Virtual Book Club: The Anxious Generation
June 13 - July 26
The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt
We can’t ignore the very real issues facing our kids from mental health to social development to sleep issues to bullying. The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt is a book that is known to be thought provoking and actionable.
Join me on Slack throughout the summer for a discussion of the book, what lessons we can take away, and how to make small changes that will have a large ripple effect.
Order here or at your local bookstore. Audio and digital versions are available Libby, Spotify, Kindle, or your preferred reading platform
Summary of Anxious Generation: Jonathan Haidt lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit so many countries at the same time. He then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults. Haidt shows how the play-based childhood began to decline by the 1980’s, and how it was finally wiped out by the arrival of the phone-based childhood in the early 2010’s. He presents more than a dozen mechanisms by which this great rewiring of childhood has interfered with children’s social and neurological development, covering everything from sleep deprivation to attention fragmentation, addiction, loneliness, social contagion, social comparison, and perfectionism. He explains how social media damages girls more than boys and why boys have been withdrawing from the real world into the virtual world, with disastrous consequences for themselves, their families, and their societies.
