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

by Jonathan Haidt

Reason #3: Girls More Easily Share Emotions and Disorders

They found that happiness tends to occur in clusters. This was not just because happy people seek each other out. Rather, when one person became happier, it increased the odds that their existing friends would become happier too. Amazingly, it also had an influence on their friends’ friends, and sometimes even on their friends’ friends’ friends. Happiness is contagious; it spreads through social networks.

Reason #4: Girls Are More Subject to Predation and Harassment

When girls’ nudes are sent around, it can be devastating and often begins a round of cyberbullying. Boys, however, are less likely to suffer when pictures of their penises are shared. In fact, boys often send such photos to girls as bait, to elicit a reciprocal nude photo. A high school girl named Nina tells Sales, “A girl who sends naked pictures, she’s a slut, but if a boy does it, everyone just laughs.”

This is the great irony of social media: the more you immerse yourself in it, the more lonely and depressed you become. This is true both at the individual level and at the collective level.

Social media harms girls more than boys. Correlational studies show that heavy users of social media have higher rates of depression and other disorders than light users or nonusers. The correlation is larger and clearer for girls: Heavy users are three times as likely to be depressed as nonusers.

Experimental studies show that social media use is a cause, not just a correlate, of anxiety and depression. When people are assigned to reduce or eliminate social media for three weeks or more, their mental health usually improves. Several “quasi-experiments” show that when Facebook came to campuses, or when high-speed internet came to regions and provinces, mental health declined, especially for girls and young women.

Two major categories of motivations are agency (the desire to stand out and have an effect on the world) and communion (the desire to connect and develop a sense of belonging). Boys and girls both want each of these, but there is a gender difference that emerges early in children’s play: Boys choose more agency activities; girls choose more communion activities. Social media appeals to the desire for communion, but it often ends up frustrating it.

There are at least four reasons why social media harms girls more than boys. The first is that girls are more sensitive to visual comparisons, especially when other people praise or criticize one’s face and body. Visually oriented social media platforms that focus on images of oneself are ideally suited to pushing down a girl’s “sociometer” (the internal gauge of where one stands in relation to others). Girls are also more likely to develop “socially prescribed perfectionism,” in which a person tries to live up to impossibly high standards held by others or by society.

The second reason is that girls’ aggression is often expressed in attempts to harm the relationships and reputations of other girls, whereas boys’ aggression is more likely to be expressed in physical ways. Social media has offered girls en...

The third reason is that girls and women more readily share emotions. When everything moved online and girls became hyperconnected, girls with anxiety or depression might have influenced many other girls to develop anxiety and depression. Girls are also more vulnerable to “sociogenic” illnesses, which means illnesses caused by social influence rather than from a biological cause.

The fourth reason is that the internet has made it easier for men to approach and stalk girls and women and to behave badly toward them while avoiding accountability. When preteen girls open social media accounts, they are often followed and contacted by older men, and they are pressured by boys in their school to share nude photographs of themselves.

Social media is a trap that ensnares more girls than boys. It lures people in with the promise of connection and communion, but then it multiplies the number of relationships while reducing their quality, therefore making it harder to spend time with a few close friends in real life. This may be why loneliness spiked ...

“What the economy requires now is a whole different set of skills: You need intelligence, you need an ability to sit still and focus, to communicate openly to be able to listen to people and to operate in a workplace that is much more fluid than it used to be. Those are things that women do extremely well.”[7] She notes that by 2009, “for the first time in American history, the balance of the workforce tipped toward women, who continue to occupy around half of the nation’s jobs.”

“a world of floundering men is unlikely to be a world of flourishing women.”

A more formal term is NEET, created by economists in the U.K. to refer to those between the ages of 16 and 24 who are Not in Education, Employment, or Training. Such young people are said to be “economically inactive.” NEETs in the U.K.[18] and the United States[19] are mostly men, once you exclude all those who are disabled or who are parents caring for their own children.

