BookscomputersThe Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness
"After 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 (pronounced "height") 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."-- Provided by Amazon
Add to your library to track progress and write reviews
Find The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness Jonathan Haidt in PDF, EPUB, ebook, audiobook, print, or library editions.
4 books in catalog
Inquiry into social psychology and the intuitive roots of human morality has reshaped modern non-fiction discussions around politics, culture, and mental health, notably through bestselling works such as The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has spent decades investigating how emotional instincts precede moral reasoning and why moral communities form opposing ideological tribes.
Born in 1963 and raised in Scarsdale, New York, Haidt earned a B.A. in Philosophy from Yale University in 1985 before completing his M.A. and Ph.D. in Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania in 1992. After completing post-doctoral research at the University of Chicago, he taught for 16 years in the Department of Psychology at the University of Virginia. He later joined New York University's Stern School of Business as the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership, where his research expanded from moral psychology and cultural politics to analyzing how social media impacts teen mental health.
Haidt combines psychological research, evolutionary concepts, and philosophical principles to explain moral judgment and cultural disagreement. His writing emphasizes that intuitive emotional reactions generally precede conscious rationalization when people evaluate right and wrong. Across his studies of moral emotions, political polarization, and youth mental health, he explores how social institutions, cultural values, and digital environments influence individual psychological well-being and collective social stability.
