THE INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice

From New York Times bestselling coauthor of The Coddling of the American Mind, an essential investigation into the collapse of youth mental health—and a plan for a healthier, freer childhood.

“Erudite, engaging, combative, crusading.” —New York Times Book Review

“Words that chill the parental heart…  thanks to Mr. Haidt, we can glimpse the true horror of what happened not only in the U.S. but also elsewhere in the English-speaking world… lucid, memorable… galvanizing.” —Wall Street Journal

"[An] important new book...The shift in kids’ energy and attention from the physical world to the virtual one, Haidt shows, has been catastrophic, especially for girls." —Michelle Goldberg, The New York Times

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. Why?

In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time. He then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults. Haidt shows how the “play-based childhood” began to decline in the 1980s, and how it was finally wiped out by the arrival of the “phone-based childhood” in the early 2010s. He presents more than a dozen mechanisms by which this “great rewiring of childhood” has interfered with children’s social and neurological development, covering everything from sleep deprivation to attention fragmentation, addiction, loneliness, social contagion, social comparison, and perfectionism. He explains why social media damages girls more than boys and why boys have been withdrawing from the real world into the virtual world, with disastrous consequences for themselves, their families, and their societies.

Most important, Haidt issues a clear call to action. He diagnoses the “collective action problems” that trap us, and then proposes four simple rules that might set us free. He describes steps that parents, teachers, schools, tech companies, and governments can take to end the epidemic of mental illness and restore a more humane childhood.

Haidt has spent his career speaking truth backed by data in the most difficult landscapes—communities polarized by politics and religion, campuses battling culture wars, and now the public health emergency faced by Gen Z. We cannot afford to ignore his findings about protecting our children—and ourselves—from the psychological damage of a phone-based life.“Erudite, engaging, combative, crusading.” —Tracy Dennis-Tiwary, New York Times Book Review

“Words that chill the parental heart…  thanks to Mr. Haidt, we can glimpse the true horror of what happened not only in the U.S. but also elsewhere in the English-speaking world… lucid, memorable… galvanizing.” —Meghan Cox Gurdon, Wall Street Journal
 
“I found myself nodding along in agreement … benefits from… years of research on how smartphones and social media dice the nerves and tamp the spirits of young people … not just reasonable but irrefutably necessary.” —Jessica Winter, New Yorker

“Boundlessly wise… important and engrossing.” —Frank Bruni, New York Times Opinion

“All the suggestions sound sensible. Some even sound fun . . . Deals seriously with counter-arguments and gaps in the evidence.” —The Economist

“Can be quite wonderful… beautifully grounds his critique in Buddhist, Taoist and Christian thought traditions… His common-sense recommendations for actions...are excellent.” —Judith Warner, The Washington Post

"[An] important new book...The shift in kids’ energy and attention from the physical world to the virtual one, Haidt shows, has been catastrophic, especially for girls." —Michelle Goldberg, The New York Times

“Informative and compelling…Haidt wants children to spend more time appreciating nature, playing with friends, riding and falling off their bikes, and doing age-appropriate chores.”—Glenn C. Altschuler, Psychology Today

"An urgent and essential read, and 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, The Guardian (UK)

“Compelling, readable—and incredibly chilling . . . remarkably persuasive.” —Lucy Denyer, Telegraph (UK)

"A persuasive and rousing argument"—Anna Davis, Evening Standard (UK)

“If this important book rings enough alarms (wait, or is that just my phone pinging?) to make politicians impose a genuine social media ban on children, I believe most parents would be happy and most teenagers happier.” —Helen Rumbelow, The Times (UK, Book of the Week)

"Haidt sets out inarguable evidence that smartphones are fuelling an anxiety epidemic among young people—and big tech must do more to reverse it…an extremely important and compelling read that is recommended not only to parents but to anyone who has felt increasingly pressurised by technology…I can’t recommend this book highly enough; everyone should read it. It is a game-changer for society." —Stella O'Malley, Irish Independent

