Reflecting on the psychological, social and physical consequences of a phone-based childhood, the author of the perennially bestselling The Righteous Mind delivers an eye-opening examination into the causes of the current mental health epidemic among young people.
An urgent and insightful investigation into the collapse in youth mental health, from the influential social psychologist and international bestselling author
Jonathan Haidt has spent his career speaking wisdom and truth in some of the most the most difficult spaces - communities polarized by politics and religion, campuses battling culture wars, and now the perfect storm contributing to a public health emergency for teenagers today.
In The Anxious Generation, Haidt argues that for the cohort that hit puberty around 2009, their sense of self developed as the threads of three dramatic technological and social changes emerged: smartphones and life with the constant companionship of a screen, front-facing cameras and apps that thrive on selfie-culture, and social networks that reduce engagement and affirmation to likes and hearts alone.
This book shows how the ground for the current crisis in teen mental health was seeded by a decades-long shift from play-based childhoods to ones defined by over-supervision, structure, and fear: how adults began to overprotect children in the real world while unwittingly offering scant protection in the brutal online world. Haidt delves into the latest psychological and biological research to show the four fundamental ways in which a phone-based childhood disrupts development - sleep deprivation, social deprivation, cognitive fragmentation, and addiction - while offering concrete and scientifically based advice to parents, schools, universities, governments, and to teens themselves. Drawing on ancient wisdom and cutting-edge research, this eye-opening book is a life-raft and a powerful call-to-arms.
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
ISBN: 9780241647660
Number of pages: 400
Weight: 624 g
Dimensions: 240 x 161 x 34 mm
A very important book - Bessel van der Kolk, Financial Times
Compelling, readable – and incredibly chilling . . . a terrifying assessment of the digital carnage . . . remarkably persuasive . . . a clarion-call to parents everywhere - Lucy Denyer, Telegraph
Deals seriously with counter-arguments and gaps in the evidence . . . all the suggestions sound sensible. Some even sound fun - Economist
A game-changer for society . . . The statistics that Haidt offers are jaw-dropping . . . although this book is about young people, it will resonate with many of us . . . I can’t recommend this book highly enough; everyone should read it - Stella O’Malley, Irish Independent
A book of devastating observations . . . his data is startling . . . robust scientific evidence for what we've all come to assume is true . . . it's the sheer scale of harm depicted here that should galvanise us - Simon Ings, Spectator
Forget horror; this is one of the most terrifying books I have read . . . some of the statistics Haidt quotes are truly shocking . . . a persuasive and rousing argument - Anna Davis, Evening Standard
If this important book rings enough alarms to make politicians impose a genuine social media ban on children, I believe most parents would be happy and most teenagers happier - The Times, Book of the Week
Urgent and essential . . . it ought to become a foundational text for the growing movement to keep smartphones out of schools, and young children off social media - Sophie McBain, Guardian
Lucid, memorable, galvanizing - Meghan Cox Gurdon, Wall Street Journal
Erudite, engaging, crusading - Tracy Dennis-Tiwary, New York Times Book Review
I think this may be one of the most important books I've read. Like Stolen Focus by Hari, it delves into the ills of social media, but with infinitely more focus and power. It has disabused me of many... More
I big call out about what consums most of out time and how that it is shapping us as a society and human beings. Absolutelly essencial to every one.
Although I’m not always one for non-fiction, something about The Anxious Generation has called out to me for some time. What Haidt sets out to examine in this has been something of great public conversation over the... More
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