The Anxious Generation How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness
by Jonathan Haidt

I know I’m getting old and all that, and I’m aware this means that I’ll be tempted to look unfavorably at people who are younger than myself. I know I’ll be tempted to consider what people were like when I was young and to stand in judgment of what people are like today. Yet even with all that in mind, it’s undeniable that the younger generation today is different from the generations that came before it. That difference is expressed in many different ways, though perhaps the ones we notice most are the levels of anxiety experienced by young people along with their relationship to social media.

This has long been a subject of disquieted fascination to Jonathan Haidt, who many know as one of the co-authors of The Coddling of the American Mind. In his new book The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, he links the two factors (technology and anxiety) and says “the members of Gen Z are the test subjects for a radical new way of growing up.” This radical new way of growing up is what he refers to as the Great Rewiring of Childhood. Essentially, beginning in the late 90s, children began to be raised in a world that was radically different from the world as it had been before. It was a world in which young people grew into adulthood being constantly formed by new devices and apps. And in Haidt’s telling, these devices and apps did far more harm than good.

He says there are four technology-based trends that together generated the Great Rewiring: the spread of high-speed internet in the early 2000s; the arrival of the iPhone (followed by its many imitators) in 2007; the introduction of social media and the later creation of the “like” and “retweet” capabilities in 2009; and the combination of the front-facing camera with Instagram in 2010-2012.

There’s a second plotline in the Great Rewiring and it is the way parents, beginning in the 80s and 90s, began to overprotect their children. Where children develop best when they are given a measure of freedom and allowed to face risk and make decisions, parents began to overprotect their children, denying them developmental opportunities that had been available to previous generations. Unable to roam and play freely, children instead gravitated to computer-based and then phone-based forms of play.

The Anxious Generation is a sobering and challenging book. It aptly shows how technology and overprotection have combined to both shape and harm an entire generation. Encouragingly, it also provides clear and well-informed instructions for parents and other adults that can help today’s young people escape the system and live healthier lives.