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

Jonathan Haid wrote that book, Anxious Generation.

And it's like, It's really bummed me out.

Australia is now trying to pass a set of rules. You know, there's a book by Jonathan Haidt called The Anxious Generation. Yeah, we've read it. I've read it.

The Anxious Generation, incredibly important book.

And today we talk mainly about The Anxious Generation. However, it is not a purely pessimistic conversation. Indeed, Dr. Haidt offers several clear solutions to the mental health crisis that now exists and that we have all created through the use of smartphones, in particular in kids entering and transitioning through puberty.

We'll provide links to the books and to these other resources in the show note captions.

To learn more about and or to support Dr. Haidt's work and to find a link to his important new book, The Anxious Generation, How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, please see the links in the show note captions.

Jonathan Haidt and the author of The Anxious Generation have been encouraging young kids to put away their phones and get out and interact more.

I have just read this book, The Anxious Generation.

I know we both know Jonathan Haidt, who's written the kind of the preeminent book, The Anxious Generation.

In March of last year, the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt published this book called The Anxious Generation, which caused, let's call it a stir.

He was the lead researcher on a recent book by the social scientist Jonathan Haidt called The Anxious Generation.

That book was making the case that like phones are destroying our children.

I saw it when it came out. There was like a little piece about it everywhere. People walking all over Brooklyn holding this book. It's talking about the great rewiring.

In early twenty twenty four, the influential social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who teaches at New York University, joined this argument with a book called The Anxious Generation, how the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness.

In early twenty twenty four, the influential social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who teaches at New York University, joined this argument with a book called The Anxious Generation, how the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness.

Everyone has a theory about what causes it. There is only one explanation. There is no other theory that can make sense of a synchronized global collapse in mental health.

Other than the fact that in 2010, the great majority kids had a flip phone, no high speed Internet, no unlimited data, no Instagram. And by 2015, we all have a smartphone, high speed Internet, unlimited data, Instagram, front facing camera.

The Anxious Generation, that's the book I'm listening to right now.

Jonathan Haidt is a leading social psychologist, a professor at NYU, and the author of The Anxious Generation, a book that's sparking urgent conversations around the world today.

When you wrote Anxious Generation, did you think you were tapping into... the last I checked, it's still on the New York Times bestsellers list. It just stays there as robust as ever.

You know, there's probably some people listening now who haven't read the book. And I've read the book. So has Trevor.

We're talking about... Jonathan Haidt... his book, The Anxious Generation.

Jonathan Height is a psychologist at New York University he's the author of The Righteous Mind by good people are divided by politics and religion and the anxious generation how the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness

Jonathan Height is a psychologist at New York University he is the author of the righteous mind why good people are divided by politics and religion and the anxious generation how the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness

My basic argument in the anxious generation is that we have over protected our kids in the real world where they desperately need a huge amount of experience and we've under protected them online which is this insane adult space that is not made for children in which a lot of kids are getting torn up so there's no contradiction

The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt was good.

My colleague at NYU wrote this book that's This is the book. We wish we'd written The anxious generation Jonathan Hyde.

We're seeing the success of people like Jonathan Haidt and his book, The Anxious Generation.

yeah, because I wrote a whole book called The Anxious Generation, focusing on teen mental health. That was the mystery that popped up in the mid 2000s.

Jonathan Haidt has written his book on The Anxious Generation. I think it's absolutely brilliant. He's talking about the damage that tech has been doing to children and smartphones in particular, and how this has made their mental health skyrocket. It's completely destroying children. It's just awful. It's a fantastic book.

But one of the things that he argues for, Abigail Schreier, and in her excellent book, Bad Therapy, also mentions this sort of thing where they want children to have the freedom that they had when they were growing up.

Jonathan Haidt will then criticize families for being a little bit too protective of their kids, not wanting them to go places on their own and so on.

Jonathan Haidt doesn't realize this.

He says in head he pulled down a copy of Jonathan Hade off the bookshelf and was like, I love to teach this and my client went, oh, I really want to make this happen. I want to teach you know more than I was sort of maybe just modeling it or humoring me or something. But he had the book. He had the book that's right. And he knew the book and he knew where it was on his shelf.

