“We are overprotecting our children in the real world while underprotecting them online. If we really want to keep our children safe, we should delay their entry into the virtual world and send them out to play in the real world instead.” Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation Location 1,109
The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt should be required reading for every parent and adult who cares about kids. It also helped give me words for some of the thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors that I’ve found in myself and those close to me. The good news…things don’t have to be this way. We can stop at any time by simply putting the phone down.
We got our daughter a phone when she started riding the bus each day to basketball practice off campus from school. She will be in 10th grade this fall and does not have social media. It’s getting harder to hold that line, but it’s worth it. Our son will be in 6th grade and is pretty certain he’s the only 6th grader without a phone. He might be…but he will then also be the only 7th grader without one next year, so he might as well settle in. To be fair…he has an old iphone that doesn’t have a sim card that he likes to play Madden on and text his friends sometimes….no internet availability or social media. One thing that makes it a bit easier for us is that I work at the school our kids go to…they are never away from me or an adult that they can go to in an emergency if needed.
I highlighted several things while reading and have posted those notes below. I look forward to continuing the conversation in the days and years ahead. Please know that my position is that it is worth the battle for the hearts and minds of our kids. We had so much to be thankful for without these palm size distractions when we were kids!
- By designing a firehose of addictive content that entered through kids’ eyes and ears, and by displacing physical play and in-person socializing, these companies have rewired childhood and changed human development on an almost unimaginable scale. Location 124
- While the reward-seeking parts of the brain mature earlier, the frontal cortex—essential for self-control, delay of gratification, and resistance to temptation—is not up to full capacity until the mid-20s, and preteens are at a particularly vulnerable point in development. Location 149
- Gen Z became the first generation in history to go through puberty with a portal in their pockets that called them away from the people nearby and into an alternative universe that was exciting, addictive, unstable, and—as I will show—unsuitable for children and adolescents. Succeeding socially in that universe required them to devote a large part of their consciousness—perpetually—to managing what became their online brand. This was now necessary to gain acceptance from peers, which is the oxygen of adolescence, and to avoid online shaming, which is the nightmare of adolescence. Gen Z teens got sucked into spending many hours of each day scrolling through the shiny happy posts of friends, acquaintances, and distant influencers. They watched increasing quantities of user-generated videos and streamed entertainment, offered to them by autoplay and algorithms that were designed to keep them online as long as possible. They spent far less time playing with, talking to, touching, or even making eye contact with their friends and families, thereby reducing their participation in embodied social behaviors that are essential for successful human development. Location 172
- My central claim in this book is that these two trends—overprotection in the real world and underprotection in the virtual world—are the major reasons why children born after 1995 became the anxious generation. Location 214
- A few notes about terminology. When I talk about the “real world,” I am referring to relationships and social interactions characterized by four features that have been typical for millions of years: They are embodied, meaning that we use our bodies to communicate, we are conscious of the bodies of others, and we respond to the bodies of others both consciously and unconsciously. They are synchronous, which means they are happening at the same time, with subtle cues about timing and turn taking. They involve primarily one-to-one or one-to-several communication, with only one interaction happening at a given moment. They take place within communities that have a high bar for entry and exit, so people are strongly motivated to invest in relationships and repair rifts when they happen. Location 217
- In contrast, when I talk about the “virtual world,” I am referring to relationships and interactions characterized by four features that have been typical for just a few decades: They are disembodied, meaning that no body is needed, just language. Partners could be (and already are) artificial intelligences (AIs). They are heavily asynchronous, happening via text-based posts and comments. (A video call is different; it is synchronous.) They involve a substantial number of one-to-many communications, broadcasting to a potentially vast audience. Multiple interactions can be happening in parallel. They take place within communities that have a low bar for entry and exit, so people can block others or just quit when they are not pleased. Communities tend to be short-lived, and relationships are often disposable. Location 225
- The key factor is the commitment required to make relationships work. When people are raised in a community that they cannot easily escape, they do what our ancestors have done for millions of years: They learn how to manage relationships, and how to manage themselves and their emotions in order to keep those precious relationships going. Location 236
