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

by Jonathan Haidt

Those seeking spiritual growth are well served by separating themselves from the noise and complexity of human interactions, with their incessant words and profane concerns. When people practice silence in the company of equally silent companions, they promote quiet reflection and inner work, which confers mental health benefits.

If we want to experience stillness and silence, and if we want to develop focus and a sense of unified consciousness, we must reduce the flow of stimulation into our eyes and ears.

Jesus was not telling us to avoid judging others entirely; he was warning us to judge thoughtfully, and to beware of using different standards for others than we use for ourselves.

In this world, hate never yet dispelled hate. Only love dispels hate. This is the law, Ancient and inexhaustible.

to worry about the future felt unnecessary because of how secure and calm I felt now.

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.

I want to acknowledge how hard it is to be a parent these days, or a teacher, school administrator, coach, or anyone else who works with children and adolescents. It’s even harder to be an adolescent. We’re all trying to do our best while struggling with incomplete knowledge about a rapidly changing technological world that is fragmenting our attention and changing our relationships. It’s hard for us to understand what is happening, or know what to do about it. But we must do something.

Kids will take on responsibility for their safety when they are actually responsible for their safety, rather than relying on the adult guardians hovering over them.[36]

parents began to think like carpenters who have a clear idea in mind of what they are trying to achieve. They look carefully at the materials they have to work with, and it is their job to assemble those materials into a finished product that can be judged by everyone against clear standards: Are the right angles perfect? Does the door work? Gopnik notes that “messiness and variability are a carpenter’s enemies; precision and control are her allies. Measure twice, cut once.”[1]

a better way to think about child rearing is as a gardener. Your job is to “create a protected and nurturing space for plants to flourish.” It takes some work, but you don’t have to be a perfectionist. Weed the garden, water it, and then step back and the plants will do their thing, unpredictably and often with delightful surprises. Gopnik urges us to embrace the messiness and unpredictability of raising children:

Our job as parents is not to make a particular kind of child. Instead, our job is to provide a protected space of love, safety, and stability in which children of many unpredictable kinds can flourish. Our job is not to shape our children’s minds; it’s to let those minds explore all the possibilities that the world allows. Our job is not to tell children how to p...

Many of us have adopted an overcontrolling carpenter mentality, which prevents our children from flourishing.

Consider taking a “digital Sabbath” every week: a full day where no screen devices are used. Consider taking a screen-free week every year, perhaps on a vacation in a beautiful natural setting.

When there is ambiguity, people look to each other to see what everyone else is doing.