكنولوجيا: الانتشار السريع للنطاق العريض عالي السرعة في العقد الأول من القرن الحادي والعشرين، وصول iPhone في عام 2007، والعصر الجديد لوسائل التواصل الاجتماعي شديدة الانتشار.
  
  وقد انطلقت آخر هذه المبادرات في عام 2009 بوصول زري "الإعجاب" و"إعادة التغريد" (أو "المشاركة")، الأمر الذي أدى إلى تحويل الديناميكيات الاجتماعية لعالم الإنترنت. قبل عام 2009، كانت وسائل التواصل الاجتماعي مفيدة للغاية كوسيلة لمواكبة أصدقائك، ومع وجود عدد أقل من وظائف التعليقات الفورية، فقد ولّدت قدرًا أقل بكثير من السمية التي نراها اليوم.
  
  بدأ اتجاه آخر بعد بضع سنوات فقط، وكان تأثيره على الفتيات أكثر من الأولاد: الانتشار المتزايد لنشر الصور الشخصية، بعد أن أضافت الهواتف الذكية الكاميرات الأمامية (2010)، واستحوذت شركة فيسبوك على إنستغرام (2012)، مما أدى إلى تعزيز شعبيتها. أدى هذا إلى زيادة كبيرة في عدد المراهقين الذين ينشرون صورًا ومقاطع فيديو منسقة بعناية عن حياتهم لأقرانهم والغرباء، ليس فقط لمشاهدتها، بل للحكم عليها.
  
  أصبح الجيل Z أول جيل في التاريخ يمر بمرحلة البلوغ مع وجود بوابة في جيوبهم تدعوهم بعيدًا عن الأشخاص القريبين منهم إلى عالم بديل كان مثيرًا ومسببًا للإدمان وغير مستقر، وغير مناسب للأطفال والمراهقين.
  
  إن النجاح اجتماعيًا في هذا العالم يتطلب منهم تكريس جزء كبير من وعيهم - بشكل دائم - لإدارة ما أصبح علامتهم التجارية عبر الإنترنت. لقد أصبح هذا ضروريًا الآن للحصول على القبول من الأقران: أكسجين المراهقة، ولتجنب التشهير عبر الإنترنت: كابوس المراهقة. لقد انغمس المراهقون من الجيل Z في قضاء ساعات طويلة من كل يوم في تصفح المنشورات السعيدة اللامعة للأصدقاء والمعارف والمؤثرين البعيدين. لقد شاهدوا كمي��ت متزايدة من مقاطع الفيديو التي أنشأها المستخدمون ووسائل الترفيه المتدفقة، والتي تم تقديمها لهم من خلال التشغيل التلقائي والخوارزميات التي تم تصميمها لإبقائهم متصلين بالإنترنت لأطول فترة ممكنة. لقد أمضوا وقتًا أقل بكثير في اللعب مع أصدقائهم وعائلاتهم أو التحدث إليهم أو لمسهم أو حتى التواصل معهم بالعين، مما يقلل من مشاركتهم في السلوكيات الاجتماعية المجسدة التي تعتبر ضرورية للتنمية البشرية الناجحة.
  .
  Jonathan Haidt
  The Anxious Generation
  Translated By #Maher_Razouk
• 
  Hannah

  Some people are out here saying that Haidt is fear mongering when it comes to the link between social media and poor mental health outcomes. And to those people I say...you've got to be joking. The link is clear. If you doubted it, you won't after reading this book.
  
  This book is a mixture of science, research, tips for parents, and suggested policy changes. If you are just wanting some guidance on what limits to set with your kid's tech use, I think you'd find this cumbersome. You could get a lot of the main points by looking him up on YouTube and listening to some of his interviews. But if you are interested in psychology, sociology, etc., I think you'll appreciate how thorough he is.
  
  I love liberty, but I am totally in support of Haidt's policy suggestions to limit minors' access to social media and place more accountability in the hands of Big Tech. As smart as we parents may be, we are no match for AI and sophisticated algorithms. Y'all, they could stop this nonsense if they wanted to. But they don't because they're making too much money off exploiting our kids. We as parents must protect our children using every tool available to us. (I am apalled at how many of my peers treat schools with derision when they try to set phone limits during school hours.)
  
  We've got to be in lock step on this.
• 
  Jacob

  I love a book like this with a clear thesis, supporting data, and not a lot of filler. Agree with the arguments or not, it provides a great jumping-off point for further discussion. In this case, the thesis is that we are protecting kids too much in the real world and not enough in the virtual world.
  
  I personally learned a ton about the negative ways that smart phones/social media like IG impact kids’ developing minds and what can be done about it. There is a healthy amount of data and charts but it’s still accessible.
  
  While I didn’t agree with all of his takes and felt hints of “the good old days”—type thinking, I agreed with a lot. I would also like more causal evidence vs. correlational studies (e.g., is social media causing anxiety/depression or do those particular kids gravitate more towards social media), but he does point to some causal data and suggests more *school-level* RCTs to further evaluate.
  
  I definitely recommend this to others! You’ll learn a lot and it’s an important topic.
• 
  Luke Gruber

  Haidt is one of my favorite authors. I wouldn’t miss a book. He provides support for what most of us already feel: phones and social media are bad for young kids. He gives confidence to raise or kids without this crutch, and do things for our kids that will help them long-term. Delay phones, delay social media, phone free schools, and maximized independent free play (risks included!).
  
