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

by Jonathan Haidt

In Sum Human childhood is very different from that of any other animal. Children’s brains grow to 90% of full size by age 5, but then take a long time to configure themselves. This slow-growth childhood is an adaptation for cultural learning. Childhood is an apprenticeship for learning the skills needed for success in one’s culture. Free play is as essential for developing social skills, like conflict resolution, as it is for developing physical skills. But play-based childhoods were replaced by phone-based childhoods as children and adolescents moved their social lives and free time onto internet-connected devices. Children learn through play to connect, synchronize, and take turns. They enjoy attunement and need enormous quantities of it. Attunement and synchrony bond pairs, groups, and whole communities. Social media, in contrast, is mostly asynchronous and performative. It inhibits attunement and leaves heavy users starving for social connection. Children are born with two innate learning programs that help them to acquire their local culture. Conformist bias motivates them to copy whatever seems to be most common. Prestige bias motivates them to copy whoever seems to be the most accomplished and prestigious. Social media platforms, which are engineered for engagement, hijack social learning and drown out the culture of one’s family and local community while locking children’s eyes onto influencers of questionable value. Social learning occurs throughout childhood, but...

I don't think there's as much difference between play and phone, in attunement, performativeness, bad examples, etc, as the text implies