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Alarmed by the rates of anxiety and depression in adolescents, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt wrote The Anxious Generation. The book explores and attributes this growing phenomena to the transition from a play-based childhood to a phone-based childhood.
We rewired childhood and created an epidemic of mental illness. 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.
The mass migration of childhood into the virtual world has disrupted social and neurological development. This disruption includes social anxiety, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation, and addiction.
But it’s not too late to change course. Professor Haidt issues a clear call to action that parents, teachers, schools, tech companies, and governments can take to end the epidemic of mental illness and restore a more humane childhood.
The Anxious Generation is more than a book – it’s a global movement with solutions for a new norm. Through a public health campaign, Professor Haidt and his team are leading a global effort to inspire action, commitment, and accountability.
Join us – together, we can reclaim childhood in the real world.
For more information on getting involved and accessing parent resources, visit The Anxious Generation website.
Learn More About Professor Jonathan Haidt:
Jonathan Haidt (pronounced “height”) is the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership based in the Business and Society Program at New York University’s Stern School of Business.
Professor Haidt’s research examines the intuitive foundations of morality, and how morality varies across cultures––including the cultures of progressives, conservatives, and libertarians. His mission is to apply research in social and moral psychology to help important institutions work better.
Professor Haidt is the author of The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom, and of The New York Times bestsellers The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, and The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting Up a Generation for Failure (co-authored with Greg Lukianoff). He has written more than 100 academic articles, which have been cited nearly 100,000 times. In 2019 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was chosen by Prospect magazine as one of the world’s “Top 50 Thinkers.” He has given four TED talks.
Since 2018 Professor Haidt has been studying the contributions of social media to the decline of teen mental health and the rise of political dysfunction. His book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, published by Penguin Press on March 26, 2024, and immediately rose to #1 on the New York Times Best Sellers List.
