A Review of The Anxious Generation: How Phones and Social Media are Rewiring Adolescence, and Why More Outdoor Time Could Be the Antidote
A new book seeks to explain what went “suddenly and horribly wrong” for adolescents in the early 2010s. The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt makes a compelling argument that our youth are not okay, and smartphones and social media combined with a lack of free play outside are the main factors. Rates of anxiety and depression were fairly stable in the 2000s yet rose by more than 50% in the last decade. Even rates of self-harm as indicated by hospital admittance rates have sky-rocketed for both boys and girls.
Haidt and his research team share results from numerous studies to demonstrate that the recent alarming statistics are based on two big shifts: overprotecting kids in the real world and vastly under-protecting them in the virtual world. “The phone-based world in which children and adolescents now grow up in is profoundly hostile to human development,” he writes.
In the first part of the book, Haidt explains that human brains of all ages, but especially adolescent ones, need in-person, embodied, synchronous interactions filled with play in the outside world with peers, ideally with unstructured time that isn’t closely supervised by adults so children learn how to take risks, resolve conflicts, and feel agency in their lives. He details how we’ve moved from play-based childhoods where children had large chunks of time to be outside without continual adult supervision to a phone-based childhood with a pocket-sized device that is connected to everything on the internet traveling to every space our children inhabit. This has had profound consequences for individual mental health as well as negative impacts on the well-being of an entire generation because smartphones and social media harm even the kids who aren’t using them because their peers aren’t available for in-person play or are caught up in microdramas happening in virtual spaces.
At first these devices were mainly useful in the way a Swiss Army Knife is—as a tool. Flip phones and early smartphones were only used in certain situations, such as actually calling a parent or a friend. However, right around 2010 with the acquisition of Instagram by Facebook, the inclusion of forward-facing cameras (for selfies) on iPhones, and the invention of the App Store, the balance shifted. A tool that had been our servant started to become our master.
Suddenly this ubiquitous device became a vehicle for companies to develop ever-more-compelling apps that are brilliantly designed to capture our attention because the economy of the Internet is our eyeballs. We are now the product. The more time we spend on various apps and platforms, the more data is extracted about our behaviors, which then becomes valuable currency for advertisers. Within a few years, it became a collective social norm for youth as early as 6th grade (and even younger) to have a smartphone everywhere they go, and often children get internet-connected iPads before they even start school.
“This great rewiring of childhood,” Haidt writes, “is the single largest reason for the tidal wave of adolescent mental illness that began in the early 2010s.”
Four major harms
There are four key areas of harm that this move from play to phones has caused. These are:
Social deprivation: The opportunity cost of phones includes a rapid decline of in-person time spent with peers.
Sleep deprivation: The overall quantity and quantity of sleep has plummeted.
Attention fragmentation: Phones are “kryptonite” for attention, and teens aren’t learning executive function skills that require focus.
Addiction: Phones are dopamine-delivering devices, and our youth are feeling compelled to be on their phones in ways that are strikingly similar to slot machine gambling. Restricting use often results in withdrawal-like symptoms of irritability and anxiety.
Few parents actually want to hand their teens (or tweens) smartphones in middle school, but they are increasingly facing a dilemma because they also don’t want their children to feel left out or rejected socially. Humans are social mammals, and we are deeply motivated by what our peer group establishes as norms. Haidt says this is why the phone/social media challenges we are all facing clearly calls for collective action.
If parents and schools can collectively work together to delay phones until at least high school and delay social media access until even later (there are strong arguments for waiting until 18 at least when brain development is more mature) then youth won’t feel left out. Studies even show that a majority of adolescents know that Tiktok, Snapchat, and Instagram are bad for them, and they prefer not to have these apps; however, they also want their peers not to have them. If the majority of a child’s peers aren’t on phones/social platforms, that will remove the pressure and give teens’ attention back to their peers and their mentors.
Why social media is so harmful for girls while video games entrap boys
The Anxious Generation also delves into the gender differences that explain why social media is particularly harmful for girls (especially if they start using it before and during puberty) while video games and pornography is particularly harmful for boys. Girls are more susceptible to visual comparisons because their social status has been more closely connected to appearance, their aggression is more suited to the subtleties of social media, they share emotional states more readily which contributes so social contagion (joy is contagious among friends but depression is much more contagious, even to friends of friends, and current algorithms reward extreme behavior to keep attention engaged), and they are much more frequently victims of online predation, which means they have to spend their time online in a continual “defend” mode.