“Jonathan Haidt is a modern-day prophet, disguised as a psychologist. In this book, he’s back to warn us of the dangers of a phone-based childhood. He points the way forward to a brighter, stronger future for us all.” —Susan Cain, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Bittersweet and Quiet

“An urgent and provocative read on why so many kids are not okay—and how to course correct. Jonathan Haidt makes a powerful case that the shift from play-based to phone-based childhoods is wreaking havoc on mental health and social development. Even if you’re not ready to ban smartphones until high school, this book will challenge you to rethink how we nurture the potential in our kids and prepare them for the world.” —Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Potential and Think Again, and host of the TED podcast Re:Thinking

“This is a crucial read for parents of children of elementary school age and beyond, who face the rapidly changing landscape of childhood. Haidt lays out problems but also solutions for making a better digital life with kids.” —Emily Oster, New York Times bestselling author of Expecting Better

“Every single parent needs to stop what they are doing and read this book immediately. Jonathan Haidt is the most important psychologist in the world today, and this is the most important book on the topic that’s reshaping your child’s life right now.” —Johann Hari, author of Stolen Focus

“This book poses a challenge that will determine the shape of the rest of the century. Jonathan Haidt shows us how we’ve arrived at this point of crisis with technology and the next generation. This book does not merely stand athwart the iPhone yelling ‘Stop!’ Haidt provides research-tested yet practical counsel for parents, communities, houses of worship, and governments about how things could be different. I plan to give this book to as many people as I can, while praying that we all have the wisdom to ponder and then to act.” —Russell Moore, editor in chief of Christianity TodayJonathan Haidt is the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business. He obtained his PhD in social psychology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992 and taught at the University of Virginia for sixteen years. His research focuses on moral and political psychology, as described in his book The Righteous Mind. His latest book, The Anxious Generation, is a direct continuation of the themes explored in The Coddling of the American Mind (written with Greg Lukianoff). He writes the After Babel Substack.THOUGHT AND ACTION STARTERS FOR PARENTS
Created by Jon Haidt, Zach Rausch, and Lenore Skenazy, with assistance from Mckenzie Love, Nicole Kitten, and Ashley Fisher-Tranese

I wrote The Anxious Generation with a firm belief that the challenges confronting our children and our families are solvable. However, addressing these challenges requires understanding the traps we have fallen into, so we can see the escape routes. The main escape routes are four new norms, four steps that are hard for any one family to do on its own, but they become much easier if we can coordinate and act together. The book and the website (anxiousgeneration.com) are designed to facilitate discussion among friends, family, book clubs, and communities, in order to change norms and reclaim human life for all generations. This guide offers conversation starters as well as some actions you can take on your own or with a few friends.

– Jon Haidt

TECHNOLOGY:
1. The book says that today we overprotect children and adolescents in the real world and underprotect them in the virtual world. Do you see this happening? Where?
2. What problems do smartphones, social media, and screens solve in your family, and what problems do they create?
3. Do you have any tech rules in your home? Do they work? Are there some that you have heard of, or would like to try?
4. What would you like to change, if anything, about your kids’ relationship with smartphones and social media? What about video games and other screen-based activities?
5. How are your kids different online and offline?

PLAY:
6. The book says that one problem with a phone-based childhood is that it replaces the hours children would otherwise spend playing in the real world: “Children are, in a sense, deprived of childhood.” Do you agree about this for children in general or your own? What exactly are kids missing out on?
7. Think back on your own childhood. What are your most thrilling memories? Could your child have a similar experience today?
8. What did you get from “just playing” as a kid?
9. “Free play” means playing without adults organizing or even supervising. What reservations do you have about allowing your own children more unsupervised time?
10. Jon and Lenore suggest a few ways to give your kids more unstructured, unsupervised opportunities for free play, such as keeping Fridays open so neighborhood kids can get together. What small steps could you take toward adding more free play to your children’s lives?