- They would provide a foundation for healthier childhood in the digital age. They are: No smartphones before high school. Parents should delay children’s entry into round-the-clock internet access by giving only basic phones (phones with limited apps and no internet browser) before ninth grade (roughly age 14). No social media before 16. Let kids get through the most vulnerable period of brain development before connecting them to a firehose of social comparison and algorithmically chosen influencers. Phone-free schools. In all schools from elementary through high school, students should store their phones, smartwatches, and any other personal devices that can send or receive texts in phone lockers or locked pouches during the school day. That is the only way to free up their attention for each other and for their teachers. Far more unsupervised play and childhood independence. That’s the way children naturally develop social skills, overcome anxiety, and become self-governing young adults. Location 321
- Here is Epictetus, in the first century CE, lamenting the human tendency to let others control our emotions: If your body was turned over to just anyone, you would doubtless take exception. Why aren’t you ashamed that you have made your mind vulnerable to anyone who happens to criticize you, so that it automatically becomes confused and upset?[19] Location 338
- Marcus Aurelius’s advice to himself, in the second century CE: Don’t waste the rest of your time here worrying about other people—unless it affects the common good. It will keep you from doing anything useful. You’ll be too preoccupied with what so-and-so is doing, and why, and what they’re saying, and what they’re thinking, and what they’re up to, and all the other things that throw you off and keep you from focusing on your own mind. Location 345
- This book is not just for parents, teachers, and others who care for or about children. It is for anyone who wants to understand how the most rapid rewiring of human relationships and consciousness in human history has made it harder for all of us to think, focus, forget ourselves enough to care about others, and build close relationships. Location 355
- What Is Anxiety? Anxiety is related to fear, but is not the same thing. The diagnostic manual of psychiatry (DSM-5-TR) defines fear as “the emotional response to real or perceived imminent threat, whereas anxiety is anticipation of future threat.”[12] Both can be healthy responses to reality, but when excessive, they can become disorders. Location 455
- “We are forever elsewhere.”[33] Location 594
- A key feature of free play is that mistakes are generally not very costly. Location 852
- The rise of mass media in the 20th century initiated this decoupling of excellence and prestige. The phrase “famous for being famous” first became popular in the 1960s when it became possible for an ordinary person to rise in the public’s consciousness not for having done anything important but simply for having been seen by millions on TV and then being talked about over a few news cycles. Location 995
- So what happens to American children who generally get their first smartphone around the age of 11 and then get socialized into the cultures of Instagram, TikTok, video games, and online life for the rest of their teen years? The sequential introduction of age-appropriate experiences, tuned to sensitive periods and shared with same-age peers, had been the norm during the era of play-based childhood. But in a phone-based childhood, children are plunged into a whirlpool of adult content and experiences that arrive in no particular order. Identity, selfhood, emotions, and relationships will all be different if they develop online rather than in real life. What gets rewarded or punished, how deep friendships become, and above all what is desirable—all of these will be determined by the thousands of posts, comments, and ratings that the child sees each week. Any child who spends her sensitive period as a heavy user of social media will be shaped by the cultures of those sites. This may explain why Gen Z’s mental health outcomes are so much worse than those of the millennials: Gen Z was the first generation to go through puberty and the sensitive period for cultural learning on smartphones. Location 1,042
- We are overprotecting our children in the real world while underprotecting them online. If we really want to keep our children safe, we should delay their entry into the virtual world and send them out to play in the real world instead. Location 1,109
- Unsupervised outdoor play teaches children how to handle risks and challenges of many kinds. By building physical, psychological, and social competence, it gives kids confidence that they can face new situations, which is an inoculation against anxiety. In this chapter, I’ll show that a healthy human childhood with a lot of autonomy and unsupervised play in the real world sets children’s brains to operate mostly in “discover mode,” with a well-developed attachment system and an ability to handle the risks of daily life. Conversely, when there is society-wide pressure on parents to adopt modern overprotective parenting, it sets children’s brains to operate mostly in “defend mode,” with less secure attachment and reduced ability to evaluate or handle risk. Let me explain what these terms mean, and why discover mode is one of the keys to helping the anxious generation. Location 1,110
- Discover mode fosters learning and growth. Location 1,144
- Discover mode (BAS) Scan for opportunities Kid in a candy shop Think for yourself Let me grow! Defend mode (BIS) Scan for dangers Scarcity mindset Cling to your team Keep me safe! Location 1,153
- Trees that are exposed to strong winds early in life become trees that can withstand even stronger winds when full grown. Conversely, trees that are raised in a protected greenhouse sometimes fall over from their own weight before they reach maturity. Location 1,186
- As children become more competent, they become increasingly more intrigued by some of the things that had frightened them. Location 1,231
