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

by Jonathan Haidt

Even if the content on these sites could somehow be filtered effectively to remove obviously harmful material, the addictive design of these platforms reduces the time available for face-to-face play in the real world. The reduction is so severe that we might refer to smartphones and tablets in the hands of children as experience blockers. Of course, a smartphone opens up worlds of new possible experiences, including video games (which are forms of play) and virtual long-distance friendships. But this happens at the cost of reducing the kinds of experiences humans evolved for and that they must have in abundance to become socially functional adults. It’s as if we gave our infants iPads loaded with movies about walking, but the movies were so engrossing that kids never put in the time or effort to practice walking.