So join us for a discussion of crucial importance... this new book of yours, The Anxious Generation, was, I suppose, was it a particular interest to me?

The book we were discussing is The Anxious Generation. It came out in March of 2024.

He's the author of a number of books, The Coddling of the American Mind, The Righteous Mind, The Happiness Hypothesis, and most recently, the anxious generation...

The book we were discussing is The Anxious Generation. It came out in March of 2024.

Jonathan Haidt is a contributor.

this book is getting a lot of attention it's basically you know sort of diagnosing that like you know the anxious kids that are having all these mental health issues that like the really big thing is phones and you know phone mobile phones they're new they're you know clearly a thing that's like that has has has totally transformed children's lives i get it but i think that there was a fascinating review of the book by a scientist in the journal nature who basically was like hang on a minute there's correlation here but there isn't necessarily causation and the reality is that there are lots of other factors that are going on out there and i'm sure these are addressed in the book i mean you know school shootings i mean how how how much it feel for kids to you know be hiding under their desks and so on um you know the climate collapse there are lots of reasons for kids to be anxious so um i you know to me the the the the the thing that makes me feel uneasy about the thesis of this book is that you know we you know we you know we you know we want to think that this one thing is the thing that's that's causing all of our problems but in fact it's so multifaceted so multivaran and it's just hard to know like what's actually causing something and in fact the solution might be more more global i think parents are are also addicted themselves and so they're feeling like maybe it's making and it makes them feel bad social media definitely makes you feel worse when you're on your phone in a doom scroll you feel worse you can see it right because many of us who aren't addicted to anything i've never been a smoked don't take drugs don't drink but phone for sure i know when it makes me feel bad one of the reasons i put twitter away in the shelf right because it just started really made me feel bad so i think that's where they feel like if i feel bad they definitely have to feel bad kind of thing you know i had a i had a great psychoanalyst that i suffered many years and he had this thing that he would always say he'd say lidia 95% of what people tell you is about themselves and so is the other 5% um it's very hard for us it's very hard for us not to assume that what we think and feel is what other people think why don't you just leave there at that moment like that okay i know i know listen that is you know it's gotten me very far uh i left not long after but i agree with you i think the step now he puts all this stuff out there that's what a lot of the fans say look he's out there people are argued but a lot of social media social scientists are like this is bullshit like they really are going at it because they think he he's not making the case and he's made he's sort of like a silver bullet kind of thing and they're not discounting phones and everything else what they're saying is it's not the it's it's a multifaceted reason and if we simplify it it's gonna be a problem um that's i think that's really what the message is

Jonathan Haidt, he has the new book, Anxious Generation. This is sort of his antidote to all the stuff that's happening with kids and isolation.

He's been on an incredible press tour for his current book, The Anxious Generation.

With my new book, The Anxious Generation, I'm engaged in a debate with people about what caused the gigantic increase in mental illness that began with young people around 2012.

The book is huge. I mean, it's on every list I see. It was on Bill's list.

There is a book that everyone's talking about right now that I've also, like, read a lot of chunks of, not all in entirety, but the anxious generation.

Height made their marks while speaking to Firing Line with host Margaret Hoover about his new book, The Anxious Generation. How the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness.

He explained that the great rewiring refers to a fiveyear period between 2010 and 2015 when society fundamentally changed for adolescents with the emergence of smartphones and social media.

People walking all over Brooklyn holding this book. It's talking about the great rewiring. Talk to me, what is the great rewiring?

So, um, something happened to young people born after 1995. Uh, all of a sudden in the early 2010s, their mental health collapsed, rates of anxiety and depression skyrocketed, self-harm is up like 150% for younger teen girls, suicide is up 50%. Something happened in the early 2010s.

And so that's what the book is about. Something changed between 2010 and 2015, and I'm trying to explain what it is.

It's interesting how you're talking a lot about not only these phones come in and they change the way kids think and the way society thinks, but you talk about raising a child an anti-fragile child. And you make some bold claims in this book. One of which is right here. You claim that this merry-go-round playground spinner is the greatest piece of playground equipment ever invented. Defend yourself. How is it...

