The Anxious Generation
After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged in the early 2010s. Rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rose sharply, more than doubling on many measures. Why? In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt (pronounced "height") 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 consequ
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Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt makes the case that a great rewiring of childhood, smartphones in pockets after 2010 and overprotective parenting in the real world, drove a worldwide collapse in adolescent mental health.
Jonathan Haidt's 2024 book argues that the rise of smartphone-based childhood and decline of play-based childhood, particularly between 2010 and 2015, caused the documented increase in adolescent mental illness. He proposes specific reforms including age limits on social media and phone-free schools.
Jonathan Haidt is a respected social psychologist, and the book draws on extensive contemporary research. Some specific causal claims have been challenged by other researchers, particularly around social media as the primary cause. The book remains widely discussed in policy debates.
The Anxious Generation was written by Jonathan Haidt, published in 2024 by Rizzoli.
The Anxious Generation is 395 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Anxious Generation takes most readers 6 to 9 hours to finish.
The Anxious Generation is a standalone novel by Jonathan Haidt, not part of a series.
The Anxious Generation is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
