How Screens Stole Childhood — and How to Get It Back

Speaking at the TED2026 conference, roughly two years after publishing 'The Anxious Generation,' Jonathan Haidt extends his earlier argument about smartphones and social media to newer generative-AI products marketed to children, including classroom tablets, AI 'companion' apps, and algorithmic feeds. He argues these tools are displacing the face-to-face social interaction he believes humans need for healthy development, and that this displacement is associated with the same mental-health warning signs he described in his earlier work. He proposes three principles of what he calls 'tech-skepticism' — treating new child-facing technologies cautiously until their effects are better understood, prioritizing unsupervised play and independence, and building shared, community-level norms around device use rather than leaving individual families to decide alone — as a framework for schools, platforms, and parents weighing whether and how to adopt new AI tools around children.

REPORT A PROBLEM WITH THIS ENTRY