The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness
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Jonathan Haidt's 2024 book argues that a shift from a play-based to a phone-based childhood, starting around 2010, is associated with rising rates of anxiety, depression, and self-harm-related warning signs among adolescents, especially girls. Haidt describes four mechanisms — social deprivation, sleep loss, attention fragmentation, and heightened social comparison — as pathways linking heavy smartphone and social-media use to these outcomes, alongside overprotective parenting and the loss of unsupervised play. It proposes four norms: no smartphones before high school, no social media before 16, phone-free schools, and more independent play. The book spent over 100 consecutive weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and has been credited by news outlets, including Reuters, as an influence on Australia's under-16 social media law. Some researchers have publicly disputed how strongly the cited studies support the book's causal framing.
As of mid-2026, the book had logged more than 111 consecutive weeks on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list, reaching #1 five times during 2024.
Haidt, Jonathan. The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. New York: Penguin Press, 2024.