Notes on "The Anxious Generation"

I recently read "The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness" by Jonathan Haidt. Check if your local library has a copy or get your own: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-anxious-generation-how-the-great-rewiring-of-childhood-is-causing-an-epidemic-of-mental-illness-jonathan-haidt/20144236?ean=9780593655030

Main Ideas:

Jonathan Haidt’s main thesis is that access to screens and social media at young ages has harmed the collective mental health of generation Z and those following. Throughout the book, he contrasts the new “phone based childhood” with the formerly “play based childhood.” The switch from one to the other he dubs, “The Great Rewiring.” He diagnoses two collective mistakes in child rearing made since the 90s - over protection of children in the real world and under protection in the virtual one.?

It is important to note that some folks better at statistics than myself criticize his drawing of casual links with the classic warning that correlation does not equal causation. See one such review from Nature here: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00902-2. Nevertheless, below summarizes the key problems and Haidt’s suggested solutions.

Haidt lists four foundational harms:

1. Social Deprivation
2. Sleep Deprivation
3. Attention Fragmentation
4. Addiction

Some might argue against number one, especially given a lot of what children spend their online time on is “social media” but Haidt writes, “Teens are certainly right when they say that social media gives them a connection with their friends , but as we’ve seen in their reports of increasing loneliness and isolation, that connection does not seem to be as good as what it replaced” and “The Great Rewiring devastated the social lives of Gen Z by connecting them to everyone in the world and disconnecting them from the people around them.”

As for sleep deprivation, I know I have found myself intending to briefly check my socials before heading to sleep only to realize, what feels like minutes later, that closer to an hour has passed. The danger here lies in how necessary sleep is for development. Many sleep scientists have warned that sleep is not a bank and you cannot make up for missed rest. Missing sleep can lead to, “depression, anxiety, irritability, cognitive deficits, poor learning, and lower grades.”

Attention fragmentation is related to the distraction brought on by the notifications and all of the dopamine potential just waiting for us on the device. The constant distraction from notifications makes finding and maintaining focus next to impossible. Again, as an adult - I have felt the same pull from Outlook to Teams to Gmail and then back to what I was initially working on. At the end of such periods I have rarely accomplished much but I feel depleted all the same. Haidt explains, “People can’t really multitask; all we can do is shift attention back and forth between tasks while wasting a lot of it on each shift.” Others like Cal Newport in his recent book Slow Productivity, also write about the metabolic cost of task switching - your brain literally burns more energy in the form of calories when it jumps from thought to thought. To scale how distracting smartphones can be: “Many adolescents get hundreds of notifications per day , meaning that they rarely have five or 10 minutes to think without an interruption.”?

Last, the addiction piece relates back to the previously mentioned dopamine potential. Many apps are designed intentionally to get, and to keep, users’ attention for as long as possible. Attention (and user data) is the commodity that these apps are selling. Haidt further explains, “When platforms offer access to information or services for free, it’s usually because the users are the product. Their attention is a precious substance that companies extract and sell to their paying customers — the advertisers. The companies are competing against each other for users’ attention, and, like gambling casinos, they’ll do anything to hold on to their users even if they harm them in the process.”

Proposed Solutions:

1. Less supervision in play - encourage children to take enough risk to learn how to navigate the world. This level of risk is naturally achieved by a play based childhood.?
2. Until children are at least 14, do not give them smartphones. Phones that perform calling and texting are fine, but internet and app accessibility should be withheld.?
3. No social media accounts until the age of 16. Rather than the current legal age of 13, Haidt suggests 16 as a more appropriate age for which adolescents are allowed to enter into contracts with companies - which is exactly what they do when they sign up for social media accounts.
4. Removing phones from schools, or “phone-free schools” for a space where adolescents can connect with one another in person and focus on studies without the incessant distraction of phones. He suggests using phone lockers or pouches where students place their phones in the morning and retrieve them at the end of the day.?

My thoughts:

The case Haidt lays out is one that is easy to believe. After all, I have seen some of the described effects in myself. While I don’t yet have children, the recommendations he made in the book will certainly be something I refer back to when that time comes.?

Aside from the core message of the book, what struck me the most is the overlap with sustainability. At first glance the book has nothing to do with sustainability, however there is overlap between the solutions Haidt recommends and solutions I have seen recommended as sustainable. Even in describing the problem, Haidt draws a parallel with nature, using the example of trees in the University of Arizona’s biosphere experiment to mirror the needs of developing children. During the experiment, researchers were able to grow the trees up to a certain height before they would fall over. Studying this phenomena researchers discovered that young tree cells are normally exposed to wind. That exposure moves the cells which eventually stiffen to become a critical part of the tree’s resilience and strength. For children, Haidt wrote, “Like young trees exposed to wind, children who are routinely exposed to small risks grow up to become adults who can handle much larger risks without panicking. Conversely, children who are raised in a protected greenhouse sometimes become incapacitated by anxiety before they reach maturity.”

In both cases, more time outdoors and connection to nature was paramount. We evolved in and with nature so, while technology has no doubt made improvements in comfort and entertainment, the negative effects can often be mitigated by looking to the natural world. With Haidt’s problem of the great rewiring, a play based childhood in the natural world is a necessary counterpart to time with smartphones and other screens. In the built environment, studies have shown increased productivity and occupant satisfaction when buildings offer natural lighting, access to views, and other biophilic features.?

More walkable cities are another perfect example where the same solution solved two problems. There are the problems Haidt describes and the problems sustainability professionals face. In the world of sustainable design, more walkable cities solve, “how to decrease air pollution?,” since people can use their feet, bikes, and other multi-modal transit instead of having only one option, a car. More walkable cities means less congestion. Fewer idling cars stuck in traffic means lower NOx and SOx. Fewer cars means less space is needed for parking, freeing up space for other things like restaurant parklets or urban tree cover.? Haidt’s problem of giving children more independence and time away from screens is impeded by cities that are not walkable. He explains, “A world designed for automobiles is often not one that children find accessible. Cities and towns can do more to be sure that they have good sidewalks, crosswalks, and traffic lights. They can install traffic calming measures, and they can change their zoning to allow more mixed - use development.” If adolescents under driving age are unable to navigate their environments, they are more likely to stay home, and while home, to stay on their devices.

Another commonality is the difficulty of executing solutions. When it comes to problems of scale, it can feel impossible to overcome them - and for good reason - no one person is capable of halting global warming any more than one child without a phone can stop the feedback loops of less social interaction with their peers. Much more likely is the case where the one child without a phone is the odd man out. Haidt describes the problems in the book as “collective action problems” and further writes, “each of us, acting alone, perceives that it’s too difficult or costly to do the right thing. But if we can act together, the costs go way down.” Heartening.?

I love the evidence that sustainable solutions positively impact many problems. All the more reason to go green! I will end with one of my favorite quotes from the environmental activist ShelBizLeee, “You cannot do all the good the world needs, but the world needs all the good that you can do.”

Questions for Contemplation:

• What do you think is the best way to begin implementing collective solutions to collective problems??
• Can you think of other win-win examples where a proposed solution to a problem that wasn’t a “sustainability” problem, was nonetheless a solution to a sustainable problem?
• After seeing the four harms of a phone-based childhood, would you give your child a phone before 14? Why or why not?