The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt (Book review)

We chose Jonathan Haidt’s latest book, The Anxious Generation shortly after its release but before its hold on the NYT best seller list, recognizing it as an important topic for the day. (We has also liked an earlier book, The Righteous Mind, Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion). The book chronicles the effect of smartphones and social media on so many of today’s young people, particularly Gen Z (born around 2000, and later).  It’s not an exaggeration to come away feeling as though the mental health pandemic affecting our young people is worse than anything we have faced as a free society.  Yes, it’s that bad.

The book was Chuck’s, so he led our discussion focused on four questions: 

• Is the problem as real as outlined in the book? Or is this hype?

• Does Haidt make his case convincingly enough that there is causation, not just correlation, between the mental health problems and smartphone and social media?

• How does the chapter on spirituality fit into the broader message of mental health?

• And finally, are we, or is the book, too late?   Can we stop, or even slow this trend?

The initial premise is that the convergence of two social trends, overprotection by parents of the real world, and under-protection of the on-line world, lay the foundation for a pandemic of mental health for an entire generation.   Beginning in the 1990s we saw the gradual erosion of play-based childhood, with greater physical risk, childhoods of discovery, emergent independence, and natural personality development.  Society broadly began to perceive physical threats to children by statistically fewer, but more highly publicized, examples of children being hurt by, or exploited by, real world adults (locally, Melissa Benoit in 1990).  The introduction of smartphones posed a different but greater danger; too many parents provided too little protection from online threats inviting anonymous predators from around the globe right into our kids’ bedrooms... and didn't see addiction and lost opportunities for developing a socially healthy life. 

Next, the book focuses on the timeline of smartphones and social media evolution, citing extensive research visually in charts and graphs as evidence of emergent stress and other unhealthy metrics, across racial, age based, and socioeconomic lines. Acceleration of the trend began with smart phones’ access to the Internet, grew with the selfie camera, and then rose again with 'Like' and 'Share' buttons within social apps.  Revenue growth from advertising demanded greater time and attention from users, so machine learning developed ever better algorithms to exploit social and psychological vulnerabilities in humans.  Companies cracked the human code, particularly in developing adolescents, and monetized its destruction.  The fast moving development became an arms race, powered by ever improving algorithms.  How can kids compete between the stressors of developing relationships like asking for a date compete with the funniest or most shocking video to appear in the last hour? FOMO is constant, relentless.

To the first question, is this problem as real as outlined, our group had no shortage of anecdotes about how disconnected Gen Z kids are to life as we know it. Most troubling were the adjectives describing Gen Z in the workplace: lazy, self-absorbed, fragile, clueless, stupid. ‘They’re just not worth the trouble to guide and mentor’, was the most chilling comment in that discussion.  Each generation has posed challenges to employers, but this seems bigger. Early reports are that too many from Gen Z appear unable to compete for meaningful or scalable work.  If so many can’t learn how to communicate, to accept criticism, to adapt, become productive, how’s that going to work for them, and the rest of us, long term?

On the topic of correlation versus causation, the central theme that the decline of unsupervised play crippled social development is well developed in the text, with  defensible references and credible methodology.  Haidt goes beyond the Anglo world, finding similar results in Scandanavia and elsewhere. In economic terms, it's the opportunity costs of lost experiences, the lost engagement while scrolling through images or videos; the missed experiences cannot be overstated.

The first chapter of the book, entitled The Surge of Suffering, describes something most of us already knew.  In 2021 the CDC reported that 57% of teenage girls feel persistently sad or depressed. This made headlines at the time, but it has taken this book to make a case for the causes and proposed action.  To its credit, the book offers solutions; more on those shortly.

CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2023/p0213-yrbs.html

Most public criticism we've heard has been anecdotal and opinion based, and light on research.   We agreed that the book effectively connected features of smartphones and the addiction of social media to the four foundational harms, each contributing to mental health challenges: 

• Social deprivation, 

• Sleep deprivation, 

• Attention fragmentation, and 

• Addiction. 

Social fragmentation has hit girls particularly hard; the trend of quantity over quality of relationships is clear from social media focus on likes and shares.  Subject to different effects from gaming and porn, boys are increasingly lonely or feel their lives carry on without purpose.  Anecdotally, a friend who lives in a neighborhood with lots of kids noticed that many kids simply do not know how to throw and catch a ball.  Nor create their own rules from play.  This lack of real world experiences, including social development within a play-based childhood into puberty leaves these young people with two few experiential points of reference to advance in the world.  Finally, attention fragmentation prevents many from completing projects in school or in work as outlined above in our collective experiences with the ‘Gen Z workers.