INDEPENDENCE:
11. When you were your child(ren)’s age, what did your parents trust you to do on your own? How did that make you feel?
12. What are some things you do for your children that they could start doing for themselves?
13. What are some things you do for your family that your children could start doing for you?
14. Think about a time when you were a child and something went wrong when no adult was around. How did you solve the problem?
15. How can you give your kids more opportunities to be part of the real world rather than the virtual one?
16. Modern technology makes it very easy to track our children’s whereabouts, grades, and even behavior electronically. This can become “the world’s longest umbilical cord.” Could you cut down on the ways in which you electronically track or watch your child in the real world? How? 

FOR YOU:
17. What problems do smartphones, social media, and screens solve in your own life and what problems do they create? 
18. Do you have any tech rules for yourself? Do they work? 
19. What would you like to change, if anything, about your own relationship with smartphones and social media? What about video games and other screen-based activities?
20. How are you different online and offline?

OVERALL:
21. In what ways can we better prepare our kids to wisely navigate the virtual world?
22. In what ways can we better prepare our kids to wisely navigate the real world?
23. Would you want to grow up the way today’s kids are growing up? Why or why not? What are some benefits of growing up today? What would you want to preserve/carry forward from your own upbringing? 
24. What actions can you take, on your own and with like-minded parents, to lessen your kids’ time spent in the virtual world and increase their opportunities for fun and responsibility in the physical world?

SOME POSSIBLE ACTIONS YOU CAN TAKE:
TECHNOLOGY:
1. Partner up with a few other families to delay giving your child a smartphone until high school. Give them a flip phone instead. 
2. Partner up with a few other families to delay giving your child access to social media until age sixteen. 
3. Partner up with a few other parents to ask your school to go phone-free so you can give your kids seven hours of attention and in-person socialization. 
4. Set tech boundaries in your household. For example, no screens during mealtime or before bed. Consider leaving phones in the kitchen overnight. (Buy an alarm clock!)

PLAY:
5. Keep Friday afternoons free for neighborhood play.
6. Partner up with a few other parents and ask your school to start a phone-free, mixed-age Let Grow Play Club before or after school.
7. On your block, arrange for one parent to sit outside each afternoon so the kids can play outside together.

INDEPENDENCE:
8. Ask your kids to start doing one thing inside the home (and let them!), without your assistance, that will help you.
9. Ask your kids to start doing one thing outside the home (and let them!), without your supervision, that will help you.
10. Have coffee with a friend and send your kids out together for a specific amount of time without a phone or tracker.
11. Ask your school to assign The Let Grow Experience, a homework assignment that asks kids to start doing something new on their own, with your permission.

If you want to share the impact the book has had on you—maybe you’re overprotecting a little less in the real world or have started protecting a little more online—please tell us your story at anxiousgeneration.com.


THOUGHT AND ACTION STARTERS FOR EDUCATORS

TECHNOLOGY:
1. The book says that today we overprotect children and adolescents in the real world and underprotect them in the virtual world. Do you see this happening? Where?
2. What problems do smartphones and social media solve in your school/classroom, and what problems do they create? What about screens more broadly (e.g., Chromebooks)?
3. Do you have any tech rules in your school/classroom? Do they work?
4. What school-wide tech rules would you implement if given the opportunity and why? 
5. How do students’ online activities (outside your classroom) impact what happens inside your classroom?
6. Do smartphones influence the way parents are involved in your school/classroom and your teaching approach? If yes, how? 


PLAY:
7. The book says that one problem with a phone-based childhood is that it replaces the hours children would otherwise spend playing in the real world: “Children are, in a sense, deprived of childhood.” Do you agree? What exactly are kids missing out on?
8. What did you get from “just playing” as a kid? What benefits do you think your students would gain if allowed more time to “just play”? 
9. “Free play” means kids of different ages playing without adults organizing their activities or even intervening, except in emergencies. What reservations do you have about allowing your students to play this way?
10. How can you give your students more opportunities for mixed-age free play? 

