The Anxious Generation

Social Media is a topic I’ve followed closely over the years, personally suffered from it, and have written about in the past.

Jonathan Haidt explains where we are headed, as a generation addicted to shortform content, having no control whatsoever on the content they watch (they think they do, but they don’t), the psychological stress that they have to endure, and the long-term implications. This book is focused on teens and pre-teens. So while I was excited to read more about the perils of social media amongst adults, the content was still riveting and sobering.

The base argument of this book is that mental health in teens and pre-teens has seen a sharp decline, coinciding with the advent of social media and smartphones. Kids are becoming more anxious, a sentiment repeatedly shared by other writers. Not just kids, I’ve experienced this myself, and I’m sure a number of adults have done so too. The deadly combination of portable computers(smartphones), the easy availability and accessibility of the internet, and the engineering minds behind social media apps, all of these come together to create an environment that makes it difficult to break free of social media. Evolutionary instincts make us susceptible to the tricks employed by these social media platforms, and this hits especially hard for kids who are plastic and are learning or molding their worldview. The author argues that free play has declined sharply and overparenting has seen a rise in recent decades. Free play, the author vehemently argues, is critical for a child to develop real-life skills such as communication, leadership, negotiation, etc. All of this is simply not possible virtually, no matter what the companies tell us.

While I resonated with the first 3 sections of the book—namely the adverse effects of social media—I specifically enjoyed the solutions proposed by the author in the final section of the book. And these are not band-aid solutions, these are solutions that can make a difference (at least imo). Encouraging parents to allow and push for more free-play, enforcing regulations to lower the minimum age for social media registration, and making schools a no-phone zone. These are solutions tried by a select few with wondrous results. More technically, suggesting operating system developers to integrate age within the device (set by the parent) so that kids cannot bypass age verification, because that’s as good as not having one.

This book reinforced my existing thoughts on the topic. I’m disheartened, sure, but there’s still hope at the end of the tunnel, contrary to what I used to think. Very good read.

Social media and smartphones destroyed the social lives of young folks by connecting them to everyone in the world and disconnecting them from the people in the room.