BookLife Review: The Anxious Generation: (Jonathan Haidt, author) by Carol O’Day
Non-fiction, technology, smartphones, mental health and mental illness, parenting, preteens and teens, child brain development, anxiety and depression, differential impact on girls and boys
BookLife Review: The Anxious Generation: (Jonathan Haidt, author)
by Carol O’Day
The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Creating an Epidemic of Mental Illness, by Jonathan Haidt, should be compulsory reading for every parent, parent-to-be, and grandparent. Full stop. Moreover, every adult who interacts regularly with children and especially preteens, including teachers, coaches, mentors, ministers, and physicians and health care providers, should acquaint themselves with the research, principles and policies in this book.
Haidt, a social scientist, makes an irrefutably compelling case that childhood was fundamentally changed by the advent of smartphones and the design and rise of social media and gaming. Haidt relies upon and cites countless studies, across multiple countries, documenting impacts of phone and internet use on mental health and mental illness, including monumental increases in anxiety, depression and suicide. Specifically, Haidt describes the toxic confluence of two major shifts in the experiences of children and the attention of parents. In the 1990s and early 2000’s parents grew increasingly overprotective of children’s safety and experience in the real world and simultaneously grew dangerously under-vigilant of their children’s experiences in the virtual world. During the period from 2010 to 2014, Haidt explains, for Generation Z children, born between 1996 and 2010, childhood was essentially rewired--childhood shifted from primarily play-based to primarily phone-based.
There were unique factors which caused this societal shift, namely the invention of the smartphone in 2007 and and more specifically the invention of the front-facing camera in 2010. Prior to 2007, teenagers had cell phones, but they were the flip phone variety that lacked cameras and were cumbersome, requiring several taps on a number key to create a single letter. Soon after 2010, with the rise of Instagram, Snapchat and other social media, the minds of pre-teens and teens were thoroughly captured and captivated by smartphones and social media. According to studies, preteen girls suffer the greatest harm. Young girls are particularly susceptible to these harms due to their susceptibility to visual social media, communication based applications, perfectionism, fear of ostracism and the fragility of their developing self-esteem. Boys experience their own vulnerabilities, usually at slightly older ages of 14-15, with later onset of puberty, their focus on agency, individuation, personal achievement, and self (as distinct from girls’ impulse toward community). The rewiring of boys’ play-based and risk-taking childhoods and early teens years is more significantly impacted by smartphones’ access to pornography and video gaming.
Haidt identifies specific psychological, physical and emotional harms generated by the ubiquitous and unregulated use of cell phones before age 14 which interfere with development of key skills necessary for successful transition to adulthood. First, phone-based childhood deprives children of essential interpersonal social interaction necessary for brain and social skill development. Second, it causes sleep deprivation, interfering with learning, focus and socialization. Third, it causes fragmentation of attention and ability to sustain focus. Finally, it can lead to addictive dependence.
If you are of the mind that “it is too late” or “that ship has already sailed,” think again. Haidt’s thesis is extremely compelling. As a society, we largely embraced cell phone ownership and use by children or at least pre-teens wholesale without first demanding studies or proof of the impact of this technology on child development. Haidt notes that while 90% of a child’s brain is developed by age 5, significant cultural and social-emotional learning continues from age 5 until the completion of adolescent brain pruning in the early 20s. Moreover, the vulnerability of a child’s brain and social-emotional well-being is particularly precarious in the pre-teen, puberty onset and puberty years. It is precisely during this period of years that play-based childhood and socialization–time spent with friends in free and unregulated play, preferably outdoors, and appropriate risk-taking-should be focal. Instead, we find our young people hunched over phones, scrolling for likes and comments all day long, and well past bedtime. This preoccupation robs them of hours of critical time when their brains would otherwise be developing differently by interacting with friends, family and parents.
The solutions are not simple. They require collective action. Specifically, Haidt concludes (and explains the basis for each pillar in detail):
No smartphones before high school, allowing only basic phones with limited apps (no social media) and no internet access before 9th grade or age 14.
No social media before age 16, allowing them to pass through the most vulnerable period of brain development without a “firehouse of social comparison and algorithmically chosen influencers” flooding their brains.
Phone-free schools, storing phones during school hours in lockers or locked pouches, freeing their attention for each other and their teachers. (Los Angeles Unified School District and several others have launched phone-free schools).
Introduce far more unsupervised play and childhood independence, critical for development of social skills, tools to overcome anxiety, and to encourage self-government and self-regulation.
The pushback is and will be substantial. It will require parents (and other adults) to modify their own phone-based activity to model healthy behavior for their children. The health, well-being and successful transition to adulthood depends on society recognizing the missteps it has made to date with respect to children and screens, and collectively acting in the best interests of children, the future generations.
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