INDEPENDENCE:
11. What are some things you do for your students that they could start doing for themselves?
12. what are some things you do for your students or school that your students could start doing for you?
13. How can you give your students more opportunities to be part of the real world as opposed to the virtual one? In what ways could you encourage the parents of your students to do the same? 
14. How would an increased sense of responsibility and independence benefit your students? 

FOR YOU:
15. what problems do smartphones, social media, and screens solve in your own life, and what problems do they create? 
16. Do you have any tech rules for yourself? Do they work? 
17. What would you like to change, if anything, about your own relationship with smartphones and social media? What about video games and other screen-based activities?
18. How are you different online and offline?

OVERALL:
19. In what ways can we better prepare our students to wisely navigate the virtual world?
20. In what ways can we better prepare our students to wisely navigate the real world?
21. Would you want to grow up the way today’s students are growing up? Why or why not? What are some benefits of growing up today? What would you want to preserve/carry forward from your own upbringing? 
22. What actions can you take, alone or with allies, to lessen your students' time spent in the virtual world and increase their opportunities for fun and responsibility in the physical world?

SOME POSSIBLE ACTIONS:
 
TECHNOLOGY:
1. Partner up with a few other colleagues to advocate that your school go phone-free. 
2. Consider setting more tech boundaries in your classroom.
3. For example, consider updating grade portals only once a week so that parents and students are less likely to spend each day checking and waiting for grades on quizzes and assignments. 
4. Consider abstaining from posting behavior points and demerits, leaving the topic of a child's behavior for in-person discussions at parent-teacher night, not a daily record.
5. Leave your own smartphone locked away when you are teaching. 

PLAY:
6. Partner up with a few other colleagues to advocate for longer recess and a mixed-age, phone-free Let Grow Play Club before and/or after school. 

INDEPENDENCE:
7. Ask your students to start doing one thing inside the classroom that will help you.
8. Assign The Let Grow Experience, a homework assignment that asks kids to start doing something new on their own (with parental permission).


Collective action requires inspiration! If you take any of these actions and would like to share what happened next, please send your story (and/or photo or video) to: anxiousgeneration.com


THOUGHT AND ACTION STARTERS FOR YOUNG ADULTS (GEN Z)
 
1. The book says that we have overprotected you in the real world and underprotected you in the virtual world. Do you agree? Do you see this happening? Where?
2. What problems do smartphones, social media, and screens solve for your generation, and what problems do they create? 
3. Do you have any rules or boundaries around the tech in your life? Do they work? Do you wish you had different ones? Who would you choose to make these?
4. What would you like to change, if anything, about your relationship with smartphones and social media? How about that of your friends? What about other screen-based activities?
5. In what ways do your online activities impact your friendships, your relationship with your family, and your relationships with others?
6. How do/did smartphones influence the way your parents are involved in your life? 
7. In what ways would you like to see younger kids’ tech use change?
8. How do you feel about the amount of time you spend online? Are there other activities you wish you had more time for? If yes, how can you create more opportunities to engage with the real world as opposed to the virtual one?


PLAY:
9. The book says that one problem with a phone-based childhood is that it replaces the hours children would otherwise spend playing in the real world: “Children are, in a sense, deprived of childhood.” Do you agree? What do you feel you missed out on?
10. What do you get from having fun with friends in the real world that you don’t get from having fun with friends online?

INDEPENDENCE:
11. What are some things you still have others do for you that you could do yourself?
12. What are some things you can start doing for others, such as your parents or other family members or friends?
13. If applicable: What are some things your parents don’t let you do that you feel ready to do? What would it take to show them you are ready?
14. What are some things you could start doing for your parents?


