Review of: J. Haidt (2024). The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, Penguin Press, 400 pp.
I have read the book on two occasions: first when it was first published, and most recently in the last two weeks. It is a disturbing, thought-provoking, controversial and misleading book.
The book is (and continues to be) a bestseller. It has received a great deal of media attention, and it has been translated into many languages. It examines the rise in mental health issues among the generation born after 1995. Haidt’s central thesis is what he calls ‘the great rewiring of childhood’ that fundamentally changed the experiences of young people and that led to an epidemic rise of anxiety, depression, and other mental health problems. His basic premise is twofold: first, that the introduction of smartphones and the subsequent widespread use of social media has transformed a ‘play-based’ childhood into a ‘phone-based’ one, leading to social and sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation, and addiction, and, second, that ‘parental overprotection’ in the real world is matched with ‘parental underproduction’ in the virtual world, leading to youths being confronted with the negatives of social media, like porn, cyber bullying, dangerous challenges as well as ideal types that can never be met. Haidt contends that all of this led to a collective ‘rewiring’ of the young mind, resulting in increased rates of anxiety, depression, self-harm, and (thoughts of) suicide.
Haidt’s critique focuses on social media platforms, or social networking sites, which he argues are characterized by one-to-many and many-to-one communication. This communication predominantly focuses on the ‘best sides’ (or idealized sides) of user lives to groups of unknown others. Haidt expresses particular concern regarding the use of such platforms by young people (defined as individuals under the age of 18) and asserts that the purported benefits of social media, such as enhanced information management and reputation building, are of negligible relevance to this demographic. Instead, he contends that younger users, particularly those between the ages of 10 and 14, primarily employ social media for the purpose of entertainment. The fact that their brains (particularly the regions involved in regulating behaviour) are not yet fully developed means that this aspect of social media platforms has the potential to become addictive, due to the difficulty of discontinuing usage. Haidt posits that contemporary social media platforms are problematic due to several factors, including the prevalence of endless scrolling, push notifications, the emphasis on enticing video content, and personalization. In my opinion, notwithstanding the tendency to reach premature conclusions given the data and analysis presented, Haidt’s thesis does possess a degree of credibility. Social media is a far more compelling and engaging form of entertainment than reading books or watching television. It is a well-documented fact that young people never dedicated 30-35 hours per week to reading or watching television.