Parents are understandably concerned. Boys are also more vulnerable to becoming complete shut-ins, as has happened in Japan. Japanese society had long placed intense pressures on young men to succeed in school, get a prestigious job, and conform to the social expectations placed on a “salaryman.” In the 1990s, when the bubble economy of the 1980s popped and the hurdles to success became higher, many young men retreated to their childhood bedrooms and shut their doors. As the economic decline made it harder for them to engage productively with the outside world, the new internet made it possible, for the first time in history, for young men to meet their agency and communion needs, to some degree, alone in their bedrooms. These young people are called hikikomori, a Japanese term that means “pulling inward.”[21] They live like hermits, emerging from their caves mostly at odd hours when they are less likely to see anyone, including family members. In some families, parents leave food for them by their doors. They calm their anxieties by staying inside, but the longer they stay in, the less competent they become in the outside world, fueling their anxiety about the outside world. They are trapped.

Luca suffered from anxiety in middle school. His mother withdrew him when he was 12 and allowed him to study online from his bedroom. Boys of past generations who retreated to their bedrooms would have been confronted by boredom and almost unimaginable loneliness—conditions that would compel most homebound adolescents to change their ways or find help. Luca, however, found an online world just vivid enough to keep his mind from starving. Ten years later, he still plays video games and surfs the web all night. He sleeps all day. Luca explains that he is not ashamed of his lifestyle. In fact, he says he’s proud of it, and he contrasts it with the working lives of other young men, who let a boss tell them what to do. His room is “the opposite of a prison,” he tells Conti. “It is freedom. There’s no one in here but me. I can do whatever, whenever. Going outside is a prison. But this room—this room is clarity.” Luca’s worldview is possible because his internet connection gives him access to a convincing simulation of many real-world pleasures—social connection, games, learning, and sex—without needing to face his anxieties and the uncomfortable uncertainty of real life. It is also representative of the swaggering and aggressive spirit that pervades the male-dominated subreddits, “chans” (such as 4chan and 8chan), and online communities (such as MGTOW—Men Going Their Own Way, without women).

One of the most widely noted traits of Gen Z is that they are not doing as much of the bad stuff that teenagers used to do. They drink less alcohol, have fewer car accidents, and get fewer speeding tickets. They have far fewer physical fights or unplanned pregnancies.[24] These are, of course, wonderful trends—nobody wants more car accidents. But because the rate of change for so many risky behaviors has been so rapid, I also look at these trends with concern. What if these changes came about not because Gen Z is getting wiser, but because they are withdrawing from the physical world? What if they are engaging in less risk-taking overall—healthy as well as unhealthy—and therefore learning less about how to manage risks in the real world?

For example, several studies indicate that after watching porn, heterosexual men find real women less attractive, including their own partners.[39] Compulsive pornography users, who are predominantly men, are more likely to avoid sexual interactions with a partner and tend to experience lower sexual satisfaction.

Nonetheless, there are at least two major harms associated with video games. First, video games can cause severe problems for a substantial subset of heavy users, like Chris, where the key is not just the quantity of play; it is the role that games have come to play in their lives.

The second major harm associated with video games is that they impose a large opportunity cost; they take up an enormous amount of time.

Video games also deliver far less of the anti-phobic benefits of risky play. Video games are disembodied. They are thrilling in their own way, but they can’t activate the kind of physical fear, thrill, and pounding heart that riding a roller coaster, or playing full-court basketball, or using hammers to smash things at an adventure playground can give. Jumping out of planes, having knife fights, and getting brutally murdered are just things that happen dozens of times each day for boys playing Fortnite or Call of Duty. They do not teach boys how to judge and manage risks for themselves in the real world. When video games replace real-world exploration and adventure with one’s buddies, as they do for heavy users, they often produce young men who feel that they are missing something, like Chris at the opening of this chapter.

when we feel the social order weakening or dissolving, we don’t feel liberated; we feel lost and anxious: If this [binding social order] dissolves, if we no longer feel it in existence and action about and above us, whatever is social in us is deprived of all objective foundation. All that remains is an artificial combination of illusory images, a phantasmagoria vanishing at the least reflection; that is, nothing which can be a goal for our action.