OVERALL:
15. Would you want the next generation of kids to grow up as you grew up? Why or why not? Which aspects of your childhood would you like the next generation to experience, and which do you hope to see change?
16. In what ways can we better prepare future generations to wisely navigate the virtual world?
17. In what ways can we better prepare future generations to wisely navigate the real world?

Collective action requires inspiration! If you take any of these actions and would like to share what happened next, please send your story (and/or photo or video) to: anxiousgeneration.com 

SOME POSSIBLE ACTIONS:
 
TECHNOLOGY:
1. Do the obvious: Leave your phone outside the bedroom at night. 
2. Take a digital sabbath—a day off a month when you don’t use any internet-connected devices. You will live.
3. Try a no-phone get-together. 
4. Partner with a few friends to advocate for a phone-free space (or school, classroom, or dining hall, depending on your stage of life).
5. Keep the phone in another room the whole time you visit Grandma.

INDEPENDENCE:
6. Learn how to do something that someone else currently does for you. Do it.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
anxiousgeneration.com

Substacks:
After Babel, Jon Haidt
Designing Tomorrow, The Neely Center
Techno Sapiens, Jacqueline Nesi, PhD
Of Boys and Men, Richard V. Reeves
Generation Tech, Jean M. Twenge
GIRLS, Freya India
Play Makes Us Human, Peter Gray
The Eternally Radical Idea, Greg Lukianoff

Books:
The Coddling of the American Mind, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt
Free-Range Kids, Lenore Skenazy
The Happiness Hypothesis, Jonathan Haidt
The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt
The Canceling of the American Mind, Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott
Awe, Dacher Keltner
Dopamine Nation, Anna Lembke, MD
Generations, Jean M. Twenge, PhD 
iGen, Jean M. Twenge, PhD
How to Have a Good Day, Caroline Webb
Indistractable, Nir Eyal with Julie Li
A Nation of Wimps, Hara Estroff Marano
The Opposite of Spoiled, Ron Lieber
Urban Playground, Tim Gill
When Men Behave Badly, David M. Buss
The Age of Addiction, David T. Courtwright
Of Boys and Men, Richard V. Reeves
Unwired, Gaia Berstein
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Shoshana Zuboff
The End of Men, Hanna Rosin
Boys Adrift, Leonard Sax, MD, PhD
Free to Learn, Peter Gray
Outrage Machine, Tobias Rose-Stockwell
Untangled, Lisa Damour, PhD
Stolen Focus, Johann Hari
Deep Work, Cal Newport
Digital Minimalism, Cal Newport
The Gardener and the Carpenter, Alison Gopnik
The Disappearance of Childhood, Neil Postman
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, Marshall McLuhan
Paranoid Parenting, Frank Furedi
Bowling Alone, Robert D. Putnam
Never Enough, Jennifer Breheny Wallace
The Emotional Lives of Teenagers, Lisa Damour, PhD
How to Raise a Healthy Gamer, Alok Kanojia, MD, MPH
The Screen Strong Solution, Melanie Hempe, BSN
Quiet, Susan Cain
The Family Firm, Emily Oster
Mortal Combat, Patrick M. Markey, PhD, and Christopher J. Ferguson, PhD
Unequal Childhoods, Annette Lareau

School resources:
letgrow.org (school programs)
everyschool.org
phonefreeschoolsmovement.org

Parent resources for tech:
screenstrong.org 
fairplayforkids.org
gamequitters.com
screentimenetwork.org
waituntil8th.org 
healthygamer.gg
protectyoungeyes.com
delaysmartphones.co.uk
lookupnonprofit.com
smart-families.org
oktodelay.org
getmediasavvy.org
smartphonefreechildhood.co.uk
screensanity.org
wearemama.squarespace.com
parentssos.org

Parent resources for play and independence: 
letgrow.org
outsideplay.org
montanawildernessschool.org
nifplay.org
nols.edu
onbeing.org
afsusa.org/study-abroad
americanexchangeproject.org
outwardbound.org
wildernessadventures.com
ycamp.org/wilderness-trips
boystomen.org/