The Anxious Generation is available now.

I see people walking all over Brooklyn holding this book. It's talking about the great rewiring. Talk to me. What is the great rewiring?

The book is about something changed between 2010 and 2015 and I'm trying to explain what it is.

You claim that this merry-go-round playground spinner is the greatest piece of playground equipment ever invented. Defend yourself.

It's just a metaphor. If you're up, you're down. You know, it's just what life is all about.

I propose in the book for there's a lot of suggestions but four norms that will break these collective action traps. First, no smartphone before high school. Just clear this out of the lives of elementary and middle school kids. Send them out, give them a flip phone, a dumb phone, a phone watch. You can say you can text them, but don't give them the entire internet, including strangers all over the world who are trying to get at them sexually. Like this is just craziness, so no smartphone till high school. The second is no social media till 16. You know the things that are sent around on social media, the things they're exposed to. Like I just recently learned about the video a cat in a blender which was popular a while ago. I don't know exactly. It is exactly what it sounds like. So you know, and this is just this is just part of childhood is hardcore porn, animal cruelty, beheading videos, so you know, let's just at least wait till they're 16 before they see that stuff. The third norm is phone-free schools. This is the most powerful one that we can do instantly. So if you're watching this and you have kids that go to a school that lets the kids keep the phone in the pocket, send well buy a copy of my book for the principal. Note to go, you know, I have videos. Send them a video of my talks on phone-free schools. Every school needs to go phone-free by September. The phones are, they don't just make the kids anxious and lonely, they make them less intelligent. Test scores have been dropping around the world since 2012. Once the kids bring a phone in school, they're doing this, they're not listening to the teacher. So get rid of phones in schools. And then the fourth norm is far more independence, free play, and responsibility in the real world. We have to, so it's not this is not just about let's take away, take away. It's let's give them a real childhood, the kind of childhood that's older people kind that we look back on. So if we, so if we love our children, the best thing we can give them is a real human childhood. And if we do it together, we can get this done in the next year or two.

I don't know if you guys have read The Anxious Generation. It's an incredible book. You should read it.

I don't know if you guys have read The Anxious Generation. It's an incredible book. You should read it.

I'd focused on the effects of social media on teen mental health. And so one thing I've discovered is that I grossly understated the damage that's being done.

the damage from this phone-based childhood is far beyond what I said in The Anxious Generation.

This is Jonathan Haidt. He's a social psychologist and a professor at New York University. He wrote Coddling of the American Mind, and more recently, the anxious generation.

John's new book is called The Anxious Generation, How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.

The Anxious Generation

The Anxious Generation. Oh my God, we haven't talked enough about this. How the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness by Jonathan Hyde.

Jonathan is the most influential scholar in the world. If you have kids, this is the most read. I'm going to stop there because everyone's already bought this goddamn thing. It's number one on every list in the world.

His book is called the anxious generation How the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness

I hope I think my book the anxious generation Is the the clearest and fullest statement of what happened

I think you're arguably the most influential scholar in the world right now

I think I can explain it like this um over my life as I have picked stocks to invest in if I simply always did the opposite of what I actually did I would be a much richer man. I have no ability to pick stocks But when it comes to picking academic topics to study because I have a kind of an intuitive sense that the world's going to help for this reason I'm gonna dig in here and I want to look and I want to trace this out I have a pretty good track record of that looking at polarization looking at emotions like moral disgust And looking at you know the overprotection of kids and the coddling the American mind And now what I'm finding is even though a lot of that other stuff had culture war overtones And there was always a left-right dimension Now I've hit on a topic which everyone is seeing everyone is concerned about Republicans, Democrats, anyone with children has seen it And so I find I don't have to persuade people. I just walk in and people say thank you. Yes Tell what do we do? What's going on?

So I think I'm really riding I just I came along with with this at the right time The world's going to hell our kids are in big trouble And I hope I think my book the anxious generation Is the the clearest and fullest statement of what happened