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

by Jonathan Haidt

I have found five studies that looked at the rollout of high-speed internet around the world, and all five found evidence of damage to mental health. It’s hard to have a phone-based childhood when data speeds are low. For example, what happened in Spain as fiber-optic cables were laid and high-speed internet came to different regions at different times? A 2022 study analyzed “the effect of access to high-speed Internet on hospital discharge diagnoses of behavioral and mental health cases among adolescents.” The conclusion: We find a positive and significant impact on girls but not on boys. Exploring the mechanism behind these effects, we show that [the arrival of high-speed internet] increases addictive Internet use and significantly decreases time spent sleeping, doing homework, and socializing with family and friends. Girls again power all these effects.[21]