Gen Z resources:
designitforus.org
gamequitters.com
healthygamer.gg
logoffmovement.org
nosonovember.org

Tech company resources:
humanetech.com
reset.tech

Researcher resources:
commonsense.org 
aibm.org
psychoftech.org
alltechishuman.org
childrenandscreens.org
counterhate.com

Speakers:

Jon Haidt: Washington Speakers Bureau:.wsb.com/speakers/jonathan-haidt
Zach Rausch: zach-rausch.com
Lenore Skenazy: bit.ly/LenoreSpeak

See more at anxiousgeneration.comPart 1

A Tidal Wave

Chapter 1

THE SURGE OF SUFFERING

When I talk with parents of adolescents, the conversation often turns to smartphones, social media, and video games. The stories parents tell me tend to fall into a few common patterns. One is the “constant conflict” story: Parents try to lay down rules and enforce limits, but there are just so many devices, so many arguments about why a rule needs to be relaxed, and so many ways around the rules, that family life has come to be dominated by disagreements about technology. Maintaining family rituals and basic human connections can feel like resisting an ever-risingtide, one that engulfs parents as well as children.

For most of the parents I talk to, their stories don’t center on any diagnosed mental illness. Instead, there is an underlying worry that something unnatural is going on, and that their children are missing something—really, almost everything—as their online hours accumulate. But sometimes the stories parents tell me are darker. Parents feel that they have lost their child. A mother I spoke with in Boston told me about the efforts she and her husband had made to keep their fourteen-year-old daughter, Emily, away from Instagram. They could see the damaging effects it was having on her. To curb her access, they tried various programs to monitor and limit the apps on her phone. However, family life devolved into a constant struggle in which Emily eventually found ways around the restrictions. In one distressing episode, she got into her mother’s phone, disabled the monitoring software, and threatened to kill herself if her parents reinstalled it. Her mother told me:

It feels like the only way to remove social media and the smartphone from her life is to move to a deserted island. She attended summer camp for six weeks each summer where no phones were permitted—no electronics at all. Whenever we picked her up from camp she was her normal self. But as soon as she started using her phone again it was back to the same agitation and glumness. Last year I took her phone away for two months and gave her a flip phone and she returned to her normal self.

When I hear such stories about boys, they usually involve video games (and sometimes pornography) rather than social media, particularly when a boy makes the transition from being a casual gamer to a heavy gamer. I met a carpenter who told me about his 14 year-old son, James, who has mild autism. James had been making good progress in school before COVID arrived, and also in the martial art of judo. But once schools were shut down, when James was eleven, his parents bought him a PlayStation, because they had to find something for him to do at home.

At first it improved James’s life—he really enjoyed the games and social connections. But as he started playing Fortnite for lengthening periods of time, his behavior began to change. “That’s when all the depression, anger, and laziness came out. That’s when he started snapping at us,” the father told me. To address James’s sudden change in behavior, he and his wife took all of his electronics away. When they did this, James showed withdrawal symptoms, including irritability and aggressiveness, and he refused to come out of his room. Although the intensity of his symptoms lessened after a few days, his parents still felt trapped: “We tried to limit his use, but he doesn’t have any friends, other than those he communicates with online, so how much can we cut him off?”

No matter the pattern or severity of their story, what is common among parents is the feeling that they are trapped and powerless. Most parents don’t want their children to have a phone-based childhood, but somehow the world has reconfigured itself so that any parent who resists is condemning their children to social isolation.

In the rest of this chapter, I’m going to show you evidence that something big is happening, something changed in the lives of young people in the early 2010s that made their mental health plunge. But before we immerse ourselves in the data, I wanted to share with you the voices of parents who feel that their children were in some sense swept away, and who are now struggling to get them back.US