- Kids and puppies are thrill seekers. They are hungry for thrills, and they must get them if they are to overcome their childhood fears and wire up their brains so that discover mode becomes the default. Children need to swing and then jump off the swing. They need to explore forests and junkyards in search of novelty and adventure. They need to shriek with their friends while watching a horror movie or riding a roller coaster. In the process they develop a broad set of competences, including the ability to judge risk for themselves, take appropriate action when faced with risks, and learn that when things go wrong, even if they get hurt, they can usually handle it without calling in an adult. Location 1,249
- Sandseter and Kennair analyzed the kinds of risks that children seek out when adults give them some freedom, and they found six: heights (such as climbing trees or playground structures), high speed (such as swinging, or going down fast slides), dangerous tools (such as hammers and drills), dangerous elements (such as experimenting with fire), rough-and-tumble play (such as wrestling), and disappearing (hiding, wandering away, potentially getting lost or separated). These are the major types of thrills that children need. Location 1,261
- Like young trees exposed to wind, children who are routinely exposed to small risks grow up to become adults who can handle much larger risks without panicking. Conversely, children who are raised in a protected greenhouse sometimes become incapacitated by anxiety before they reach maturity. Location 1,312
- We are misallocating our protective efforts. We should be giving children more of the practice they need in the real world and delaying their entry into the online world, where the benefits are fewer and the guardrails nearly nonexistent. Location 1,334
- If we want children to have a healthy pathway through puberty, we must first take them off experience blockers so that they can accumulate the wide range of experiences they need, including the real-world stressors their antifragile minds require to wire up properly. Then we should give children a clear pathway to adulthood with challenges, milestones, and a growing set of freedoms and responsibilities along the way. Location 1,618
- A human child doesn’t morph into a culturally functional adult solely through biological maturation. Children benefit from role models (for cultural learning), challenges (to stimulate antifragility), public recognition of each new status (to change their social identity), and mentors who are not their parents as they mature into competent, flourishing adults. Location 1,664
- In 1890, the great American psychologist William James described attention as “the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. . . . It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others.” [43] Attention is a choice we make to stay on one task, one line of thinking, one mental road, even as attractive off-ramps beckon. When we fail to make that choice and allow ourselves to be frequently sidetracked, we end up in “the confused, dazed, scatterbrained state” that James said is the opposite of attention. Staying on one road got much harder when the internet arrived and moved much of our reading online. Every hyperlink is an off-ramp, calling us to abandon the choice we made moments earlier. Location 2,062
- The opportunity cost of a phone-based childhood refers to everything that children do less of once they get unlimited round-the-clock access to the internet. Location 2,285
- The first foundational harm is social deprivation. When American adolescents moved onto smartphones, time with friends in face-to-face settings plummeted immediately, from 122 minutes per day in 2012 down to 67 minutes per day in 2019. Time with friends dropped further because of COVID restrictions, but Gen Z was already socially distanced before COVID restrictions were put in place. Location 2,286
- The second fundamental harm is sleep deprivation. As soon as adolescents moved from basic phones to smartphones, their sleep declined in both quantity and quality, around the developed world. Longitudinal studies show that smartphone use came first and was followed by sleep deprivation. Location 2,290
- The third fundamental harm is attention fragmentation. Attention is the ability to stay on one mental road while many off-ramps beckon. Staying on a road, staying on a task, is a feature of maturity and a sign of good executive function. But smartphones are kryptonite for attention. Many adolescents get hundreds of notifications per day, meaning that they rarely have five or 10 minutes to think without an interruption. Location 2,295
- The fourth fundamental harm is addiction. The behaviorists discovered that learning, for animals, is “the wearing smooth of a path in the brain.” The developers of the most successful social media apps used advanced behaviorist techniques to “hook” children into becoming heavy users of their products. Location 2,300
- The Great Rewiring of Childhood pulled young people out of real-world communities, including their own families, and created a new kind of childhood lived in multiple rapidly shifting networks. One inevitable result was anomie, or normlessness, because stable and binding moralities cannot form when everything is in flux, including the members of the network. Location 3,262
- When we give trust to kids, they soar. Trusting our kids to start venturing out into the world may be the most transformative thing adults can do. Location 4,205
- childhood independence requires collective action, and collective action is most easily facilitated by local schools. Location 4,208
- Anxious and depressed students have been flowing from middle schools into high schools since the early 2010s, and high schools are struggling to respond—as are universities. But we can stem the flow. If we can keep smartphones entirely out of elementary and middle schools while making more room for free play and student autonomy, then the students who enter high school in a few years will be healthier and happier. Location 4,352
- The cure for such parental anxiety is exposure. Experience the anxiety a few times, taking conscious note that your worst fears did not occur, and you learn that your child is more capable than you had thought. Each time, the anxiety gets weaker. Location 4,525