The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness

Written by Jonathan Haidt  and Reviewed by Gary A. Furr

In 2010 I led a group of pastors to the Holy Land. I began to notice that whenever there was free time, at least half of the group sat in the commons area of our retreat center staring at their phones. While I had a cell phone, I had not yet transitioned to the usage levels I would later attain. I still did a great deal of my work on the computer and through email. It seemed odd to sit in a group while no one was talking for long periods of time. But they were just ahead of me—the phone and the iPad would come to dominate all of our lives more and more. It seemed odd to see pastors sit for hours at a time, staring at their phones and messages. Meanwhile, the Sea of Galilee was right outside our door. What was this to distract us from such a place?

Jonathan Haidt’s latest book has shot to the top of the New York Times bestseller list and should be at the top of the reading list of every pastor, parent and community leader. He is sounding an alarm: we have an epidemic of mental illness that is entirely preventable but now out of control. If he is right, a large number of social ills—drug abuse, suicide and depression, gun violence and mass shootings, at least among young people, are at the least worsened by the very technology we have placed in their hands at younger and younger ages.

It is as though, he said, we gave consent to allow our children to be placed on an expedition to Mars, a harsh world where they are completely untrained and ill-equipped to survive. Even in the 1990s as parents hovered over their children’s daily activities, fearful of sex offenders and kidnappings in public spaces, children were allowed to enter into a far more dangerous place with insufficient help.

Most of us are aware, by observation if not through research, that our devices have taken over our lives morally, spiritually, and in ways that transform our humanity. In recent years, I read the work of Sherry Turkel and Nicholas Carr as they warned of the profound transformation of our perceptual and communal lives through the revolution of the internet. The rapidity of the replacement of books by online reading and information has been breathtaking. January 6, 2021, and the insurrection at the Capitol only underlined a weird disappearance of common and rational public life into the murky recesses of the virtual world.

Originally Haight, a social psychology professor at New York University, set out to document the damage of social media to democracy and democratic institutions. Ultimately, his research uncovered an even more alarming reality about what our technology is doing to children.

Gen Z became the first gener5ation in history to go through puberty with a portal in their pockets that called them away from the people nearby and into an alternative universe that was exciting, addictive, unstable, and—as I will show—unsuitable for adolescents.

Plenty of books, especially Christian ones, have lamented the negative impact of social media. But Haidt and his colleagues document this disaster impressively. Study after study showed them and us that a catastrophic rise in preteen and teen depression among females shot skyward from 2010 to 2015, and among boys, other similar negative effects. This was not only nearly universal across studies in the United States. It replicated across the entire globe in most developed countries and wherever the internet and mobile phones appeared.

At the same time, Instagram and other apps exploded in the virtual sphere, bringing the world into the purses and pockets of us all. And what is the net effect? Essentially what he calls the play-based childhood of most of human history has been replaced a “phone-based childhood.”

It was the iPhone 4 in June of 2010 that brought the front facing camera, and Instagram was developed to be used only on smartphones. Soon teenage girls were using filters and editing software to improve their looks as they presented themselves to their peers not in the usual ways, but online more and more. The bullying and hypercriticism soon followed.

Boys abandoned their usual ways of relating to one another and increasingly disappeared into video games and pornography became pervasive and easily accessible. Parents were ill prepared to stay ahead of their children, who were much more adept in using the technology, and while companies placed “age restrictions” on their products for minors, in fact it was impossible to keep them from going online with a little effort on their part.

The companies who created these devices and their addictive algorithms, as is well documented by now, intentionally designed them to prey upon human vulnerabilities and claim more and more time and attention from our children.

Haidt argues that the rampant mental illness among youth is not created by a dangerous world. Life has always been more or less filled with danger. Wars do not even cripple children and societies fully—instead he argues that people rally together and hold one another up. But the “Great Rewiring of Childhood” has altered deeply the ability for young people to be fully present in their world and process it accurately. From 2010 to 2015, social patterns, role models, emotions, and sleep patterns were shaped by the changes it brought.

Life did not suddenly get worse, but “around 2012…world events were suddenly being pumped into adolescents’ brains through their phones, not as news stories, but as social media posts.” (p. 38) Oddly, the symptoms of olderwomen having depression did not change significantly. But at the same time, the line for youngest women went into free fall beginning in 2011.

We are now familiar with “social media influencers” and “digital media creators,” but fifteen years ago these were unheard of and ridiculous notions—that unknown people who produced only “virtual” content—would shape more and more the self-images of young girls. The impact was more deeply felt in less affluent homes, where supervision after school was harder and harder to monitor and therefore usage higher.

