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The Anxious Generation

A Book Review

“Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right … Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”

Ephesians 6:1, 4 ESV

The following is a book review. It relates to a book that I HIGHLY RECOMMEND every parent and grandparent read. It relates to parenting and protecting our children from the new danger of digital technology, social media, and pornography. I say new because in the long history of the world these particular manifestations have only been present from 2010, with the invention of the iPhone. However, in less than one generation the effects of this device (including iPads and other app-based tablets) and the content it delivers has radically affected our children for the worse.

NOTE: This is a non-Christian book written by an atheist that clearly believes in evolution. The strength of this book is not in explaining how to fix the problem, but in objectively and powerfully identifying that there is a problem and what that problem is. This is so often the case with psychology. Through objective research and broad studies, psychology is able to identify a problem, but then is unclear (and often wrong – as with parts of this book) as to how to correct the problem. I find that Christian books are often the other way around. Through weak public research, they tend to lag behind in identifying important social problems but do have the correct solution once the problem is identified. This is where two parts can fit together. As the church we can learn much about social trends through general research then propose the correct biblical answers to societal corruption and failure bringing redemption by the power and design of Jesus.

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The Anxious Generation:

How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Childhood Mental Illness

By Jonathan Haidt

For the first two-thirds of this book, Haidt builds a carefully researched case that smartphone and tablet use in children under high school age are the major cause of a flood of current mental and emotional disorders from childhood onward. To make this case he first reminds us of the nature of the world we now live in. He gives a detailed explanation as to how the app-based smartphone was developed and how the social media, gaming, and pornography available on it have taken over the minds and lives of so many youths. Any observant adult knows that the world has shifted for our youths, but reading about the purposeful software engineering to addict the minds, disrupt the attention, and intentionally foster discontent for the sake of profit is sobering.

Haidt thoroughly documents how childhood access to phones and tablets creates a door to radically self-destructive content that affects the minds, self-imagine, morality, isolation, and dumbing down of our children through displacing healthy human relationships and the struggle of real life with fantasy. Let me highlight just a few of the sobering points that Haidt makes in this nearly 300 page book.

He emphasizes the “opportunity cost” of digital encounters. Childhood is a very short period of time with limited days and windows of opportunity. The more childhood is wasted or corrupted on a device, the more necessary cognitive, physical, and spiritually formative opportunities our children miss out on. The bad displaces the good. Use of devices, social media, and pornography are shaping the minds and souls of our children toward interpersonal dysfunction, radical isolation, eating disorders, moral perversion, depression, anxiety, and widespread generational failure to thrive.

After laying the groundwork, Haidt has specific chapters on boys and girls. He compellingly argues that social media exposure for young girls is life-changing in every bad way. Early and regular exposure to social media in young girls works to form in them an identity that is hyper-critical of self and others, loses touch between fantasy and reality, stokes materialism, and deeply engrains finding identity in outward appearance rather than in the soul. Haidt writes, “There is a clear, consistent, and sizable link between heavy social media use and mental illness in girls” (p.146).

For boys he speaks to the ubiquitous availability of pornography at the fingertips of every young boy with a smart phone or tablet, and how this developed addiction radically disrupts the ability for boys to form proper relationships with girls. This is paired with overuse of video games in boys. The two paired together work to create a corrupted fantasy world of adventure and sex, leading them further and further away from real healthy relationships. The intentionally addictive nature of these apps, if unrestricted, lead not only to twisted self-image and social relationships, but sleep deprivation and the radical fragmenting of attention span.

The main thesis of the book argues that parents are overprotecting kids from necessary experiences and relationships in the real world stemming from an obsession with safety (helicopter parent), but radically under protecting children from the much more real and devastating threats online. I believe Haidt’s four basic proposals for arresting and reversing these trends are correct:

1. No Child Should be Given a Smart Phone Before Age 16: No child or adolescent has the mental or spiritual self-control to handle unfettered internet and app access prior to age 16. He argues correctly that no filtering of any sort can effectively stop a child from reaching what they want to once they have the device.

2. No Social Media Before Age 16: Both the brain and the soul are not developed fully enough until this point to be faced with the onslaught of unhealthy social comparisons or algorithms supplying unhealthy “influencers” into their lives.

3. School Should be Phone Free: This means ZERO phone access during all school hours. The phone is such a radical distraction that it seriously inhibits education, and the possible “emergency” need to call the helicopter parent does not outweigh the serious downsides. For our community, I would also remind you that this should equally apply to a homeschool setting.

4. Far More Unsupervised Childhood Play and Increasing Childhood Independence: I both agree and disagree with Haidt in his chapter on parenting response. I agree that children should be given wide latitude to roam and play, and as they grow into teenagers they must be given increased independence until they reach full liberty at 18. However, I disagree with his typical non-Christian idea that the child should be left to form their own direction of soul. The primary roles of the Christian parent are spiritual and mental formation for the child to then pursue the individual life God has for them.

There is so much more that could be said here, and I believe NEEDS to be said. This is a conversation that we must collectively have to pull our children and teens back from this radically destructive form of living. This is where the church can work together cooperatively toward healthy communal norms that deliver our children from mental addiction, corruption, fragmentation, and isolation. If you are interested in hearing from me further on these issues, asking questions, and discussing solutions – I will hold a meeting on this subject June 8 at the church at 4:00pm. Hopefully, this is after naptime but before dinner!

May the Lord give us courage and wisdom in this area,

Pastor Vic