The first chapter of ‘The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness” by Jonathan Haidt begins with an imaginary scenario about sending your oldest child to the first permanent human settlement on Mars. If children go through puberty and its associated growth spurt on Mars, their bodies will be permanently tailored to the planet’s low gravity, unlike settlers who come over as adults. Children raised in the low-gravity environment of Mars would also be at high risk of developing deformities in their skeletons, hearts, eyes, and brains. In addition, because of the radiation on Mars, there would be higher rates of cellular damage.
Mr. Haidt says that the planners didn’t take this vulnerability of children into account. Worse still: The company did not require proof of parental permission.
Would you let your child go?
Mr. Haidt compares this imaginary scenario about Mars to what’s happened to Generation Z . He claims that two trends—overprotection in the real world and under-protection in the virtual world—are the major reasons that children born after 1995 experience high rates of anxiety.
Physical and Social Deprivation
Phone-based childhoods are deprived of physical play. Mr. Haidt points out that the healthiest play is outdoors and includes occasional physical risk-taking and thrilling adventure.These children have lost a connection is essential for mental health. With social media, superficial connections to everyone in the world replaces deep connections. When Gen Z children reach out to adults, the adults are often distracted by their own social media addictions, which prevents communication these young people so deeply need.
Attention Fragmentation and Addiction
Mr. Haidt says the average teenager gets 192 alerts or notifications per day from social media and communication apps. People can’t really multitask; all they can do is shift their attention back and forth. This never-ending stream of interruptions—this constant fragmentation of attention—takes a toll on their ability to think deeply.Mr. Haidt quotes Dr. Anna Lembke, the medical director of addiction medicine at Stanford University and chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic. “The smartphone is the modern-day hypodermic needle, delivering digital dopamine 24/7 for a wired generation,” Dr. Lembke said.
(Kaspars Grinvalds/Shutterstock)
Overall Effects and Possible Solutions
Mr. Haidt does an extraordinary job showing how social media harms teenagers. Girls are more likely to be drawn to visual social media platforms which can heighten their self-consciousness about their bodies and their place in the social world. Boys tend to prefer the social media interactive technologies of video games and YouTube. That leads to boys withdrawing from the real world and entering the virtual world, where desires for adventure and for sex can be satisfied on a superficial level. This prevents them from doing anything that prepares them for real world success.“The Anxious Generation” gets into particulars about how different teens are affected. LGBTQ adolescents are more likely than their peers to encounter harmful material on social media. Black teens were about twice as likely as Hispanic or white teens to be a target of online abuse. And, teens from low-income households (earning $30,000 per year or less) were twice as likely as teens from higher-income families (earning $75,000 per year or higher) to be affected.
The book also offers solutions by looking to the past. After cars became popular in the early 20th century, tens of thousands of children died in them. Eventually adults mandated seatbelts in 1968 and then car seats in the 1980s. In the late 1970s, students smoked cigarettes, which they could easily buy from vending machines. Eventually, adults banned those machines, inconveniencing adult smokers. Now, it is time for adults to get motivated to help reverse the damage done to Generation Z.
Before reading the final section, I respectfully suggest that adults look at their own relationships with social media. A change in attitude is the number one solution. Many adults are addicted to social media and don’t recognize the harm it is doing. They need to be willing to use social media responsibly if they wish Gen Z to do the same. (Note: Haidt wants readers to remember that “Social media is not synonymous with the internet, smartphones are not equivalent to desktop computers or laptops.”)
Mr. Haidt’s solutions call for a multipronged approach to social media management. This includes working to inform the public of the risks, technological inventions to help with control social media use, phone-free schools, and delaying the opening of social media accounts until 16. Mr. Haidt also wants a new focus on outdoor play and childhood independence to counter the influence of social media.
My opinion is the fact is that social media is here to stay but definitely can be used in a more positive way. I applaud Haidt’s idea of returning to a more play-based childhood and see his book is an enormously helpful resource to make this happen.
