In no circumstance would I permit my eldest child, freshly into their tenth year, to journey to Mars at the beck and call of a so-called “prophetic billionaire”, notorious for their lack of knowledge regarding a child’s developmental journey and apparent disregard for children’s safety. However, it is seen as entirely acceptable for this cherished offspring of mine to establish a TikTok or Instagram profile, despite the fact that these platforms were purposely built to leverage the mental and neurological vulnerabilities present in young and teenage girls. These girls, whose frontal cortices have yet to fully mature, are ill-equipped to counter the unending novelty and societal advantages presented by a world dominated by likes, comments, and re-tweets.
While the first idea may be branded as wholly ludicrous, the latter is a common, and to some, necessary concession. Throughout ‘The Anxious Generation,’ social scientist Jonathan Haidt uses the analogy of thrusting our offspring to Mars – an atmosphere they are heartbreakingly unsuited for – as a simile for presenting them with a smartphone, a device that acts as a persistently buzzing gateway to explicit online material, video games, and addictive social media applications.
Haidt attributes the advent of this gateway, paired with the rise of social media and the iPhone, as reasons for the unprecedented surge in anxiety and depression rates among boys and girls born post-1995 (i.e., Gen Z or the ‘Anxious Generation’) in the 2010s. Added to this is the emergence of a culture of excessive parental safeguarding, or “safetyism” originating a few decades earlier.
In ‘The Anxious Generation,’ Jonathan Haidt proposes potential answers for this crisis, all of which hinge on collective action.
In Haidt’s ground-breaking book, he effortlessly transitions between roles – an educator, a social researcher, and a parent of two tech-fixated adolescents. But it is in the pivotal chapters where he steps into the shoes of a scientist that readers are most captivated. He commences his journey with a striking revelation that sheds light on the ongoing adolescent mental health crisis, which refuses to align with any other widespread theory. He skillfully illuminates the recurring patterns that pervade the English-speaking world, and he counters the popular argument – raised by researchers from the University of Oxford – that this crisis could be an outcome of increased self-diagnosis or overdiagnosis, a concept also known as the inflation of prevalence.
Haidt doesn’t gloss over the harsh truths, yet he also underscores the problematic reality that our young ones are moulded like laboratory mice during their paramount growth years when their brains are undergoing substantial rewiring. His case is fortified by leaked confidential records demonstrating that Facebook was not only knowledgeable of the neurobiological susceptibilities of preteens and teenagers but was also knowingly exploiting these to establish self-perpetuating habit cycles.
At times, Haidt’s impassioned claims risk coming across as less scholarly and more tabloid-esque. But given the compelling set of evidences to back his perspective, he doesn’t only manage to pull it off but also makes a strong case for his arguments. He systematically depicts that addiction is but a single detrimental aspect amongst the “four key harms”, which include social detachment, sleep deprivation and attention disintegration. These were induced by the paradigm shift towards a mobile-dependent childhood experienced by both boys and girls.
Haidt, further, prompts us to reflect upon the extensive damages caused by the “Great Rewiring” through the lens of the “opportunity cost” associated with almost complete absorption in the digital realm. In his capacity as a social researcher, he posits that the next generation, Gen Z, find themselves experiencing life through a new digital culture established around 2010s, which is robbing them of quintessential experiences of a formative, play-based childhood.
Throughout centuries, the cornerstones of indispensable societal and cultural growth have hinged on various elements of our existence. These include our physical presence as beings of flesh and blood, our coordinated movement and alternation as collective communities, our resilience as mammals honed by calculated risk and undirected physical play, along with our sense of belonging in a community where we spend time and efforts to cultivate and mend enduring relationships.
However, it’s time to scrutinise the damage wrought by teenagers allocating six to eight hours each day to screen-based recreational activities. The fallout is more pronounced than many of us – who’ve unconcernedly accepted the phenomenon – may realise. We’ve witnessed the deterioration of firmly established communities, the fading importance of transitional rituals that demarcate the progression from childhood to adolescence, and the disappearance of screen-free zones that facilitate unbroken sleep, intellectual stimulation in classrooms, and even natural inspired wonder triggering spiritual upliftment.
In the latter part of his book, Haidt proposes possible solutions to this predicament, all necessitating joint efforts. These corrective measures include no access to smartphones until high school (around the age of 14), no use of social media before 16, implementing phone-free educational institutions, and promoting a greater amount of autonomous play and independence during childhood.