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

by Jonathan Haidt

Companies that strive to maximize “engagement” by using psychological tricks to keep young people clicking were the worst offenders. They hooked children during vulnerable developmental stages, while their brains were rapidly rewiring in response to incoming stimulation.

By designing a firehose of addictive content that entered through kids’ eyes and ears, and by displacing physical play and in-person socializing, these companies have rewired childhood and changed human development on an almost unimaginable scale.

They spent far less time playing with, talking to, touching, or even making eye contact with their friends and families, thereby reducing their participation in embodied social behaviors that are essential for successful human development.

Most parents don’t want their children to have a phone-based childhood, but somehow the world has reconfigured itself so that any parent who resists is condemning their children to social isolation.

Smartphones and social media smash the levee, flood consciousness with alerts and triviality, fill the ears with sounds, fragment attention, and scatter consciousness.[15] 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.

Younger users are particularly valuable because the habits they form early often stick with them for life, so companies need younger users to ensure robust future usage of their products.

When TikTok limited the ability of teenagers to be contacted by strangers via direct message[17] in response to the U.K. code, or when Facebook pulled back on how advertisers could target underage users with personalized ads,[18] these changes were “viewpoint neutral.”[19]

But it wasn’t just that. “It seems small. But in the moment, when I saw her get on the bus and it drove away, I felt really important to her, important to someone.” That’s what was so new to her. At last, instead of feeling needy, she was needed.

Re-normalizing childhood independence requires collective action, and collective action is most easily facilitated by local schools.

Kids will take on responsibility for their safety when they are actually responsible for their safety, rather than relying on the adult guardians hovering over them.[36]