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

by Jonathan Haidt

Politically homogeneous communities are more susceptible to witch hunts, particularly when they feel threatened from outside.

“dialectic, which does mean I listen to you and you listen to me.”

“If you offer any kind of alternative viewpoint, you’re ‘the enemy.’”

Humans are tribal creatures who readily form groups to compete with other groups (as we saw in chapter 3). Sociologist Emile Durkheim’s work illuminates the way those groups engage in rituals—including the collective punishment of deviance—to enhance their cohesion and solidarity. Cohesive and morally homogeneous groups are prone to witch hunts, particularly when they experience a threat, whether from outside or from within. Witch hunts generally have four properties: they seem to come out of nowhere; they involve charges of crimes against the collective; the offenses that lead to those charges are often trivial or fabricated; and people who know that the accused is innocent keep quiet, or in extreme cases, they join the mob. Some of the most puzzling campus events and trends since 2015 match the profile of a witch hunt. The campus protests at

Yale, Claremont McKenna, and Evergreen all began as reactions to politely worded emails, and all led to demands that the authors of the emails be fired. (We repeat that the concerns that provide the context for a witch hunt may be valid, but in a witch hunt, the attendant fears are channeled in unjust and destructive ways.) The new trend in 2017 for professors to join open letters denouncing their colleagues and demanding the retraction or condemnation of their work (as happened to Rebecca Tuvel, Amy Wax, and others) also fits this pattern. In all of these cases, colleagues of the accused were afraid to publicly stand up and defend them. Viewpoint diversity reduces a community’s susceptibility to witch hunts. One of the most important kinds of viewpoint diversity, diversity of political thought, has declined substantially among both professors and students at American universities since the 1990s. These declines, combined with the rapidly escalating political polarization of the United States (which is our focus in the next chapter), may be part of the reason why the new culture of safetyism has spread so rapidly since its emergence around 2013.

people primarily acting from good or noble motivations. In most cases, the motive is to help or protect children or people seen as vulnerable or victimized. But as we all know, the road to hell can be paved with good intentions. Our goal in Part III is not to blame; it is to understand.

the loss of a common enemy after the collapse of the Soviet Union can be expected to lead to more intratribal conflict.

In other words, Americans are now motivated to leave their couches to take part in political action not by love for their party’s candidate but by hatred of the other party’s candidate.

The United States has experienced a steady increase in at least one form of polarization since the 1980s: affective (or emotional) polarization, which means that people who identify with either of the two main political parties increasingly hate and fear the other party and the people in it. This is our first of six explanatory threads that will help us understand what has been changing on campus. Affective polarization in the United States is roughly symmetrical, but as university students and faculty have shifted leftward during a time of rising cross-party hatred, universities have begun to receive less trust and more hostility from some conservatives and right-leaning organizations.56 Beginning in 2016, the number of high-profile cases of professors being hounded or harassed from the right for something they said in an interview or on social media began to increase. Rising political polarization, accompanied by increases in racial and political

provocation from the right, usually directed from off-campus to on-campus targets, is an essential part of the story of why behavior is changing on campus, particularly since 2016.

These mood disorders have many close relationships with the three Great Untruths.

There was no “eureka” moment. My rational mind could understand that my thoughts were distorted, but nothing changed until it simply became a habit to hear the cruelest, craziest, and most destructive voices in my head without believing I had to act on them. When I stopped letting those voices win, they got quieter. Thanks to CBT, my mind is now in the habit of hearing my worst thoughts as if they are speaking in silly cartoon voices. While I still get depressed, the frequency and severity of those bouts are nowhere near as powerful as they used to be.

Colleges were struggling to cope with rapidly rising numbers of students who were suffering from mental illness—primarily mood disorders.3

The new culture of safetyism can be understood in part as an effort by some students, faculty, and administrators to remake the campus in response to this new trend. If more students say they feel threatened by certain kinds of speech, then more protections should be offered.

college students are antifragile, not fragile. Some well-intended protections may backfire and make things worse in the long run for th...

She calls the generation after the Millennials iGen (like iPhone), which is short for “internet generation,” because they are the first generation to grow up with the internet in their pockets.

but search engines don’t change social relationships. Social media does.

Twenge suggests that 1994 is the last birth year for Millennials, and 1995 is the first birth year for iGen.

Social media platforms proliferated, and adolescents began using Twitter (founded in 2006), Tumblr (2007), Instagram (2010), Snapchat (2011), and a variety of others. Over time, these companies became ever more skilled at grabbing and holding “eyeballs,” as they say in the industry. Social media grew more and more addictive.

The thought process that went into building these applications, Facebook being the first of them . . . was all about: “How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?” . . . And that means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever. And that’s going to get you to contribute more content, and that’s going to get you . . . more likes and comments. . . .

In short, iGen is the first generation that spent (and is now spending) its formative teen years immersed in the giant social and commercial experiment of social media. What could go wrong?

Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy—and Completely Unprepared for

Adulthood—and What That Means for the Rest of Us.

there are two major generational changes that may be driving the rise of safetyism on campus since 2013. The first is that kids now grow up much more slowly. Activities that are commonly thought to mark the transition from childhood to adulthood are happening later—for example, having a job, driving a car, drinking alcohol, going out on a date, and having sex. Members of iGen wait longer to do these things— and then do less of them—than did members of previous generations. Instead of engaging in these activities (which usually involve interacting with other people face-to-face), teens today are spending much more time alone, interacting with screens.8 Of special importance, the combination of helicopter parenting, f...

Members of iGen, therefore, may not (on average) be as ready for college as were eighteen-year-olds of previous generations. This might explain why college students are suddenly asking for more protection and adult intervention in their affairs and interpersonal conflicts.

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.

This is part of why labeling is such a powerful cognitive distortion.

Suicide and attempted suicide rates vary by sex; girls make more attempts, but boys die more often by their own hand, because they tend to use irreversible methods (such as guns or tall buildings) more often than girls do.

What is driving this surge in mental illness and suicide? Twenge believes that the rapid spread of smartphones and social media into the lives of teenagers, beginning around

2007, is the main cause of the mental health crisis that began around 2011.

Twenge finds that there are just two activities that are significantly correlated with depression and other suicide-related outcomes (such as considering suicide, making a plan, or making an actual attempt): electronic device use (such as a smartphone, tablet, or computer) and watching TV.

On the other hand, there are five activities that have inverse relationships with depression (meaning that kids who spend more hours per week on these activities show lower rates of depression): sports and other forms of exercise, attending religious services, reading books and other print media, in-person social interactions, and doing homework.

When kids use screens for two hours of their leisure time per day or less, there is no elevated risk of depression.21 But above two hours per day, the risks grow larger with each additional hour of screen time. Conversely, kids who spend more time off screens, especially if they are engaged in nonscreen social activities, are at lower risk for depression and suicidal thinking.

Part of what’s going on may be that devices take us away from people. Human

beings are an “ultrasocial” species.

boys are more physically aggressive—more likely to shove and hit one another, and they show a greater interest in stories and movies about physical aggression. Girls, in contrast, are more “relationally” aggressive; they try to hurt their rivals’ relationships, reputations, and social status—for example, by using social media to make sure other girls know who is intentionally being left out.

We should all take reasonable precautions to protect our children’s physical safety—for example, by owning a fire extinguisher—but we should not submit to the pull of safetyism (overestimating danger, fetishizing safety, and not accepting any risk), which deprives kids of some of the most valuable experiences in childhood.

The shift to this more fearful and overprotective way of treating children, which began in the 1980s and reached high levels in the 1990s—especially among more educated parents—is our third explanatory thread.

Both scholars find that, with respect to parenting practices, social class matters far more than race,

The first kind of family is very common in the upper third of the socioeconomic spectrum, in which marriage rates are high and divorce rates are low. These families generally employ a parenting style that Lareau calls “concerted cultivation.” Parents using this style see their task as cultivating their children’s talents while stimulating the development of their cognitive and social skills. They fill their children’s calendars with adult-guided activities, lessons, and experiences, and they closely monitor what happens in school. They talk with their children a great deal, using reasoning and persuasion, and they hardly ever use physical force or physical punishment. The second kind of family is very common in the bottom third of the socioeconomic spectrum, where most children are born to unmarried mothers.

These families generally employ a parenting style that Lareau calls “natural growth parenting.”

tend to believe that children will reach maturity without needing much guidance or ...

Spock encouraged parents to relax and let children be children, and indeed, Baby Boomers and GenX children were generally given the freedom to roam around their neighborhoods and play without adult supervision.

Severe adversity that hits kids early, especially in the absence of secure and loving attachment relationships with adults, does not make them stronger; it makes them weaker.

The lesson we draw from this brief review of research on social class and parenting is that although kids are naturally antifragile, there are two very different ways to damage their development. One is to neglect and underprotect them, exposing them early to severe and chronic adversity. This has happened to some of today’s college students, particularly those from working-class or poor families. The other is to overmonitor and overprotect them, denying them the thousands of small challenges, risks, and adversities that they need to face on their own in order to become strong and resilient adults.

They may be more likely to interpret words, books, and ideas in terms of safety versus danger, or good versus evil, rather than using dimensions that would promote learning, such as true versus false, or fascinating versus uninteresting.

When we overprotect children, we harm them. Children are naturally antifragile, so overprotection makes them weaker and less resilient later on.

In species that are predators, such as wolves, their pups seem to prefer to be the chasers. In species that are prey, such as rats, the pups prefer to be chased.

Experience is so essential for wiring a large brain that the “first draft” of the brain includes a strong motivation to practice behaviors that will give the brain the right kind of feedback to optimize itself for success in the environment that happens to surround it. That’s why young mammals are so keen to play, despite the risks.

The genes get the ball rolling on the first draft of the brain, but the brain is “expecting” the child to engage in thousands of hours of play—including thousands of falls, scrapes, conflicts, insults, alliances, betrayals, status competitions, and acts of exclusion—in order to develop. Children who are deprived of play are less likely to develop into physically and socially competent teens and adults.7