In part two, he describes in great detail the normal processes by which children learn their world—conformity bias and prestige bias. In other words, who do you want to be like? And who is impressive in your social world, someone with whom you wish to be around, learn from or be associated with? This has ancient roots and is familiar to us. Erik Erikson in his seminal work on development described adolescence as a time when more than anyone, young people find heroes to emulate and peers to associate with them. Through human history this took place within the play and friendships of children. Sports, competitive activities, service, free play, hobbies and school are essential to this process.

With the phone-based childhood, however, this process is short-circuited and suddenly a flood of marketing takes its place. Haidt documents extensively how the companies—Google, Facebook, Instagram and all of their similar endeavors, intentionally created their products to stimulate the desire for users to spend more and more time on their devices. The children and all of us are not the customers of the digital producers—it is their advertisers. And what the advertisers are buying is our time and attention. The more time we spend online, the more they can charge.

From the outset, there have been a minority of voices within the software engineering world who have protested the implications of disrespecting their customers and especially children and the impact it would have on their lives. To date, little has been done to hold them accountable, and they continue to rake in vast profits while undermining the very “connection” they advertise as the outcome of their products.

As for children, the most toxic development was the addition of the “like” click. Now we have been addicted to approval from others, even strangers who view us. It has been damaging enough for us adults but consider what this might do to a twelve-year-old, fragile and uncertain about themselves.

Haidt has plenty of suggestions about what ought to be done about all of this—for parents, schools, and lawmakers.  For schools, he says there are two very simple solutions: phone-free schools and more free play. Counter to our competitive stresses on children, he reminds us that learning goes on all the time, not merely through curriculum and tests.

I would add that de-emphasizing the arts, vocational training and other opportunities are not enhancing learning but diminishing it in the long run. He cites some fascinating successful experiments in diminishing teen anxiety through expanded opportunities for free play. For parents, he gives age-specific guidelines to protect them and enhance the development of whole persons. There are guidelines for the use of screens and devices by age group provided that parents will find very helpful.

Children are learning socially, experimentally, all the time. He is hopeful that it is not yet too late. His chapters are very readable and accessible. He places summaries at the end of each section so that his argument is plainly understandable. He adds:

teens who spend more time using social media are more likely to suffer from depression, anxiety, and other disorders, while teens who spend more time with groups of young people (such as playing team sports or participating in religious communities) have better mental health. (p. 121)

It is most interesting that Haidt argues for the place of spirituality and religion. Though not himself an overtly religious person, he believes that the idea of Pascal that there is a “God shaped vacuum” in us has a universal significance. While he substitutes “spiritual” for God, he spends a surprising amont of space on the importance of the religious quest in lives.

Churches might find a bit of inspiration for what they do as well. In a moment when we are told constantly what a bad job we are doing, there are some clear opportunities. It is not, though, simply acquiescing to technology and adapting to it.

I would argue that the shallow and false religiosity being mediated through online communities is precisely the argument against religion primarily as an online self-help endeavor. We have the phenomenon of “self-educated” (!) Christian nationalism that is disconnected from actual concrete communities, instead existing in the murky recesses of the internet. Authentic community is needed more than ever. It won’t happen unless we care about it and work for it, not simply post about it.

It reminds me of Langdon Gilkey’s experiences in World War II which he described in the book Shantung Compund. Westerners were rounded up by the Chinese and put into internment camps. Their captors left them to organize their life together. Protestant fundamentalists, foul-mouthed sailors, worldly businessmen, housewives, Catholic nuns and everything in between, thrown together and captive, they organized into a community.

One day, it came to the attention of the community that the teenagers were having sexual orgies in a quiet corner of the camp. All manner of consternation broke out among the leaders, and the conservative Protestants especially were alarmed. The Catholic nuns, on the other hand, got together and organized a rigorous schedule of card and board games, activities and sports for children and soon the orgies ceased.

As alarming as the virtual world may seem, it is still possible, Haidt believes, for us to pull back from the virtual abyss. It will take collective action, strong laws that require accountability from the companies, and leadership from parents, churches, synagogues and other faith-based groups, as well as a restructuring of our own lives. We have passively accepted this state of things. It is within our possibilities to demand a different kind of world for our children, but it will not happen. Leaders must lead. And the book is a great help with ideas to implement. But they have to be carried out. It is not a moment for passivity.

I rarely say this: every pastor, teacher, principal, parent and church member need to read this book or at least a presentation about it. He has a website where a summary is easily available. https://jonathanhaidt.com/anxious-generation/ As much time as we spend lamenting the state of the world, it seems inarguable to me that we ought to do something about it. And above all, don’t merely post on Instagram and think you’ve done anything.

One last observation: his discussion of attention and the algorithms of the virtual world set off an alarm bell. When we talk about stewardship, what about the stewardship of our minds, hearts, attention, time and thoughts? As important as money may be, perhaps this is the glaringly ignored aspect of our time. The short-circuiting of contemplation, reflection, and consideration is more needed than ever.

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