The Dis-Ease of Gen Z?
The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt
Some books lure the reader in from multiple angles, and The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt is one such book for me . . .
As a college professor, I am concerned about the uptick in mental health disorders among my students. As a midlifer, I wonder what the dopamine draw of my devices is doing to my own ability to sustain attention. And, I am a new grandma with nightmarish thoughts about how burgeoning technologies might negatively shape my grandchild’s growing brain.
Before cracking open Haidt’s book, I expected to read the usual narrative about how social media shatters self-esteem and that video games can be addictive for teens. What I didn’t expect was Haidt’s compelling and multifaceted argument about what children and adolescents need to develop and thrive in this tech-infused, always-connected world.
The book’s basics
In The Anxious Generation, Haidt cites the combination of parental over-protection in the real, “analog” world and under-protection in the always-on digital world as the cause of increased mental health challenges in Generation Z (born 1995- 2012). Although life in the virtual world has impacts for persons of all ages, Haidt provides evidence that the years between 9 and 15 make up a sensitive period of brain development for social learning. These years form a developmental stage when unfettered access to the virtual world can have outsized negative effects.
“My central claim in this book is that these two trends - overprotection in the real world and underprotection in the virtual world - are the major reasons why children born after 1995 became the anxious generation.” (p. 9)
Haidt’s is a causal argument - a phone-based childhood causes mental distress - and as such it is currently being sliced and diced by psychological scholars. In this review, however, I will address some of Haidt’s big ideas that resonated with me personally as a professor/concerned tech-user/grandma.
The problem with overprotection in the real world
Last week, I spent four days hiking around Mount Rainier with three dear friends. Bathed in green, my soul was restored as I clocked mountain miles. But hiking on Mount Rainier is dangerous at points with narrow paths and potential for dropping straight down down into an abyss, and I definitely had some moments of anxiety.
Those moments were interrupted, though, when I would see a child skipping up the path in front of me or an adolescent bounding down the mountain at twice my pace. My immediate reaction was often, What in the hell are their parents thinking letting them teeter on the edge like that? But then I remembered Haidt’s words about the importance of exposing children to risky situations in order to strengthen their psychological immune system. By encouraging children to take appropriate risks, Haidt says children become antifragile. He wrote extensively about the importance of parents resisting safetyism - the worship of safety above all else.
Haidt dates the start of parental over-protection to the early 1980s. One way he believes parents can stunt children’s development is in the over-management of free play. He gives the example of a playground in Berkeley, California with a mile-long sign listing Tag Rules - one rule reads “resolve differences with rock-paper-scissors” and another warns children to use only “one finger touch.” Any potential misstep is flagged and accounted for on the sign, making for a very safe play experience indeed.
But, messy free play is essential for physical, cognitive, and social growth. Children need to be able to muck about and find out how to negotiate differences and solve problems on their own. Not being able to do so makes for anxious adults later on down the line who haven’t learned how to test limits, fall, brush off skinned knees, and get up to face the next challenge.
In other words, unstructured free play helps build resilience.
Free play occurs in what Haidt describes as the “real world,” with relationships and social interactions consisting of four main features (adapted from p. 9):
They are embodied. In other words, when we occupy the same space we are able to use our bodies as part of our communication.
They are synchronous, meaning our interactions are live and happening at the same time.
They involve mostly one-to-one, or one-to-several communication.
They occur within communities where there is a high bar for entry and exit, and people can’t just enter and leave the community without effort.
On the other hand, the virtual world is disembodied, usually asynchronous, often involves one-to-many communication, and people can join or leave groups effortlessly.
What is lost in the phone-based childhood
Although various technologies have differential effects on children and adolescents, Haidt uses the term phone-based childhood as a useful shorthand for constant access to the virtual world. He asserts phone-based childhoods started in the mid-2010s, when smartphone ownership became ubiquitous. This means Gen Z is the first cohort to have widespread smartphone access during puberty.
Psychologists use the term opportunity cost to describe what one could do otherwise with their time or money when choosing a particular action. For example, Haidt cites research showing that teens spend six to eight hours a day on “all screen-based leisure activities.” The opportunity cost is all the things teens are not doing with that large chunk of time: Studying? Playing in the “real world” as previously defined? Exploiring nature? Honing a hobby? Asking someone out on a date? Crashing and burning only to get up and try again? Haidt aptly describes smartphones as “experience blockers.”
Perhaps the most compelling aspect of Haidt’s thesis is the four foundational harms of the phone-based childhood:
Social deprivation - Social media lures with the promise of connection, but delivers poorly. Again, Haidt defines real-world social relationships as embodied, synchronous, one-to-one or one-to-several, and involving commitment.
Sleep deprivation - Devices have only exacerbated the struggles parents of teens experience trying to ensure their children get adequate sleep.
Attention fragmentation - This. Is. Happening! I see it in my college students. I see it in myself. Haidt refers to smartphones as “kryptonite for attention.”
Addiction - Dopamine pinging is baked into the pie of many applications. They are designed to capture eyeballs and keep users coming back for more, not with our children’s best interests in mind.
An atheist walks into a chapter on spirituality . . .
In an interesting detour, Haidt, who is a self-described atheist, included a chapter entitled Spiritual Elevation and Degradation. His premise in the chapter is that “the phone-based life produces spiritual degradation, not just in adolescents, but in all of us.” (p. 199) He goes on to define six spiritual practices that improve well-being based on the book How God Works: The Science Behind the Benefits of Religion by David DeSteno.
One particularly relevant spiritual practice Haidt cites as needed in the virtual world is, “Be slow to anger, quick to forgive.” We’ve all seen it. The hair-trigger response on a social media feed, the piling on by the shame brigade when someone has stepped out of bounds. And because social media relationships don’t require commitment - if I’m miffed I can gather up my social media marbles and simply sign off - forgiveness often doesn’t have time to evolve.
Another practice Haidt promotes is “stillness, silence, and focus.” But online interactions often result in jumpiness, clamor, and distraction. Haidt also writes about the importance of the spiritual practice of self-transcendence:
“Social media is a fountain of bedevilments. It trains people to think in ways that are exactly contrary to the world’s wisdom traditions: Think about yourself first; be materialistic, judgmental, boastful and petty; seek glory as quantified by likes and followers.” (p. 209)
Haidt’s recommendations
Part 4 of The Anxious Generation provides solid recommendations for actions to be taken by governments, tech companies, schools, and parents. The chapter for parents is helpfully divided by age ranges (0 to 5, 6 to 13, and 13 to 18). It is my fervent hope that parents read this book and have important conversations with their children as well as with other parents. As Haidt describes, collective action is more effective than trying to be the only parent monitoring their child’s online connectivity.
In the end, Haidt identifies four foundational reforms for raising healthier children in the digital age:
No smartphones before high school
No social media before age 16
Phone-free schools
Far more unsupervised play and childhood independence
These are all no- or low-cost, doable interventions that can be enacted even if tech companies and governments continue their inaction on protecting children in the online world.
Throughout the book, Haidt refers to the “great rewiring” due to the phone-based childhood:
“Rewiring of human relationships and consciousness has made it harder for all of us to think, focus, forget ourselves enough to care about others, and build close relationships” (p. 17)
Haidt’s recommendations are a clarion call for all to take action now to understand the effects of this “grand experiment” of allowing phone-based childhoods on our developing children and adolescents.