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

by Jonathan Haidt

It sounds like the “PG-13” by which the Motion Picture Association tells parents that a movie is appropriate for a 13-year-old to see without a parent. But readiness to see a movie is very different from readiness to exercise self-control and make wise choices while being subjected to the addictive attention-extracting techniques used by powerful companies.

“Parent must provide proper supervision.” Yes, of course they should, but people have wildly different ideas of what that entails. Just because some passerby wouldn’t let her nine-year-old play outside doesn’t mean the state should be able to investigate anyone who does.

The “digital divide” is no longer that poor kids and racial minorities have less access to the internet, as was feared in the early 2000s; it is now that they have less protection from it.

Those are the two whales: going phone-free and giving a lot more unstructured free play. A school that is phone-free and play-full is investing in prevention.

When parents can’t take their eyes off their kids, and kids can’t do a single thing on their own, the result is a double helix of anxiety and doubt.

If we can keep smartphones entirely out of elementary and middle schools while making more room for free play and student autonomy, then the students who enter high school in a few years will be healthier and happier. If schools take these steps, in concert with parents taking related steps at home and governments changing laws to support those efforts, then I believe we can reverse the surge of suffering that hit adolescents in the early 2010s.

The main harm done by most screen activities is the opportunity cost, which directly drives two of the four foundational harms that I described in chapter 5: social deprivation and sleep deprivation.

The frontal cortex is not fully developed until the mid-20s, but a 16-year-old can and should be given more autonomy and self-determination than a 12-year-old.

Whenever you let your children open social media accounts, look out for signs of problematic or addictive use. Ask them how their online lives are helping them to achieve their goals, or hindering them. Educate them about how social media works and how it hooks and harms many users by going through the “Youth Toolkit” and other resources at the Center for Humane Technology.[34]

A free-range childhood is more likely to produce confident, competent young adults, with lower levels of anxiety, than is a childhood ruled by safetyism, fear, and constant adult supervision. The biggest obstacle is the parents’ own anxiety about letting a child out of sight, unchaperoned by an adult.

Humanity evolved on Earth. Childhood evolved for physical playfulness and exploration. Children thrive when they are rooted in real-world communities, not in disembodied virtual networks. Growing up in the virtual world promotes anxiety, anomie, and loneliness. The Great Rewiring of Childhood, from play-based to phone-based, has been a catastrophic failure.