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

by Jonathan Haidt

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.

While the reward-seeking parts of the brain mature earlier, the frontal cortex—essential for self-control, delay of gratification, and resistance to temptation—is not up to full capacity until the mid-20s, and preteens are at a particularly vulnerable point in development.

Gen Z became the first generation in history to go through puberty with a portal in their pockets that called them away from the people nearby and into an alternative universe that was exciting, addictive, unstable, and—as I will show—unsuitable for children and adolescents. Succeeding socially in that universe required them to devote a large part of their consciousness—perpetually—to managing what became their online brand.

As the transition from play-based to phone-based childhood proceeded, many children and adolescents were perfectly happy to stay indoors and play online, but in the process they lost exposure to the kinds of challenging physical and social experiences that all young mammals need to develop basic competencies, overcome innate childhood fears, and prepare to rely less on their parents. Virtual interactions with peers do not fully compensate for these experiential losses.

overprotection in the real world and underprotection in the virtual world—are the major reasons why children born after 1995 became the anxious generation.

The key factor is the commitment required to make relationships work. When people are raised in a community that they cannot easily escape, they do what our ancestors have done for millions of years: They learn how to manage relationships, and how to manage themselves and their emotions in order to keep those precious relationships going.

They would provide a foundation for healthier childhood in the digital age. They are: No smartphones before high school. Parents should delay children’s entry into round-the-clock internet access by giving only basic phones (phones with limited apps and no internet browser) before ninth grade (roughly age 14). No social media before 16. Let kids get through the most vulnerable period of brain development before connecting them to a firehose of social comparison and algorithmically chosen influencers. Phone-free schools. In all schools from elementary through high school, students should store their phones, smartwatches, and any other personal devices that can send or receive texts in phone lockers or locked pouches during the school day. That is the only way to free up their attention for each other and for their teachers. Far more unsupervised play and childhood independence. That’s the way children naturally develop social skills, overcome anxiety, and become self-governing young adults.

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.

(the percent change since 2010, which I’ll always use as the baseline), the increases were similar for both sexes—roughly 150%. In other words, depression became roughly two and a half times more prevalent. The increases happened across all races and social classes.[4]

A 2023 study of American college students found that 37% reported feeling anxious “always” or “most of the time,” while an additional 31% felt this way “about half the time.” This means that only one-third of college students said they feel anxiety less than half the time or never.[14]

From 2010 to 2021, the rate increased 167%. This too is a clue guiding us to ask: What changed for preteen and younger teen girls in the early 2010s?

I am not saying that none of the increase in anxiety and depression is due to a greater willingness to report these conditions (which is a good thing) or due to some adolescents who began to pathologize normal anxiety and discomfort (which is not a good thing).

The smartphone was adopted faster than any other communication technology in history.

People don’t get depressed when they face threats collectively; they get depressed when they feel isolated, lonely, or useless.

Everything may seem broken, but that was just as true when I was growing up in the 1970s and when my parents were growing up in the 1930s. It is the story of humanity.

Physical play, outdoors and with other children of mixed ages, is the healthiest, most natural, most beneficial sort of play. Play with some degree of physical risk is essential because it teaches children how to look after themselves and each other.[9]

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.

Social media platforms are therefore the most efficient conformity engines ever invented. They can shape an adolescent’s mental models of acceptable behavior in a matter of hours, whereas parents can struggle unsuccessfully for years to get their children to sit up straight or stop whining.

we are overprotecting our children in the real world while underprotecting them online. If we really want to keep our children safe, we should delay their entry into the virtual world and send them out to play in the real world instead.

By building physical, psychological, and social competence, it gives kids confidence that they can face new situations, which is an inoculation against anxiety.

We are embodied creatures; children should learn how to manage their bodies in the physical world before they start spending large amounts of time in the virtual world.

For social development they need to learn the art of friendship, which is embodied; friends do things together, and as children they touch, hug, and wrestle. Mistakes are low cost, and can be rectified in real time.

such as an apology with an appropriate facial expression. A smile, a pat on the back, or a handshake shows everyone that it’s okay, both parties are ready to move on and continue playing, both are developing their skills of relationship repair. In contrast, as young people move their social relationships online, those relationships become disembodied, asynchronous, and sometimes disposable. Even small mistakes can bring heavy costs in a viral world where content can live forever and everyone can see it. Mistakes can be met with intense criticism by multiple individuals

the online world is not nearly as dangerous as Mars, but it shares the property that small mistakes can bring enormous costs.

