The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness Hardcover – March 26, 2024

As a Xennial born in 1981, I grew up in a world that felt almost entirely disconnected from the digital age we now know. My childhood wasn’t defined by screens; the internet didn’t exist in the way it does today, and smartphones were years away from becoming a part of our everyday lives. Fast forward to today, and I find myself not only navigating the challenges of adult life with a smartphone in hand, but also parenting a child who is already becoming immersed in the digital world. This is the tension at the heart of The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness—and it’s one that Jonathan Haidt explores in this startling and thought-provoking book.Haidt offers a hard-hitting analysis of how the dramatic shift in childhood experiences, fueled by screen time and digital immersion, is causing a mental health crisis. He doesn’t just argue that we’ve lost control over how children engage with technology, but he emphasizes the profound and often damaging effects this digital transformation has on developing minds. As a parent, I found myself both haunted and enlightened by the stories of how kids today are growing up under constant digital influence.For me, it’s not just about my own relationship with technology (though, let’s face it, the constant pull of my phone is hard to ignore). It’s about my child. My son may be too young for a smartphone, but already, at just six years old, I’m seeing how YouTube videos—the kind that glorify luxury toys, lavish lifestyles, and endless, rule-free play—are shaping his world. The influencers he watches lead a life that seems far removed from anything he could imagine, and it’s almost impossible for me not to wonder how this affects his ability to focus, to find joy in simple, non-digital experiences.The concept of "the great rewiring of childhood" struck me most profoundly. The book paints a stark picture of how today's kids are growing up in a constant feedback loop of dopamine hits, designed to grab their attention and keep them hooked. It's not just that our kids are distracted, it’s that they are actively being conditioned to expect instant gratification, to struggle with deep focus, and to navigate the world through fragmented, bite-sized content. It’s no surprise that anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues are on the rise.But here’s the irony: I read The Anxious Generation on a digital device. I didn’t pick up a hardcover. Instead, I used an e-reader, the very kind of tool Haidt warns about in his book. It was impossible for me to escape the irony of digesting a book about the dangers of digital immersion while using the very technology it critiques. This only amplified the book's message, making me reflect more deeply on how even as I try to understand the problem, I am still caught in the web of digital influence. It’s a reminder of how hard it is to break free, even when you’re aware of the issue.The Anxious Generation isn’t just for parents. It's for anyone who uses technology—basically, all of us. Haidt pulls no punches in showing how we’re all complicit in allowing the internet to rewire us, how we’re all susceptible to the addictive qualities of endless scrolling and the demands of a digital world that never turns off. As much as I recognize the benefits of connectivity, I also feel the weight of how deeply this addiction is eroding not just our children’s mental health, but our own sense of well-being.This book challenges us to take action—not just for the sake of the next generation, but for ourselves. We are handing over our time, our focus, and our mental health to the internet in ways that we’re only just beginning to understand. If we don’t acknowledge this problem, if we don’t make conscious decisions about how we interact with technology, we risk losing something much deeper than just time. We risk losing our humanity.The Anxious Generation is a wake-up call. It’s not a doomsday prophecy, but it is a call to action. We need to understand how we got here, what’s at stake, and what we can do to reclaim our lives—and the lives of our children—before it’s too late.

While Jonathan Heidt writes of Zoomers, the enticement of social media affects us all. Reading an article by Amelia Butler-Gallie in The Spectator on the 100th anniversary of the publication of The Great Gatsby, I was reminded of this. The green light at the end of Daisy’s dock symbolized Gatsby’s hopes and dreams – the unattainable. We see that same lure in today’s social media. Ms. Butler-Gallie wrote: “…the digital glow of our smartphones, beckoning us toward the ever-elusive ideal that, if we only keep scrolling, we will find what we were always searching for.”Social media is not going away nor will its powers of seduction; so it becomes incumbent on each of us to make it our servant, not our master. For young and old, I believe you will find this book important.Sydney M. WilliamsThe Anxious Generation, Jonathan HaidtMarch 22, 2025“There is no one right way to be a parent;there is no blueprint for building a perfect child.”The Anxious Generation, Jonathan HaidtProfessor Haidt’s book speaks to Generation Z (Zoomers), those born between 1997 and 2012, a grouping that includes our ten grandchildren. For a grandparent of Zoomers, Haidt’s findings are sobering; for a parent they must be alarming. Since 2010, depression among boys and girls is up 161% and 145% respectively. Mental illness among college students has surged, has have emergency room visits for self-inflicted harm and suicide rates for younger adolescents.Since the onset of the Industrial Revolution, children have grown up in worlds foreign to their parents. They have access to goods and services unknown to their parents at the same age. My parents grew up with the telephone, automobiles and planes, all unknown to their parents at the same age. My generation grew up with the radio, television, talking movies and parkways. Our children grew up with space exploration, hand-held calculators, cassettes, and cordless electric games. However, the technologies available to generation Z are more dramatic. They have come of age with violent video games and “smart” phones. The iPhone was introduced in 2007, the App store in 2008 and, most concerning to Professor Haidt because of its consequences for young girls, the iPhone 4 with its front-facing camera. Facebook was launched in 2004, YouTube in 2005, WhatsApp in 2009, Instagram in 2010, and TikTok in 2014.As a father of two children of the “anxious generation,” Professor Haidt seeks answers, knowing that, as he writes in the epigraph, no one has all the answers. He writes easily and well, and supports his arguments with graphs, tables and figures, and concludes: “…we have vastly and needlessly overprotected our children in the real world. At the same time, we have underprotected our children in the virtual world…”It is the virtual world that has overtaken the real world, in terms of time consumed: For preteens, it is close to 40 hours per week – an adult’s average work week. “For teens aged 13 to 18, it’s closer to 50 hours per week.” He does not see the internet as harmful. “We need,” he writes, “to develop a more nuanced mental map of the digital landscape…I’m not saying that 11-year-olds should be kept off the internet. I’m saying that the Great Rewiring of Childhood, in which phone-based childhood replaced play-based childhood, is the major cause of the international epidemic of adolescent mental illness.”Professor Haidt concludes his book with suggestions for parents: less screen time – turn off phones during meal time and remove them from bedrooms an hour or so before bedtime – and provide more play time. He admits that he and his wife used the TV show Teletubbies to “mesmerize and calm our children from infancy through the toddler years.” He adds, however: “But if we had to do it over again, we’d do less of it.” He believes schools should increase recess times with lighter supervision, and parents should not micromanage their children; they should encourage sleepovers and after school free play.His statistics are alarming, but there is wisdom in his recommendations. The primary purpose of parenting is to raise a child to become a productive and happy adult. This book helps illuminate that passage, a passage that should be joyous, but one that has become difficult to navigate.