The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure

by Jonathan Haidt

Tell them it’s OK to talk to strangers and ask for help or directions, just never go off with a stranger. Remember that the crime rate is back down to where it was in the early 1960s.

Encourage your children to walk or ride bicycles to and from school at the earliest ages possible, consistent with local circumstances of distance, traffic, and crime.

Send your children to an overnight summer camp in the woods for a few weeks—without devices. “The old-fashioned generalist camps are where we see the most impact in terms of letting children develop their own interests,” Erika Christakis says, “where kids can make choices about what they do and don’t do.”

Encourage your children to engage in a lot of “productive disagreement.” As psychologist Adam Grant notes, the most creative people grew up in homes full of arguments, yet few parents today teach their children how to argue productively; instead, “we stop siblings from quarreling and we have our own arguments behind closed doors.” But learning how to give and take criticism without being hurt is an essential life skill.

Argue as if you’re right, but listen as if you’re wrong (and be willing to change your mind).

“Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own thoughts, unguarded. But once mastered, no one can help you as much, not even your father or your mother.”

Parents can get an accessible overview of CBT from reading Dr. Leahy’s book The Worry Cure. Also, Freeing Your Child From Anxiety, by Tamar Chansky,

Teach children mindfulness. According to Jon Kabat-Zinn, professor of medicine emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, “mindfulness” means “paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally.”

Give people the benefit of the doubt. Use the “principle of charity.” This is the principle in philosophy and rhetoric of making an effort to interpret other people’s statements in their best or most reasonable form, not in the worst or most offensive way possible.

Practice the virtue of “intellectual humility.” Intellectual humility is the recognition that our reasoning is so flawed, so prone to bias, that we can rarely be certain that we are right.

“What does it feel like to be wrong?” She collects answers from the audience: “dreadful,” “thumbs down,” “embarrassing.” Then she notes that her audience has actually described what it feels like the moment they realize they are wrong. Until that moment, the feeling of being wrong is indistinguishable from the feeling of being right.

Homework in the early grades should be minimal. In the early grades, it’s always good to encourage kids to read with their parents and on their own, but homework beyond that should not intrude on playtime or family time.

Give more recess with less supervision. Recess on school property generally provides an ideal and physically safe setting for free play. However, as we’ve noted, when adults are standing by to resolve disputes or stop children from taking small risks, this may breed moral dependency.

“No Rules School,”27 about a New Zealand elementary school principal who gradually removed adult supervision from recess so kids could have “risky, unmanaged play.” Kids there climb trees, make up their own games, and play with boards, scraps of wood, and junk. Kids get to calculate risks, take chances, and experience real-world consequences.

All students would benefit from learning debating techniques and participating in formal debates. In addition to the obvious benefits of learning how to make a well-supported case, debate helps students distinguish between a critique of ideas and a personal attack.

John Stuart Mill’s classic work On Liberty.35 Mill’s book is perhaps the most compelling argument ever made for why we need to interact with people who see things differently from ourselves in order to find the truth.

Place clear limits on device time. Two hours a day seems to be a reasonable maximum, as there does not appear to be evidence of negative mental health effects at this level.

Read Twenge’s book iGen (as a family, if you can) and then bring your teenager into the discussion of how to minimize the potential hazards of heavy device use.

Today’s college students are suffering from much higher rates of anxiety and depression than did the Millennials or any other generation. They are cutting and killing themselves in higher numbers. Many are embracing safetyism and are objecting to books and ideas that gave Millennials little trouble. Whatever we are doing, it is not working.

The truth is powerful, yet the process by which we arrive at truth is easily corrupted by the desires of the seekers and the social dynamics of the community.

A university devoted to the pursuit of truth must prepare its students for conflict, controversy, and argument. Many students will experience their most cherished beliefs being challenged, and they must learn that this is not harassment or a personal attack; it is part of the process by which people do each other the favor of counteracting each other’s confirmation bias.

PSYCHOLOGICAL PRINCIPLE WISDOM GREAT UNTRUTH Young people are antifragile. Prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child. What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker. We are all prone to emotional reasoning and the confirmation bias. Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own thoughts, unguarded. But once mastered, no one can help you as much, not even your father or your mother. Always trust your feelings. We are all prone to dichotomous thinking and tribalism. The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. Life is a battle between good people and evil people.

there is no simple explanation for what is happening. You have to look at six interacting trends: rising political polarization; rising rates of adolescent depression and anxiety; a shift to more fearful, protective, and intensive parenting in middle-class and wealthy families; widespread play deprivation and risk deprivation for members of iGen; an expanding campus bureaucracy taking an increasingly overprotective posture; and a rising passion for justice combined with a growing commitment to attaining “equal outcomes” in all areas.

we are heartened and persuaded by cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker’s argument, in Enlightenment Now, that in the long run most things are getting better, quickly and globally.

