Jonathan Haidt

Researchers · NYU Stern School of Business

The social psychologist who turned "phone-based childhood" into the defining frame for the youth mental-health debate.

Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist at NYU Stern whose book "The Anxious Generation" (2024) became a publishing phenomenon, spending more than 100 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. It popularized four norms for parents and schools: no smartphone before high school, no social media before 16, phone-free schools, and more unsupervised free play. He earlier co-wrote "The Coddling of the American Mind" (2018) and continues the argument on his After Babel Substack. Through anxiousgeneration.com, he has organized a wide network of parents and schools around reducing children's phone-based childhoods.