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

by Jonathan Haidt

The next year, when he was 13, he wanted to go to a particular night match by himself. Jayne and I were hesitant, but Max assured us that he could do it, and he really did know the subway system better than we did. So we conjured up an image of Lenore in our minds, and we said okay. Max had a fantastic time at the match, which ran past 11:00 p.m. No problem, he flowed with the boisterous crowd to the nearby subway afterward. The problem arose at the transfer station; the train Max needed for the last mile home was not running that night. Max was nervous, but he improvised. He walked upstairs from the subway station and hailed a yellow cab—which I had taught him how to do but he had never done on his own—and made it home safely at 1:00 a.m. From that day on he was a different person, with more confidence, and from that day on we treated him differently and gave him still more independence. Jayne and I would not have said yes to Max’s request had we not let him walk to school years earlier, and grown to trust him without tracking his blue dot at every moment.