But perhaps the most important change in the 1980s was the rising fear among parents that everyone and everything was a threat to their children.[39]

when adults step away and stop helping each other to raise children, parents find themselves on their own. Parenting becomes harder, more fear-ridden, and more time consuming, especially for women,

There is no equivalent to movie ratings such as PG-13, R, and X in the online world. Social media platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok don’t enforce their minimum age of 13.[18] Children are free to do as they please, and to play video games and exchange messages and photographs with unknown adults. Pornography sites also welcome children, as long as they click a box to say that they are 18 or older. Porn sites will show them how to have anal sex long before they’ve had their first kiss.

Safetyism is an experience blocker. When we make children’s safety a quasi-sacred value and don’t allow them to take any risks, we block them from overcoming anxiety, learning to manage risk, and learning to be self-governing, all of which are essential for becoming healthy and competent adults.

the four foundational harms of the new phone-based childhood that damage boys and girls of all ages: social deprivation, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation, and addiction.

The people with the least willpower and the greatest vulnerability to manipulation were, of course, children and adolescents, whose frontal cortices were still highly underdeveloped.

It’s painful to be ignored, at any age. Just imagine being a teen trying to develop a sense of who you are and where you fit, while everyone you meet tells you, indirectly: You’re not as important as the people on my phone.

There is evidence that the fragmentation of attention in early adolescence caused by problematic use of social media and video games may interfere with the development of executive function.

Teens who are heavy users of social media are more depressed than light users and nonusers, and this is especially true for girls.

The images were flashed on a screen for just 20 milliseconds, too fast for the women to become consciously aware of what they had seen. The authors conclude that “social comparison takes place outside awareness and affects explicit self-evaluations.”

The researchers found that Instagram is particularly bad for girls: “Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression. . . . This reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups.” [44] The researchers also noted that “social comparison is worse” on Instagram than on rival apps.

“A girl who sends naked pictures, she’s a slut, but if a boy does it, everyone just laughs.”[80]

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.

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 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.[40] In a 2017 meta-analysis of over 50 studies collectively including more than 50,000 participants from 10 countries, pornography consumption was “associated with lower interpersonal satisfaction outcomes in cross-sectional surveys, longitudinal surveys, and experiments.” Importantly, the relationship was only significant among males.[41]

one of the most beneficial parts of free play is that kids must act as legislators (who jointly make up the rules) and as judges and juries (who jointly decide what to do when rules appear to be violated).

Porn is an example of how tech companies have made it easy for boys to satisfy powerful evolved desires without having to develop any skills that would help them make the transition to adulthood.

Video games offer boys and girls a number of benefits, but there are also harms, especially for the subset of boys (in the ballpark of 7%) who end up as problematic or addicted users. For them, video games do seem to cause declining mental and physical health, family strife, and difficulties in other areas of life.

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)

Research consistently shows that teens who play team sports are happier than those who don’t.[9] Humans are embodied; a phone-based life is not. Screens lead us to forget that our physical bodies matter.

Focusing your attention and meditating have been found to reduce depression and anxiety.[11] You don’t need to become a monk or join a monastery; many ordinary people gain these benefits by taking a vow of silence for a day, a week, or more as they join with others on meditation retreats. Even brief sessions of mindfulness meditation—10 minutes each day—have been found to reduce irritability, negative emotions, and stress from external pressures.[12]

Unfortunately, most young people become heavy users of social media during the sensitive period for cultural learning, which runs from roughly age 9 to 15.[21] 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.[22]

If we want awe to play a larger and more beneficial role in our lives, we need to make space for it.

As for our children, if we want awe and natural beauty to play a larger role in their lives, we need to make deliberate efforts to bring them or send them to beautiful natural areas. Without phones.

In 2010, teens, parents, schools, and even tech companies didn’t know that smartphones and social media had so many harmful effects. Now we do. In 2010 there was little sign of a mental health crisis. Now it’s all around us.

parents can support each other when they stick together. The group Wait Until 8th is a wonderful example of such coordination: Parents sign a pledge when their child is in elementary school that they will not give their child a smartphone until eighth grade. The pledge becomes binding only when 10 families with kids in that school and grade sign the pledge, which guarantees that those children will have others to play with and will not feel that they are the “only ones” excluded.