Jonathan Haidt on the Rise of The Anxious Generation (Part 1)

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Bestselling author and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has dedicated his career to speaking truth and wisdom in some of the most challenging spaces – communities polarised by politics and religion and university campuses mired in culture wars. Now he turns his attention to what he sees as a perfect storm of factors that are causing a collapse in mental health among teenagers today. According to the American College Health Association, since 2010 anxiety among American college students has increased by 134%, depression by 106%, bipolar disorder by 57%, and anorexia by 100%.

In April 2024 Haidt came to the Intelligence Squared stage where in conversation with BBC presenter Sarah Montague he drew on his new book The Anxious Generation, which has shot to No 1 in the Sunday Times bestsellers. He argued that the decline of free play in childhood and the rise of smartphone use among adolescents are the twin sources of increased mental distress among teenagers. He showed how, between 2010 and 2015, as teens traded in their flip phones for smartphones packed with social media apps, time online soared. This profound shift took place against a backdrop of diminishing childhood freedom, as parents over-supervised every aspect of their children’s lives offline, depriving them of the face-to-face experiences with their peers which they need to become strong and self-governing adults. In short, childhood got rewired.

Haidt argued that it isn’t too late to put the genie back in the bottle. Against the backdrop of the growing movement to ban smartphones in schools, he drew on traditional wisdom and cutting-edge research to offer practical advice to parents, teachers and teenagers,

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