Scott Rhee's Reviews > The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness

If you are a parent of a child between the ages of 0 and 18: please do yourself the favor of reading Jonathon Haidt’s book “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness”. It may save yourself much frustration, fear, and grief down the line.

Haidt’s book is the inevitable endpoint of research and knowledge that started in 2010 with Nicholas Carr’s book “The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to To Our Brains” and followed, in 2022, by Johann Hari’s book “Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t pay Attention—-and How to Think Deeply Again”.

Haidt’s book provides conclusive (or pretty damned near) evidence of what Carr could only hypothetically predict would happen 14 years later and substantiates, with further studies and statistics, what Hari was saying in his book.

The basic premise is this: Sometime around the years 2010 to 2015, something drastic and worrisome started happening to children born in the late-1990s (a demographic of children often referred to as “Gen Z”). Rates of childhood depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation began to skyrocket across the country. This was across racial, ethnic, and gender lines, although it seemed to effect girls more.

Haidt and his researchers believe that a combination of factors are the reason for these high rates of mental illness among children.

One factor is a type of parenting called “helicopter parenting” that became prevalent, which essentially involves an extreme overprotection of children, out of an irrational sense of safety, that does not allow—-or over-regulates—-certain childish activities that children of the ‘70s and ‘80s engaged in quite regularly: climbing trees, walking unsupervised to the park or school or store, playing on a playground, skateboarding, staying in a house by him or herself.

Another factor is the prevalence of devices that allowed children a preponderance of “screen time” that far exceeded previous norms in previous generations. Haidt directly links this rise of device usage to the introduction of smartphones (specifically, iPhones, which were brought to market in 2007) and popular social media platforms like Facebook (launched in 2004).

A third factor is an inexplicable “underprotection” of children from the Internet and, specifically, social media sites. So-called helicopter parents were fearful of their children playing on a jungle gym, but they seemed to have a complete lack of worry about their children being vulnerable to cyberbullying or on-line sexual predators. One explanation for this—-given by parents themselves in studies—-is the parents’ own distractedness and addiction to device usage.

Haidt’s solutions—-based on the advice of mental health professionals, educators, and social scientists—-is weirdly simple: Don’t give your kid a smartphone until they are about 16-18; Limit kids in both time and access to the Internet; allow kids to do more activities unsupervised; increase the amount of playtime for kids.

According to almost every scientific study, playtime has been shown to be vitally important to a child’s development. Despite this fact, many schools have limited or eliminated playtime and replaced it with more academics, such as testing, to detrimental results. Thankfully, there is a swing back towards more playtime during school hours, especially more unsupervised playtime.

Even Haidt acknowledges that it goes against every fiber in one’s being to let your kid walk to the grocery store in town by him or herself. On the same token, it’s hard to give up the “babysitter” benefits of the iPad or iPhone.

I’ll be honest: I get a shitload of laundry and house-cleaning done when my daughter is curled up on the couch playing God-knows-what on her iPad, and while I trust that my daughter is playing appropriate games and not browsing Youtube for porn, I realize that it’s not the healthiest thing for her.

Seriously, Haidt’s book is an important resource for parents, teachers, and health care providers. We need to be more aggressive advocates for the health of our children, but if healthier children means loosening the reins and letting our kids engage in more risky activities by themselves while simultaneously limiting—-or forbidding—-access to stupid shit like Snapchat, Instagram, or Facebook, then we need to do some serious soul-searching as parents.