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

by Jonathan Haidt

Anxiety affects the mind and body in multiple ways. For many, anxiety is felt in the body as tension or tightness and as discomfort in the abdomen and chest cavity.[16] Emotionally, anxiety is experienced as dread, worry, and, after a while, exhaustion. Cognitively, it often becomes difficult to think clearly, pulling people into states of unproductive rumination and provoking cognitive distortions that are the focus of cognitive behavioral therapy

They are also accompanied by disordered thinking, including an inability to concentrate, dwelling on one’s transgressions or failings (causing feelings of guilt) and the many cognitive distortions that CBT tries to counteract. People experiencing a depressive disorder are likely to think about suicide because it feels like their current suffering will never end, and death is an end.

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

In fact, posting and commenting on social media sites is the opposite of Gray’s definition. Life on the platforms forces young people to become their own brand managers, always thinking ahead about the social consequences of each photo, video, comment, and emoji they choose.

Rather, every public action is, to some degree, strategic. It is, in Peter Gray’s phrase, “consciously pursued to achieve ends that are distinct from the activity itself.”

Even for kids who never post anything, spending time on social media sites can still be harmful because of the chronic social comparison, the unachievable beauty standards, and the enormous amount of time taken away from everything else in life. Surveys show that unstructured time with friends plummeted in the exact years that adolescents moved from basic phones to smartphones—the early 2010s. Figure 2.1 shows the percentage of U.S. ...

When a family moves to a new country, the kids who are 12 or younger will quickly become native speakers with no accent, while those who are 14 or older will probably be asked, for the rest of their lives, “Where are you from?”

Their default setting is discover mode, although they will shift into defend mode if attacked. In contrast, animals such as rabbits and deer, which evolved in the presence of constant predation, are skittish; they are quick to bolt and run. Their default setting is defend mode, and they shift into discover mode only slowly and tentatively when they perceive that the environment is unusually safe.

In humans (and other highly sociable mammals, such as dogs), the default setting is a major contributor to their individual personality. People (and dogs) who go through life in discover mode (except when directly threatened) are happier, more sociable, and more eager for new experiences. Conversely, people (and dogs) who are chronically in defend mode are more defensive and anxious, and they have only rare moments of perceived safety.

Taleb coined the word “antifragile” to describe things that actually need to get knocked over now and then in order to become strong. I used the word “things,” but there are very few inanimate objects that are antifragile. Rather, antifragility is a common property of complex systems that were designed (by evolution, and sometimes by people) to function in a world that is unpredictable.[11]

First, he noted that “chronic stress,” meaning stress that lasts for days, weeks, or even years, is much worse than “acute stress,” which refers to stress that comes on quickly but does not last long, such as an ordinary playground conflict. “Under chronic stress, it is much harder to adapt, recover, and get stronger from the challenge,” he wrote.