Boys are less impacted by social media but are on an equally troubling path with many disengaging from the real world, replacing it with video games and pornography. According to Haidt, this decline dates back to the 1970s, with males feeling aimless and disconnected in a society that seems unwelcoming. While the digital realm offers opportunities for agency-building activities, such as exploration and skill mastery, it comes at the cost of profound loneliness and a lack of real-life skills development.
Collective action
While The Anxious Generation is a sobering read, it moves towards hope as it outlines four simple action for parents, schools, and possibly legislatures to take. Haidt argues that if just these four actions were taken by a majority of parents and schools, we’d see tangible improvements in teen mental health in just two years. The four takeaway action items are:
No smartphones before high school
No social media before 16
No phones in schools
More free independent play
This last area is crucial because we can’t simply take something away without filling that void with things we know are good for humans (all humans, but especially those in the crucial brain development stage of adolescence). We need to know that life, while full of challenges, has potential for deep meaning and beauty, that we matter, and that we belong to each other and to the earth.
Nature connection for the win
That’s where nature connection teachers have so much good wisdom to offer—they already know that young people need time in the more-than-human world with peers, play, stories, and song (group song and birdsong!). Good mentors are especially important to teens as adolescent brains are primed to start paying attention to mentors to learn how to live well and contribute positively within their community.
Awe and wonder is the best antidote for anxiety
While The Anxious Generation briefly mentions how unfortunate it is that children aren’t playing outside and getting comfortable in their local woods like they usually did when their parents were growing up, I want to add more that isn’t included in this book about kids and the natural world because there is a related body of research showing that the number one antidote to anxiety is awe and wonder. And while there are many ways to feel awe and wonder, one of the easiest ways is spending time in the more-than-human, natural world.
Paying attention to the more-than-human world is deeply good for us. And it’s actually accessible—research has shown that just 15 minutes sitting in a natural environment outside (without a distraction device in our pockets) results in reduced anxiety, mental restoration, a sense of connectedness with all life, and a greater sense of purpose. Mental health educator Tanya J. Peterson sums up the current research this way:
“The relationship between anxiety and awe is strong. Because it's an inverse relationship, when one goes up, the other goes down, be intentional about creating even small opportunities to experience awe and appreciate beauty. When you experience awe, you get out of your head and into the greater world. And when that happens, anxiety lessens.”
The Irish philosopher, former priest, and poet John O’Donohue says puts it this way:
“If you go out for several hours into a place that is wild, your mind begins to slow down, down, down. What is happening is that the clay of your body is retrieving its own sense of sisterhood with the great clay of the landscape.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer, the Potawatomi botanist, SUNY-distinguished professor, and the author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants says we don’t need the teaching of wonder—we need wonder itself.
“The land is the real teacher. All we need as students is mindfulness. Paying attention is a form of reciprocity with the living world, receiving the gifts with open eyes and open heart.”
In summary, The Anxious Generation is ringing a loud alarm about the potential harms of modern technology while providing tangible collective actions we all can take. And nature connection can be a much needed antidote for these anxious times, for teens and parents alike.
Daneen Akers is an Asheville area mama as well as a writer and English teacher. She wants to help more young people grow up doing what The Anxious Generation argues our children (including teens) all need more of—being outside with peers interacting in real time and space.
Sources:
Haidt, Jonathan. The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. Allen Lane, 2024.
“Absorption: How Nature Experiences Promote Awe and Other Positive Emotions.” Ecopsychology, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/eco.2017.0044.
Peterson, Tanya J. “The Relationship Between Anxiety and Awe.” HealthyPlace, HealthyPlace, accessed February 12, 2023, https://www.healthyplace.com/blogs/anxiety-schmanxiety/2016/06/the-relationship-between-anxiety-and-awe.
O'Donohue, John. Beauty: The Invisible Embrace. HarperPerennial, 2005.
Kimmerer, Robin Wall. “The Intelligence of Plants.” The On Being Project, June 16, 2022, https://onbeing.org/programs/robin-wall-kimmerer-the-intelligence-of-plants-2022/.