That, I believe, is what has happened to Gen Z. They are less able than any generation in history to put down roots in real-world communities populated by known individuals who will still be there a year later. Communities are the social environments in which humans, and human childhood, evolved. In contrast, children growing up after the Great Rewiring skip through multiple networks whose nodes are a mix of known and unknown people, some using aliases and avatars, many of whom will have vanished by next year, or perhaps by tomorrow. Life in these networks is often a daily tornado of memes, fads, and ephemeral micro-dramas, played out among a rotating cast of millions of bit players. They have no roots to anchor them or nourish them; they have no clear set of norms to constrain them and guide them on the path to adulthood.

Human children and human bodies need to be rooted in human communities. Children must grow up on Earth before we can send them to Mars.

Boys are at greater risk than girls of “failure to launch.” They are more likely to become young adults who are “Not in Education, Employment, or Training.” Some Japanese men developed an extreme form of lifelong withdrawal to their bedrooms; they are called hikikomori

As boys engaged in fewer risky activities outdoors or away from home, and began spending more time at home on screens, their mental health did not decline in the 1990s and 2000s. But something changed in the early 2010s, and their mental health then began to decline.

As with social media for girls, spending hours “connecting” with others online produces an increase in the quantity of social interactions and a decrease in the quality of social relationships. Boys, like girls, became lonelier during the Great Rewiring. Some boys use video games to strengthen their real-world packs, but for many others, video games made it easier for them to retreat to their bedrooms rather than doing the hard work of maturing in the real world.

The Great Rewiring of Childhood pulled young people out of real-world communities, including their own families, and created a new kind of childhood lived in multiple rapidly shifting networks. One inevitable result was anomie, or normlessness, because stable and binding moralities cannot form when everything is in flux, including the members of the network.

anomie breeds despair and suicide. This may be why boys and girls, who followed different paths through the Great Rewiring, ended up in the same place, with a sudden and rapid increase in the feeling that their lives were meaningless.

When any . . . act of charity or of gratitude, for instance, is presented either to our sight or imagination, we are deeply impressed with its beauty and feel a strong desire in ourselves of doing charitable and grateful acts also. On the contrary, when we see or read of any atrocious deed, we are disgusted with its deformity, and conceive an abhorrence of vice.

six spiritual practices: shared sacredness; embodiment; stillness, silence, and focus; self-transcendence; being slow to anger, quick to forgive; and finding awe in nature.

This is one of the founding insights of sociology: Strong communities don’t just magically appear whenever people congregate and communicate. The strongest and most satisfying communities come into being when something lifts people out of the lower level so that they have powerful collective experiences. They all enter the realm of the sacred together, at the same time. When they return to the profane level, where they need to be most of the time to address the necessities of life, they have greater trust and affection for each other as a result of their time together in the sacred realm. They are also happier and have lower rates of suicide. In contrast, transient networks of disembodied users, interacting asynchronously, just can’t cohere the way human communities have from time immemorial. People who live only in networks, rather than communities, are less likely to thrive.

To enable their adherents to share collective experiences, religions mark off certain times (such as the Sabbath and holy days), places (shrines, churches, temples), and objects (the cross, the Bible, the Qur’an) as sacred. They are separate from the profane world; the faithful must protect them from desecration. The Hebrew word for holiness (kadosh) literally means “set apart,” or “separated.”

We could create healthier environments for ourselves and our children if we could reconnect with the rhythms of the calendar and of our communities. This might include taking part in regular religious services or joining other groups organized for a moral, charitable, or spiritual purpose. It could include establishing family rituals such as a digital Sabbath (one day per week with reduced or no digital technology, combined with enjoyable in-person activities) or marking holidays together consistently, ideally with other families. All such practices would endow time and space with some of the social meaning they have lost.

The assembled family and friends must share the food, and this is among the most widespread of human customs: People who “break bread” together have a bond.[7] The simple act of eating together, especially from the same plate or serving dish, strengthens that bond and reduces the likelihood of conflict. This is one deficiency the virtual world can never overcome, no matter how good VR gets.

