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

by Jonathan Haidt

In Sum Between 2010 and 2015, the social lives of American teens moved largely onto smartphones with continuous access to social media, online video games, and other internet-based activities. This Great Rewiring of Childhood, I argue, is the single largest reason for the tidal wave of adolescent mental illness that began in the early 2010s. The first generation of Americans who went through puberty with smartphones (and the entire internet) in their hands became more anxious, depressed, self-harming, and suicidal. We now call that generation Gen Z, in contrast to the millennial generation, which had largely finished puberty when the Great Rewiring began in 2010. The tidal wave of anxiety, depression, and self-harm hit girls harder than boys, and it hit preteen girls hardest of all. The mental health crisis has also hit boys. Their rates of depression and anxiety have also increased a lot, although usually not by as much as for girls. Boys’ technology use and mental health difficulties are somewhat different from those of girls, as I’ll show in chapter 7. Suicide rates in the United States began rising around 2008 for adolescent boys and girls; they rose much higher in the 2010s. The increase in suffering was not limited to the United States. The same pattern is seen at roughly the same time among teens in the U.K., Canada, and other major Anglosphere countries, and also in the five Nordic nations. Feelings of alienation in school rose after 2012 across the Western world. ...

I think the "reporting is easier" and "less social bias against issues" are thrown away as possibilities too quickly. I think that they glide over the "other countries may not have the same problem" too quickly.