We cannot absolutely prove that those are in error who tell us that society has reached a turning point, that we have seen our best days. But so said all who came before us, and with just as much apparent reason. . . . On what principle is it that, when we see nothing but improvement behind us, we are to expect nothing but deterioration before us?1 Those words were written in 1830 by Thomas Babington Macaulay, a British historian and member of Parliament. Britain’s best days were certainly not behind it.

The more serious a problem gets, the more inducements there are for people, companies, and governments to find innovative solutions, whether driven by personal commitment, market forces, or political pressures.

Psychological research shows that tribalism can be countered and overcome by teamwork: by projects that join individuals in a common task on an equal footing. One such task, it turns out, can be to reduce tribalism. In other words, with conscious effort, humans can break the tribal spiral, and many are trying.

David Burns’s best-seller, Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy. Several studies have found that reading the book—yes, just reading the book—is an effective treatment for depression.

We also recommend Dr. Robert Leahy’s excellent book The Worry Cure: Seven Steps to Stop Worry from Stopping You, which is more focused on anxiety, and is updated with the latest CBT techniques.

The specific details for practicing CBT differ from book to book and therapist to therapist, but the basic process is something like this: When you are feeling anxious, depressed, or otherwise distressed, take a moment to write down what you are feeling. Write down your level of distress. (For example, you could score it on a scale of 1 to 100.) Write down what happened and what your automatic thoughts were when you felt the pang of anxiety or despair. (For example, “Someone I was interested in canceled our date. I said to myself, ‘This always happens. No one will ever want to go out with me. I’m a total loser.’”)

Look at the categories of distorted automatic thoughts below, and ask yourself: Is this thought a cognitive distortion? Write down the cognitive distortions you notice. (For example, looking at the automatic thoughts in number 3 above, you might write, “personalizing, overgeneralizing, labeling, and catastrophizing.”) Look at the evidence for and against your thought. Ask yourself what someone might say who disagreed with you. Is there any merit in that opinion? Consider again what happened, and reevaluate the situation without the cognitive distortions. Write down your new thoughts and feelings. (For example, “I am sad and disappointed that a date I was excited about got canceled.”) Write down again, using the same scale as before, how anxious, depressed, or otherwise distressed you feel. Chances are the number will be lower—perhaps a lot lower.

Categories of Distorted Automatic Thoughts MIND READING: You assume that you know what people think without having sufficient evidence of their thoughts. “He thinks I’m a loser.” FORTUNE-TELLING: You predict the future negatively: Things will get worse, or there is danger ahead. “I’ll fail that exam,” or “I won’t get the job.” CATASTROPHIZING: You believe that what has happened or will happen will be so awful and unbearable that you won’t be able to stand it. “It would be terrible if I failed.” LABELING: You assign global negative traits to yourself and others. “I’m undesirable,” or “He’s a rotten person.”

DISCOUNTING POSITIVES: You claim that the positive things you or others do are trivial. “That’s what wives are supposed to do—so it doesn’t count when she’s nice to me,” or “Those successes were easy, so they don’t matter.” NEGATIVE FILTERING: You focus almost exclusively on the negatives and seldom notice the positives. “Look at all of the people who don’t like me.” OVERGENERALIZING: You perceive a global pattern of negatives on the basis of a single incident. “This generally happens to me. I seem to fail at a lot of things.” DICHOTOMOUS THINKING: You view events or people in all-or-nothing terms. “I get rejected by everyone,” or “It was a complete waste of time.” SHOULDS: You interpret events in terms of how things should be, rather than simply focusing on what is. “I should do well. If I don’t, then I’m a failure.”

PERSONALIZING: You attribute a disproportionate amount of the blame to yourself for negative events, and you fail to see that certain events are also caused by others. “The marriage ended because I failed.” BLAMING: You focus on the other person as the source of your negative feelings, and you refuse to take responsibility for changing yourself. “She’s to blame for the way I feel now,” or “My parents caused all my problems.” UNFAIR COMPARISONS: You interpret events in terms of standards that are unrealistic—for example, you focus primarily on others who d...

REGRET ORIENTATION: You focus on the idea that you could have done better in the past, rather than on what you can do better now. “I could have had a better job if I had tried,” or “I shouldn’t have said that.” WHAT IF?: You keep asking a series of questions about “what if” something happens, and you fail to be satisfied with any of the answers. “Yeah, but what if I get anxious?” or “What if I can’t catch my breath?” EMOTIONAL REASONING: You le...

INABILITY TO DISCONFIRM: You reject any evidence or arguments that might contradict your negative thoughts. For example, when you have the thought “I’m unlovable,” you reject as irrelevant any evidence that people like you. Consequently, your thought cannot be refuted. “That’s not the real issue. There are deeper problems. There are other factors.” JUDGMENT FOCUS: You view yourself, others, and events in terms of evaluations as good–bad or superior–inferior, rather than simply describing, accepting, or understanding. You are continually measuring yourself and others according to arbitrary standards, and finding that you and others fall short. You are focused on the judgments of othe...