Book Review: ‘The Anxious Generation’

LW residents are invited to submit reviews of their favorite books for publication in the LW Weekly. Include your name and mutual and telephone numbers. The reviews are subject to editing and will run as space allows. Email submissions to emmad@lwsb.com. Title: “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness” Author: Jonathan Haidt

by Maureen Habel

LW contributor

Older generations have always fretted about young people. However, the challenges facing Gen Z, born since 1995, are alarming in a different way. The mental health of teens plunged in the last decade as shown by escalating rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm and suicide. In this compelling book, best-selling author and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt explores reasons for the collapse of youth mental health and suggests a plan for a healthier childhood. Haidt shows how “play-based” childhood began to decline in the 1980s and how it was replaced by a “phone-based” childhood in the 2010s, accompanied by sleep deprivation, addiction, loneliness, 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 a virtual world, causing serious consequences for themselves, their families and communities. Haidt’s observation that parents have overprotected kids in the real world while underprotecting them in the virtual world rings true in my family. He suggests four very practical ways to protect children, including no smart phones before high school, no social media before age 16, phone free schools, and a return to far more unsupervised play and childhood independence. This book, which would make a provocative family discussion, is available at the LW Library.