Anxious Generation

I did not enjoy reading this as sociology often rubs me the wrong way, though I do recognize it's value. However, as a parent of two young kids, I am glad I read this. I hope this book will spark change, so that we can give the future a healthier childhood.

The discourse in this book is very important. I would recommend this book to parents or people who want to be parents soon. Although, I found this book to be a conversation starter into this topic. The book was very one sided throughout, and I sometimes found myself pushing back on the author’s advice. Especially in the case of children being less supervised- which I agree with to a point. It just seemed like he was asking readers to take this to an extreme and pushing actual risks under the rug. I think there are more systematic problems that need to be addressed to take all of this author’s advice. (Couldn’t help but think this book was obviously written from a slightly out of touch man’s perspective.) He did address that we need better infrastructure to foster better safety for people/children walking and biking outside independently; but that was mentioned briefly and never brought up again. I thought this book was a good start into this important topic, and I agreed with most of the sentiments and enjoyed the statistics- though I think more research should be done to respond to this book. I will be keeping my eye on new discourse coming out around this topic.

This book argues very convincingly that the cause of many of today's issues, the isolation of boys and mental health problems in girls, can be traced back to smartphone and social media use. I particularly enjoyed that the author tries to highlight possible solutions both on the large scale and the smaller scale.

At times I felt the author started having a pretty black and white look on smartphones and social media. I would have enjoyed a more in-depth discussion of possible advantages of smartphones or online communities and how they can be used for meaningful connection.

Haidt argues the introduction of smart phones around 2012, with the resulting constant access to social media, has caused the decline in teen girls' mental health around the world, along with the loss of freedom as parents became more worried about "stranger danger". Research seems pretty robust to me, even though it cannot prove causation. I'm old so I grew up without mobile phones or internet, riding my bike around the suburbs. Even if the thesis of the book is wrong, I think a free range, smart-phone free childhood is not going to kill anyone, so why not try it? The only problem is that if your kid is the only one who doesn't have a smart phone or social media, they'll feel left out. So it's good to try and get your kids' friends' parents to ban the smart phones too. As regards letting kids roam the neighbourhood, I suppose it depends where you live. Haidt let his daughter walk to school in NYC from the age of 9.

If you combine this book with Pete Etchells' Unlocked: The Real Science of Screen Time, you'll probably find a good balance of information on this subject. There are other books on this subject which will likely highlight other angles, I just haven't read them yet. ;)

Jonathan clearly understands the situation we are in, but appears to have very black and white thinking on this subject, which is an honestly natural and completely human reaction to watching two generations of kids seriously damaged by smartphones, in real time.

We can absolutely pull Gen Alpha back from the brink, but Gen Z will be the most scarred by indiscriminate access to social media via smartphones.

There are a couple of areas I didn't agree with at all, but I will keep those to myself as I think they are important as discussion points, but not to the extent implied.

I didn't have internet access at all until my twenties, and I agree that the moment we let techbros put smartphones in our hands, we basically sold our souls to Big Tech; forever too distracted by the 24/7 pull of mobile internet to pay attention to what was happening to kids who'd never known anything else, until it had dire consequences.

This book started off really strongly, discussing something that is up there with climate change for me as a crisis everyone seems aware of but doesn't really ever move in a positive direction.

I resonate with a lot of what Haidt says even though I feel like I only caught the early beginnings of this with myspace and mmos. I can't imagine what it would be like to grow up now with social media a huge fixture of my life.

The second half of the book was very disappointing, it felt like he repeats the same two or three collective action points which left me feeling a bit hopeless. I do wonder whether it is too late and we need to lean into changing social media into a positive force and supporting kids using it.

The idea of risky play and overly defensive parenting also strikes a chord, but as I'm not a parent I'll reserve my opinion on how best to parent. I certainly remember the scrapes and close calls fondly.