  Highly recommend for all parents.
• 
  Anthony Rodriguez

  I’d love to see a critique of this book because I truly have no idea what it would be. Most adults I know believe they have an unhealthy relationship with their phone. How can we possibly believe that young brains that are not fully formed could have a healthy one? What tech companies are doing to kids is unconscionable. What we as a society are permitting them to do is equally infuriating. Free our kids. Shoot smartphones into the sea.
• 
  Bob

  I am greatly tempted to rate this book five stars, but I will conform to my long-standing standard of reserving five stars for books that contribute to making life changes. I don't think there is anything in this book that will cause me to live differently, but let this review serve as as high a four-star endorsement as I am capable of rendering.
  
  I found it fascinating and persuasive from cover to cover. Haidt makes the compelling case that we are in the midst of a global mental health crisis for our children and grandchildren arising from our 1) neglecting to exercise loving limitations on their exposure to the virtual world while 2) overprotecting them in the real world.
  
  He achieves this by juxtaposing data from several objective studies with a number of anecdotes from his own family or others to highlight the harm being caused by the predatory behavior of big businesses that deliberately design platforms and apps to prey on impressionable minds in an effort to monopolize as much time and harvest as many clicks as possible.
  
  In several passages where Haidt made reference to, or quoted from, religious texts, I thought perhaps he was writing to a broad audience but from a personally religious worldview. But he makes clear that he is, in fact, an atheist who ascribes to biological and cultural evolutionary forces the nonetheless real aspects of humanity that cannot be explained with charts and data. I found him to be respectful of those of us who ascribe Pascal's "God-shaped hole" to the Creator.
  
  He is admirably bold in his assertion that parents should be intentional about raising their children to be confident, independent, and capable of engaging as adults with other adults. To that end, he recommends training kids to interact face-to-face with peers, take risks, make decisions, learn from mistakes, and then giving them ample opportunities to do so. I heartily agree; as I've said for years, we raised our children with an eye toward launching them to be productive, responsible, contributing members of the community. It's a relief to find affirmation in this volume.
  
  It's not merely a book on parenting, nor is it just a screed ranting conspiracy theories about Big Media seeking to turn us all into zombies. It is well written and considerate, and I believe it is worth the time and effort to consider the message.
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  Nawell Ponson

  While much of this reminded me of my hours of Child, Adolescent, and Educational Psychology courses (which I LOVED), I really feel that any teacher, parent, or anyone else comes into daily contact with our next generation(s) will find this totally engrossing. I went into it feeling like it was going to be primarily about how Gen Z (and Haidt lumps everyone born after ‘96 in this for his purposes) is anxious and how we (as older generations) can help them. And while he does discuss this, it’s much more encompassing of the larger issue: “The Rewiring of Childhood.” It’s really made me feel more empowered about letting my own children have the developmentally appropriate aspects of childhood I got to have, but that social media and other aspects of technology have stolen. And it’s made me feel less anxious about letting them have those aspects.
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  Simen N. Myklebust

  Oh no. The mental health effect of social media and excessive internet use is even worse than I thought. His thoughts on being overprotective of children in the real world are also interesting. My almost 4 year old went alone on a (safe but risky) adventure with two neighbours children his age today because of this book.
  
  As a Christian I found chapter 8 on the importance of a divine axis as opposed to the flattened world of the internet interesting. Though Haidt himself didn’t have a compelling vision for what that could look like, I believe historic Christianity does.
  
  A simple take away is that giving your child or young teen free access to the internet and especially social media is more harmful for their mental health than you might think.
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  Ashley Arnold

  Absolutely deserved every one of the five stars. Such a crucial read. What I loved about this book is how recent everything is and they are able to pinpoint what is causing our kids to fall down these traps of anxiety and depression. SUCH a fascinating read. Well-researched, well-written, very easy to understand despite the heavy topic. I’m telling all my friends and family about this one. I loved Haidt’s “Coddling of the American Mind,” and this book goes hand in hand. Allowing our kids to be kids - to grow up in a play/discovery based environment in order to learn the crucial life lessons they need to be a happy, functioning adults. And a huge part of that is getting screens out of our kids’ hands, out of the bedrooms, out of their pockets, and out of schools.
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  Becca

  So so important and informative. Really explains the correlation (causation??) of mental illness and recent technologies. It doesn’t come across as suggesting that screens are all bad or that we’ve left “the good ole days,” but presents data showing how more play in the real world and less time in the digital world is crucial for growing minds. If you’re a someone who is involved in caring for the next generation, this is a must read. It doesn’t have to be this way, and the author gives hope for the way forward.
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  Bethmerrill

  My criteria for giving a book a 5 star rating is that is has to have changed me in some way. This book did. I have an intellectual crush on Jonathon Haidt and if he writes it I read it. Although the book is data heavy and even a little cumbersome at times, it’s worth getting through. Everyone should probably read this book, especially if you are a parent. I wish this book had existed 10 years ago. I would have done many things differently. My poor little 17 year old daughter is going to be the reluctant beneficiary of the knowledge and insights gained from this book. Everyone pray for her.