Jul 31, 2025 Book Review: “The Anxious Generation” by Jonathan Haidt
In the Pixar movie, WALL-E, set a few hundred years in the future, humans have no direct contact with one another, are relatively helpless, and spend all day interacting only via television. As did many of my friends, I felt that the film got the trends exactly right. Author Jonathan Haidt leads the pack in warning how the seeds of this problem have sprouted before us in recent years.
In The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness (2024), Jonathan Haidt, a social psychology professor at New York University, delivers a compelling and urgent examination of the alarming rise in adolescent mental health issues, tying the trend to the equally worrying sense that future generations will be unable to cope with real life challenges.
The book argues that the transition from an outdoor play-based to an indoor phone-based childhood, particularly for Generation Z (born after 1995), has fundamentally altered child and teen development, contributing to a global surge in depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide.
Drawing on evolutionary psychology, Haidt compares human development to the way creatures adapt to gravity. Just as bones and muscles grow in response to the consistent pull of gravity, children’s neurological and social development relies on physical, unstructured play. He further describes how we have lost the critical experiences of social rituals, rites of passage and romantic attachments with the retreat to video gaming and addiction to social media tracking. Haidt explains, “Play is the work of childhood, and all young mammals have the same job: Wire up your brain by playing vigorously and often.” Haidt recounts studies that show how play-deprived mammals suffer social, cognitive, and emotional impairments.
Haidt shares the story of his new puppy, Wilma, learning to handle challenges through play, making a comparison to children who need unstructured outdoor play to develop confidence and resilience. “Unsupervised outdoor play teaches children how to handle risks and challenges of many kinds,” he explains, arguing that its decline has left children unprepared to face life’s uncertainties.
Haidt documents an international trend that started in the early 2010s, where adolescent mental health metrics—previously stable or improving—experienced a sharp decline. This isn’t a solely American phenomenon; similar patterns are seen in countries with widespread smartphone and social media use, such as Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Iceland. Hospitalization rates for non-fatal self-injury among pre-teens and teens have increased, with suicide rates for 15- to 19-year-olds reaching historic highs, especially among girls. Haidt reports a staggering 45%+ increase in young adolescent American girls reporting major depressive episodes since 2012, along with a tripling of self-harm rates among young adolescent girls from 2010 to 2020.
Haidt argues that two simultaneous trends—overprotection by parents of children in the real, physical world and underprotection of children in the virtual world—have created a wave of disability among the latest generation. The challenges will only worsen as generative AI blurs the lines between reality and fiction, potentially making digital navigation even more complicated.
Looking back at evolutionary history, other species, and Americans, Haidt explains how children’s opportunities for free play and independent mobility have changed significantly since the 1980s. High school seniors’ engagement in “adult” activities like working, walking to stores, or driving has decreased by up to 40% over the decades. U.S. micro-parenting in the 1990s and 2000s coincided with a decline in children’s autonomy. Haidt argues that this “safetyism” stifles the development of resilience, likening children to “stress wood”—a metaphor for trees that grow stronger when exposed to environmental stressors. “Stress wood is a perfect metaphor for children, who also need to experience frequent stressors in order to become strong adults,
In contrast, the virtual world, where young people increasingly escape from real life, offers little protection. Smartphones, which reached majority penetration among American teens by 2015, have ushered in a “phone-based childhood” that Haidt describes as “disembodied, asynchronous, one-to-many communications, and a low bar for entry.” This shift has disrupted key developmental processes.
Haidt identifies four primary harms: sleep deprivation, social deprivation, attention fragmentation, and addiction.
Haidt convincingly argues that this is a causal relationship, not just a correlation. “Social media does not just correlate with mental illness, it causes it,” Haidt asserts, citing studies showing that girls spending five or more hours daily on social media are three times more likely to be depressed compared to those who abstain. Adolescent girls increasingly face pressure to post images of themselves during puberty—a period of heightened vulnerability. He argues that the virtual world, with its “like” and retweet mechanics, fosters a culture of comparison and validation-seeking that worsens loneliness and depression. “This is the great irony of social media: the more you immerse yourself in it, the more lonely and depressed you become,” he writes. The metaphor of smartphones as “a portal in their pockets” pulling teens into an “exciting, addictive, unstable, and… unsuitable” alternative universe is particularly evocative, underscoring how digital environments disrupt rites of passage and real-world social bonds.
Stories of parents feeling powerless as their children become irritable or threaten self-harm when separated from their devices are especially distressing. Haidt’s emphasis on collective resilience—“People don’t get depressed when they face threats collectively; they get depressed when they feel isolated, lonely, or useless”—provides a hopeful counterpoint, indicating that community-driven solutions can help restore balance.
Haidt observes, “We don’t let preteens buy tobacco or alcohol, or enter casinos. The costs of using social media, in particular, are high for adolescents, compared with adults, while the benefits are minimal. Let children grow up on Earth first, before sending them to Mars.”
Haidt’s solutions are bold, difficult and specific:
- No smartphones for children before high school,
- no social media before age 16,
- phone-free schools: no online social media or use of phones while in classes, and,
- a return to unsupervised play.
From his interviews, he recounts how many parents feel helpless acting alone to solve these issues. As a result, he emphasizes collective action, “No single parent can make these changes alone… whole communities and institutions must embrace new norms together,” he writes. He advocates for a cultural shift, comparing unrestricted social media access for preteens to allowing them into casinos or giving them alcohol.
Other reviewers question the feasibility of his recommendations, noting that in an increasingly tech-integrated and technology-dependent world, banning smartphones for younger teens could isolate them from peers and hinder their development of online skills.
The Anxious Generation, which builds on similar books by Haidt that have made him popular, is an easy and convincing read as he weaves data, anecdotes, and evolutionary insights in a way that resonates with parents, educators, and policymakers.
The book’s strength is in its clarity and urgency, although its prescriptive approach might oversimplify a complex issue. Haidt’s emphasis on experience over information—“Experience, not information, is the key to emotional development”—serves as a powerful reminder of the tactile, human connections children need. While some may find his solutions as idealistic, they spark necessary conversations about how society can protect its youth without stifling their growth. As Haidt states, “We are misallocating our protective efforts,” and his call to recalibrate parenting and policy for the digital age presents both a challenge and an opportunity.
Overall, The Anxious Generation is a timely, provocative and well-researched exploration of a very worrying generational crisis.
Steven Hansch is a humanitarian aid specialist with extensive field, management, and evaluation experience. He teaches at several universities and serves on several nonprofit boards involved in human development and humanitarian aid. Leslie Barcus has served on national and international animal protection organization boards. Her professional activities include work in more than forty countries addressing animal protection, microfinance, biodiversity conservation, organizational capacity building, and international economic development.