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

by Jonathan Haidt

When heaven is about to confer a great responsibility on any man, it will exercise his mind with suffering, subject his sinews and bones to hard work, expose his body to hunger, put him to poverty, place obstacles in the paths of his deeds, so as to stimulate his mind, harden his nature, and improve wherever he is incompetent. MENG TZU (MENCIUS), fourth century BCE

Human beings need physical and mental challenges and stressors or we deteriorate. For example, muscles and joints need stressors to develop properly.

Systems that are antifragile become rigid, weak, and inefficient when nothing

challenges them or pushes them to respond vigorously.

This is the tragedy of modernity: as with neurotically overprotective parents, those trying to help are often hurting us the most

“Prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child.”

If we protect children from various classes of potentially upsetting experiences, we make it far more likely that those children will be unable to cope with such events when they leave our protective umbrella.

Avoiding triggers is a symptom of PTSD, not a treatment for it.

A culture that allows the concept of “safety” to creep so far that it equates emotional discomfort with physical danger is a culture that encourages people to systematically protect one another from the very experiences embedded in daily life that they need in order to become strong and healthy.

What really frightens and dismays us is not external events themselves, but the way in which we think about them. It is not things that disturb us, but our interpretation of their significance. EPICTETUS, 1st–2nd century1

“Nothing is miserable unless you think it so; and on the other hand, nothing brings happiness unless you are content with it.”5

“Education should not be intended to make people comfortable; it is meant to make them think.”

This is the way to win hearts, minds, and votes: you must appeal to the elephant (intuitive and emotional processes) as well as the rider (reasoning).

old Bedouin proverb: “I against my brothers. I and my brothers against my cousins. I and my brothers and my cousins against the world.”

Teens are physically safer than ever, yet they are more mentally vulnerable.”

Applying labels to people can create what is called a looping effect: it can change the behavior of the person being labeled and become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

On social media, girls can never escape.

So many teens have lost the ability to tolerate distress and uncertainty, and a big reason for that is the way we parent them. KEVIN ASHWORTH, clinical director, NW Anxiety Institute in Portland, Oregon1

As Taleb showed us in Antifragile, by placing a protective shield over our children, we inadvertently stunt their growth and deprive them of the experiences they need to become successful and functional adults.

When children are repeatedly led to believe that the world is dangerous and that they cannot face it alone, we should not be surprised if many of them believe it.

According to the nonprofit organization Common Sense Media, teens spend on average about nine hours per day on screens, and eight- to twelve-year-olds spend about six hours; that is in addition to whatever they are doing on screens for school.