Meditation helps to calm the monkey mind. Over time, the nature of conscious experience changes, even when one is not meditating. Studies on Buddhist monks suggest that their intense meditation practices alter their brains in lasting ways, decreasing activation in brain areas related to fear and negative emotionality. That’s a sign that they have come to live in the openness of discover mode, rather than in the guardedness of defend mode.

The phone-based life makes it difficult for people to be fully present with others when they are with others, and to sit silently with themselves when they are alone. If we want to experience stillness and silence, and if we want to develop focus and a sense of unified consciousness, we must reduce the flow of stimulation into our eyes and ears. We must find ample opportunities to sit quietly, whether that is in meditation,[16] or by spending more time in nature, or just by looking out a car window and thinking on a long drive, rather than always listening to something, or (for children in the back seat) watching videos the whole way.

Social media is a fountain of bedevilments. It trains people to think in ways that are exactly contrary to the world’s wisdom traditions: Think about yourself first; be materialistic, judgmental, boastful, and petty; seek glory as quantified by likes and followers. Many users may believe that the implicit carrots and sticks built into platforms like Instagram don’t affect them, but it’s hard not to be affected unconsciously.

To experience more self-transcendence, we need to turn down the things in our lives that activate the profane mode network and bind us tightly to our egos, such as time on social media. We need to seek out conditions and activities that have the opposite effect, as most spiritual practices do, including prayer, meditation, mindfulness, and for some people psychedelic drugs, which are increasingly found to be effective treatments for anxiety and depression.

We are too quick to anger and too slow to forgive. We are also hypocrites who judge others harshly while automatically justifying our own bad behavior.

As Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For the judgment you give will be the judgment you get, and the measure you give will be the measure you get.[23] Jesus was not telling us to avoid judging others entirely; he was warning us to judge thoughtfully, and to beware of using different standards for others than we use for ourselves. In the next verse he says, “Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye but do not notice the log in your own eye?”[24] He urges us to fix ourselves first, before we criticize anyone else.

Thousands of years later, Martin Luther King Jr. used the power of forgiveness, as developed in the Judeo-Christian tradition, to inspire those in the civil rights movement to act in elevated ways that would win hearts and minds: We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.

Dacher went on to become the preeminent scientist studying awe. He and his students collected thousands of accounts of awe experiences from people around the world and sorted them into the eight most common categories, which he calls the “eight wonders of life.” They are moral beauty, collective effervescence, nature, music, visual design, spiritual and religious awe, life and death, and epiphanies (moments in which a new and grand understanding dawns).

When people see morally beautiful actions, they feel as though they have been lifted up—elevated on a vertical dimension that can be labeled divinity. When people see morally repulsive actions, they feel as though they have been pulled downward, or degraded.

A phone-based life generally pulls people downward. It changes the way we think, feel, judge, and relate to others. It is incompatible with many of the behaviors that religious and spiritual communities practice, some of which have been shown to improve happiness, well-being, trust, and group cohesion, according to researchers such as David DeSteno. I described six such practices.

First, Émile Durkheim showed that human beings move up and down between two levels: the profane and the sacred. The profane is our ordinary self-focused consciousness. The sacred is the realm of the collective. Groups of individuals become a cohesive community when they engage in rituals that move them in and out of the realm of the sacred together. The virtual world, in contrast, gives no structure to time or space and is entirely profane. T...

Second, religious rituals always involve bodily movement with symbolic significance, often carried out synchronously with others. Eating together has a special power to bond people together. The virtual world is, by definition, disembodied, and most of its activities are conducted asynchronously.

Third, many religions and spiritual practices use stillness, silence, and meditation to calm the “jumping monkey” of ordinary consciousness and open the heart to others, God, or enlightenment. Meditation has been shown to promote well-being, even brief regular meditation in fully secular contexts. The phone-based life, in contrast, is a never-ending series of notifications, alerts, and distractions, fragmenting consciousness and training us to fill every moment of consciousness with something from our phones.