What I’m Reading : The Anxious Generation
The Anxious Generation, by Jonathan Haidt was recently released. I read an Instagram post in February from Jessica Seinfeld announcing pre-orders. After reading the subtitle, “How the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness”, I counted the days until March 27 when my copy arrived.
The book title spoke to the parts in me who are fierce about what input children take in. I raced through the book in order to be able to share it’s ideas with other passionate people.
Haidt observes that mental health of children has plunged since the 2010s. He spends a large portion of the book outlining the two contributing factors to what is now sadly common in anglo countries worldwide. The first is the rise of the ultra safe parenting that rose and spread in the 1980s and 1990s. Parents became so concerned about safety that they stopped letting their children play outside of their sight out of fears of rape and kidnapping. Those numbers have gone down consistently but the heightened parental concern has not. This changes the amount of free time a child is able to develop creative skills on their own and learn how to manage risk.
Couple the safety focus with the introduction of the smart phone in 2008 and then the additions of likes and retweets by 2010. Suddenly, children could carry 24/7 access to the unregulated internet. Childhood experiences from 2010 on made a dramatic shift from play-based to phone-based. Couple that with 24 hour recycled news and the world was literally at the fingertips of our children. And online, age does not matter. All you have to do is lie and say you are over 18 - there aren’t the safeguards in place to enforce that - even now. Just ask Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook is still “looking into” that.
When children base their time investing online their time becomes a commodity, they miss the experiences necessary in the physical world for healthy development. The rise in depression and anxiety has been directly connected to the amount of internet exposure and Haidt’s book is loaded with charts and data that support this message. He cites Gen Z as taking the biggest hit so far.
We learn how our children need to experience frustrations in order to become strong but they aren’t developing those skills while online.
Haidt doesn’t just sound the alarm, among the solutions he offers to realign the drift we see in today’s youth: not allowing children access to social media until age 16 when their brain has had more experience. Wait until high school for smart phones - just use basic phones/watches without the internet until then. He provides links to resources for further information.
This is a book every parent, educator and therapist should read and refer to.. It provides facts about childhood developmental needs and educates us on why we need to think twice before we hand over a smart phone or a tablet for their entertainment. It ends with hope and solutions, the best kind of ending!
