"The Anxious Generation," Jonathan Haidt - A Review

While Jonathan Heidt writes of Zoomers, the enticement of social media affects us all. Reading an article by Amelia Butler-Gallie in The Spectator on the 100^th anniversary of the publication of The Great Gatsby, I was reminded of this. The green light at the end of Daisy’s dock symbolized Gatsby’s hopes and dreams – the unattainable. We see that same lure in today’s social media. Ms. Butler-Gallie wrote: “…the digital glow of our smartphones, beckoning us toward the ever-elusive ideal that, if we only keep scrolling, we will find what we were always searching for.”

 

Social media is not going away nor will its powers of seduction; so it becomes incumbent on each of us to make it our servant, not our master. For young and old, I believe you will find this book important.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Books

The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt

March 22, 2025

 

“There is no one right way to be a parent; 

there is no blueprint for building a perfect child.”

                                                                                                                The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt

 

Professor Haidt’s book speaks to Generation Z (Zoomers), those born between 1997 and 2012, a grouping that includes our ten grandchildren. For a grandparent of Zoomers, Haidt’s findings are sobering; for a parent they must be alarming. Since 2010, depression among boys and girls is up 161% and 145% respectively. Mental illness among college students has surged, has have emergency room visits for self-inflicted harm and suicide rates for younger adolescents.

 

Since the onset of the Industrial Revolution, children have grown up in worlds foreign to their parents. They have access to goods and services unknown to their parents at the same age. My parents grew up with the telephone, automobiles and planes, all unknown to their parents at the same age. My generation grew up with the radio, television, talking movies and parkways. Our children grew up with space exploration, hand-held calculators, cassettes, and cordless electric games. However, the technologies available to generation Z are more dramatic. They have come of age with violent video games and “smart” phones. The iPhone was introduced in 2007, the App store in 2008 and, most concerning to Professor Haidt because of its consequences for young girls, the iPhone 4 with its front-facing camera. Facebook was launched in 2004, YouTube in 2005, WhatsApp in 2009, Instagram in 2010, and TikTok in 2014. 

 

As a father of two children of the “anxious generation,” Professor Haidt seeks answers, knowing that, as he writes in the epigraph, no one has all the answers. He writes easily and well, and supports his arguments with graphs, tables and figures, and concludes: “…we have vastly and needlessly overprotected our children in the real world. At the same time, we have underprotected our children in the virtual world…”

 

It is the virtual world that has overtaken the real world, in terms of time consumed: For preteens, it is close to 40 hours per week – an adult’s average work week.  “For teens aged 13 to 18, it’s closer to 50 hours per week.” He does not see the internet as harmful. “We need,” he writes, “to develop a more nuanced mental map of the digital landscape…I’m not saying that 11-year-olds should be kept off the internet. I’m saying that the Great Rewiring of Childhood, in which phone-based childhood replaced play-based childhood, is the major cause of the international epidemic of adolescent mental illness.”  

 

Professor Haidt concludes his book with suggestions for parents: less screen time – turn off phones during meal time and remove them from bedrooms an hour or so before bedtime – and provide more play time. He admits that he and his wife used the TV show Teletubbies to “mesmerize and calm our children from infancy through the toddler years.” He adds, however: “But if we had to do it over again, we’d do less of it.” He believes schools should increase recess times with lighter supervision, and parents should not micromanage their children; they should encourage sleepovers and after school free play.

 

His statistics are alarming, but there is wisdom in his recommendations. The primary purpose of parenting is to raise a child to become a productive and happy adult. This book helps illuminate that passage, a passage that should be joyous, but one that has become difficult to navigate.