RECOMMENDED BOOK
The Anxious Generation
By Jonathan Haidt
In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time. He then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults. Haidt shows how the “play-based childhood” began to decline in the 1980s, and how it was finally wiped out by the arrival of the “phone-based childhood” in the early 2010s. He presents more than a dozen mechanisms by which this “great rewiring of childhood” has interfered with children’s social and neurological development, covering everything from sleep deprivation to attention fragmentation, addiction, loneliness, social contagion, social comparison, and perfectionism. He explains why social media damages girls more than boys and why boys have been withdrawing from the real world into the virtual world, with disastrous consequences for themselves, their families, and their societies.
Categories: Book Reports from Our Contributors, Further Reading, Our Mind in the Modern WorldHow the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness
By Jonathan Haidt
- All Books by Section
- Book Reports from Our Contributors (42)
- Books Referenced in Human Journey Sections:
- Journey of the Human Mind (7)
- Discovering Our Distant Ancestors (34)
- The Evolution of Language (18)
- Ideas that Shaped Our Modern World (117)
- Tools and the Development of Contemporary Society (33)
- A Sustainable Planet (25)
- The Changing World Economy (34)
- Health and Education in the Modern World (34)
- Our Mind in the Modern World (24)