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

by Jonathan Haidt

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.

colleagues of the accused were afraid to publicly stand up and defend them.

diversity of political thought, has declined substantially among both professors and students at American universities since the 1990s.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Isaac Newton’s third law of motion

six interacting explanatory threads: rising political polarization and cross-party animosity; rising levels of teen anxiety and depression; changes in parenting practices; the decline of free play; the growth of campus bureaucracy; and a rising passion for justice in response to major national events, combined with changing ideas about what justice requires.

the faculty and students at universities have shifted to the left since the 1990s,

(The mainstream media overall leans left,

there was no concept of a “white” race in ancient times).

Many professors say they now teach and speak more cautiously, because one slip or one simple misunderstanding could lead to vilification and even threats from any number of sources.

at Wayne State University in Michigan, a student pulled a knife during a dispute with a group that was handing out pamphlets in favor of immigrants’ rights. He said he wanted to “kill all illegals that don’t belong in our country.”54

did my CBT exercises twice a day,

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.

CBT saved his life. In a matter of just a few months, he began to learn how to catch his own distortions.

it’s not very hard to identify catastrophizing, dichotomous thinking, labeling, and all the rest.

iGen (like iPhone), which is short for “internet generation,” because they are the first generation to grow up with the internet in their pockets. (Some people use the term Generation Z.)

1995 is the first birth year for iGen.

iPhone was introduced (in 2007)

In a chilling 2017 interview, Sean Parker, the first president of Facebook, explained those early years like this: 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. . . . It’s a social-validation feedback loop . . . exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.7

members of iGen drink less and smoke less; they are safer drivers and are waiting longer to have sex.

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.

As Twenge puts it, “18-year-olds now act like 15-year-olds used to, and 13-year-olds like 10-year-olds.

major generational change is a rapid rise in rates of anxiety and depression.11

Percent of adolescents aged 12–17 who had at least one major depressive episode in the past year.

Studies of mental illness have long shown that girls have higher rates of depression and anxiety than boys do.

one out of every five girls reported symptoms that met the criteria for having experienced a major depressive episode in the previous year.13 The rate for boys went up, too, but more slowly (from 4.5% in 2011 to 6.4% in 2016).

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

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.

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 ...

When kids use screens for two hours of their leisure time per day or less, there is no elevated risk of depression.

From 2010 to 2015, the percentage of teen boys who said they often felt left out increased from 21 to 27. For girls, the percentage jumped from 27 to 40.30

Instagram provide “filters” that girls use to enhance the selfies they pose for and edit,

One out of every seven women at U.S. universities now thinks of herself as having a psychological disorder,

beginning in 2010, the percentage of students with anxiety complaints began to increase. It reached

46% in 2013 and continued climbing to 51% in 2016.

Safetyism also inflicts collateral damage on the university’s culture of free inquiry, because it teaches students to see words as violence and to interpret ideas and speakers as safe versus dangerous, rather than merely as true versus false.

rates of mood disorders began rising so quickly in the 2010s.

and 99.8% of the time, missing children come home.

the number abducted by a stranger is a tiny fraction of 1% of children reported missing—roughly

teen suicide rate in Palo Alto, California, was more than four times the national average.44

Northern Michigan University (NMU)

seventeen of the top twenty-five universities in the world are in the United States.