A few weeks ago, I had the chance to read a book called The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, by Jonathan Haidt. The argument made in the book went like this: with the rise of smartphones and other internet-connected devices, there’s been a massive uptick in mental illness among Gen Z youth and adolescents. Haidt connects these two, arguing that these don’t merely correlate, but share a causal link. I saw a lot of really positive coverage of his book, a lot of really fawning praise for his work, but something about it didn’t sit quite right with me. It all fit too neatly.
"So he sees a correlation here and it's irresistible to him because of course if he can spark panic about this..."
So, ironically, this guy who claims to be so concerned about a rise in anxiety among children is himself invested in raising the level of anxiety among parents. Because anxiety sells. Media that "alerts" us to some new thing to worry about always gains more clicks. It's a tough market out there, competing with so many others for public attention, the person who can engender greater anxiety in the audience rises above.
I'm not saying Haidt isn't sincere in his concerns, but sincerity is the cheapest coin of the realm, it only requires that you convince yourself that you act from good motives, who who doesn't believe that?
If Siva Vaidhyanathan is right that Haidt didn’t talk to parents, or kids, that is gross misconduct by Haidt. Siva’s takedown here is excellent.
Though I’m no longer the parent of school-age kids , I was doing holiday food deliveries yesterday in a community that I lived in when I was in elementary school. (The elementary school I went to is no longer a school, the synagogue we went to is no longer a religious building, but the duplexes all were still in good condition, and the park a short walk away from where we lived was hopping.) Kids soccer games were part of the reason, but the playground was also well used, and that was good to see. The park was as well used as it was back when I lived there. So there is some use of the physical environment, but what I didn’t see (that went on all the time when I was a kid) was self- directed play by kids in that park.
Haidt's new book has just arrived from the library and I haven't started it yet. I'm glad to see that Vaidhyanathan thinks Haidt has it right about the restrictions of childhood experience over the years. At almost 80, I've witnessed this change, from my own free range (though not latch-key) childhood through my children in the 80s to my grandchildren in the oughts-tens. The point I liked most about The Coddling of the American Mind is that "stranger danger" has progressed from physical danger to THOUGHT danger--don't you dare listen to anyone who might contradict your beliefs. This feels very likely a source of the "cancelling" of speakers on campuses.
I tend to be against "monocausal" explanations of any phenomenon--remember all those Brazilian butterflies when looking out the window at this week's storm. So I'll be interested in seeing whether I agree with Vaidhyanathan when reading the book. Anecdotally, I will say that I babysat my grandkids pretty much every weekend from toddlerhood to the time they were able to be "home alone." I always had a huge number of age-appropriate toys for them, and I concentrated on toys that encouraged creativity. And I read them stories and had all sorts of books, which once they could read they devoured, sometimes over and over. Grandma, where are the Catwing books???
The results were gratifying until the phones arrived. At that point they sat like lumps, and would barely set them down for my traditional pancake dinner. Whether they have suffered increased anxiety I can't really say. They don't TALK much anymore. And my son tells me they have now, in mid-late teens, stopped reading for pleasure. Even on a screen. That makes me very sad.
So whether screentime leads straight to anxiety and depression I'll remain agnostic on. But it HAS changed kid's lives in ways that feel to me to be a diminishment.
“through. Height had no interest in talking to the researchers who actually listen to young people about how” - this is just one of the times where ‘height’ has been substituted for Haidt in the story.
"So he sees a correlation here and it's irresistible to him because of course if he can spark panic about this..."
So, ironically, this guy who claims to be so concerned about a rise in anxiety among children is himself invested in raising the level of anxiety among parents. Because anxiety sells. Media that "alerts" us to some new thing to worry about always gains more clicks. It's a tough market out there, competing with so many others for public attention, the person who can engender greater anxiety in the audience rises above.
I'm not saying Haidt isn't sincere in his concerns, but sincerity is the cheapest coin of the realm, it only requires that you convince yourself that you act from good motives, who who doesn't believe that?
If Siva Vaidhyanathan is right that Haidt didn’t talk to parents, or kids, that is gross misconduct by Haidt. Siva’s takedown here is excellent.
Though I’m no longer the parent of school-age kids , I was doing holiday food deliveries yesterday in a community that I lived in when I was in elementary school. (The elementary school I went to is no longer a school, the synagogue we went to is no longer a religious building, but the duplexes all were still in good condition, and the park a short walk away from where we lived was hopping.) Kids soccer games were part of the reason, but the playground was also well used, and that was good to see. The park was as well used as it was back when I lived there. So there is some use of the physical environment, but what I didn’t see (that went on all the time when I was a kid) was self- directed play by kids in that park.
Haidt's new book has just arrived from the library and I haven't started it yet. I'm glad to see that Vaidhyanathan thinks Haidt has it right about the restrictions of childhood experience over the years. At almost 80, I've witnessed this change, from my own free range (though not latch-key) childhood through my children in the 80s to my grandchildren in the oughts-tens. The point I liked most about The Coddling of the American Mind is that "stranger danger" has progressed from physical danger to THOUGHT danger--don't you dare listen to anyone who might contradict your beliefs. This feels very likely a source of the "cancelling" of speakers on campuses.
I tend to be against "monocausal" explanations of any phenomenon--remember all those Brazilian butterflies when looking out the window at this week's storm. So I'll be interested in seeing whether I agree with Vaidhyanathan when reading the book. Anecdotally, I will say that I babysat my grandkids pretty much every weekend from toddlerhood to the time they were able to be "home alone." I always had a huge number of age-appropriate toys for them, and I concentrated on toys that encouraged creativity. And I read them stories and had all sorts of books, which once they could read they devoured, sometimes over and over. Grandma, where are the Catwing books???
The results were gratifying until the phones arrived. At that point they sat like lumps, and would barely set them down for my traditional pancake dinner. Whether they have suffered increased anxiety I can't really say. They don't TALK much anymore. And my son tells me they have now, in mid-late teens, stopped reading for pleasure. Even on a screen. That makes me very sad.
So whether screentime leads straight to anxiety and depression I'll remain agnostic on. But it HAS changed kid's lives in ways that feel to me to be a diminishment.
“through. Height had no interest in talking to the researchers who actually listen to young people about how” - this is just one of the times where ‘height’ has been substituted for Haidt in the story.