Knowingo
The cover of The Anxious Generation

The Anxious Generation

Jonathan Haidt, 2024

Understand why childhood changed, how phones and overprotection intensified adolescent distress, and which coordinated family, school, technology, and policy reforms can restore healthier development.

Get the app Read on the web

8 parts, about 23 minutes to read.

Why read it

  • Argues that overprotected real childhoods and underprotected online ones together drove the sharp rise in teen anxiety and depression
  • Offers four reforms communities can adopt together: later smartphones, later social media, phone free schools and more independent play
  • Weighs survey, hospital and cross national data against rival explanations, and says openly where the causal case remains unproven

Who it is for

  • Parents deciding when to give a child a smartphone
  • Teachers and principals considering phone free schools
  • Lawmakers weighing online safety rules for minors

What the summary covers

  1. From play based childhood to phone based childhood2 min
  2. The outcome that needs explaining3 min
  3. What development requires4 min
  4. Four foundational harms3 min
  5. Different pathways for girls and boys4 min
  6. Meaning and spiritual practice2 min
  7. Coordination, not solitary willpower2 min
  8. Four reforms that become possible together3 min

Recommended by

  • Susan CainNew York Times bestselling author
    Jonathan Haidt is a modern-day prophet, disguised as a psychologist.
  • Emily OsterNew York Times bestselling author
    This is a crucial read for parents of children of elementary school age and beyond, who face the rapidly changing landscape of childhood.
  • Russell MooreEditor in chief of Christianity Today
    This book poses a challenge that will determine the shape of the rest of the century.
  • Susan CainNew York Times bestselling author
    Jonathan Haidt is a modern-day prophet, disguised as a psychologist.

About the author

  • Jonathan HaidtSocial psychologist and professor at NYU Stern School of Business
    • Born 19 October 1963 in New York City
    • BA in philosophy from Yale in 1985
    • MA 1988 and PhD 1992 in psychology
    • Assistant professor at the University of Virginia from August 1995, there until 2011
    • Moved to NYU Stern in 2011

Read it alongside

  • Pushes backHow to Save the Internet

    Haidt presents the Great Rewiring, a phone based childhood combined with declining real world independence, as the leading but unsettled explanation for the post 2010 decline in adolescent mental health; Clegg finds the evidence mixed, with population wide effects often small or inconsistent and the harm falling on a vulnerable subset.

More books like this