When Chuck was a trustee at his college in the early teens, he recalled a Dean expressing concern for a surge in mental health needs by students. At the time, he and others on the board thought this was simply overhyped requests for additional resources; but in retrospect the dean’s description of the lack of coping skills and Inability to navigate interpersonal relationships is chilling.  People close to the generation were noticing these trendlines a decade ago! This book seems to have hit a nerve with schools (Brockton High, for example) finally banning smartphones in school.

To the final topical question, “Is it too late?“ our opinions were varied.  Bill suggested that we have already lost a generation: between the broadly evident addiction, Covid school closings’ gut punch to education, and all the anecdotal evidence of failure in the workplace, "Gen Z is a write off".  Then the question became, can we save the next group? I proposed that we can save a small percentage, but only those where communities can establish counterbalanced collective action. Collective action seems to be the only effective antidote to the powerful social draw of smartphones and social media on pre-pubescent kids.  It will take parents, school leaders, and legislators working together. Some will succeed. Many (most?) won't. If such collective efforts for alternative social support save just a few children, they will be worth the effort.

Our group’s repeated focus on AI has always looked toward future disruptions.  I argued that the demonstrated ability of AI to exploit human psychological vulnerabilities is no longer in our future, but rather, now, right out of the recent past; and its grip is growing.  If today’s newest parents believe that their premier responsibility is to nurture and support children into becoming functioning adults, then the call to action should be clear. It’s going to take parents, educators, working together, to save some.

Haidt suggests, and we mostly concurred, that we cannot rely on government to provide this support.  Vague and capriciously enforced rules on 'child neglect' intimidated parents who would otherwise permit their kids to develop independence and agency in the real world: walking or biking to school; using public transportation, doing chores, or playing without supervision.  Today the law permits children at age 13 to enter into contracts with social media companies; but they never enforce even these remarkably inadequate age limits.  Just click "I'm 18". Thus, while better legislation would be great, don’t count on it. 

Haidt proposes the following boundaries: 

• No smart phones before high school; 

• No social media before age 16;

• Phone-free schools; 

• More unsupervised, play, and childhood independence. 

Each community must create its own sub community where these rules such as those above are enforced within that set, providing counterbalanced collective action. Parents can't do it alone without social ostracizing in school. Every parent who takes action helps other parents and their children succeed.  The transformation from a play-based into a phone based childhood has been inhuman.  We should do better.

We didn’t spend as much time on the chapter “Spiritual Elevation and Degradation“ but spirituality can be an important counterbalance.  Haidt was the author of “The Happiness Hypothesis” including a chapter entitled “Divinity with or without God“.  As a person of faith, I found it fascinating that Haidt so elegantly expressed the sense of wonder, purpose, and gratitude that sustains me personally.   Imagine my surprise to read that he is an atheist!  We had a laugh about that. Atheism aside, his case for how spirituality enhances mental well-being was solid.   Spirituality is another casualty of the opportunity cost of spending so much time looking at screens, rather than contemplating the Divine or even a 'divinity without God'.  

Our conversations often deviate from the book into larger issues, and a few tidbits include the concept of technology as a tool of war.  Tik Tok in China is a very different product than what operates here, where it is manifestly a surveillance tool powered by addiction.   Conversely, Europeans have addressed American innovation with fines and regulations.  The fines are mere speed bumps in the general direction, and countervailing innovation seems unlikely.

Today Norwell Middle School allows smartphones in classrooms.  Meanwhile every school in our region is asking for tax overrides to fix the disaster of virtual schooling during Covid.  Meanwhile, Votech (trade school) is doubling its physical footprint while already turning away 40% of its applicants. The educational landscape is changing. Maybe more recess, less screen time, and limits on social media platforms would be a good place for all education to reset at.   

Additional Resources: 

Anxious Generation site: https://www.anxiousgeneration.com/

Resource Guide: https://www.anxiousgeneration.com/resources

Chapter supplements: https://www.anxiousgeneration.com/research/supplements-for-each-chapter

Action for parents: https://www.anxiousgeneration.com/take-action