UCSB Arts & Lectures – Jonathan Haidt

The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness

“The shift in kids’ energy and attention from the physical world to the virtual one, Haidt shows, has been catastrophic, especially for girls.” The New York Times

“His common-sense recommendations for actions are excellent.” The Washington Post

Jonathan Haidt discusses why Gen Z (born after 1995) has such extraordinary rates of mental illness. He explains how their loss of independence and free play in the 1990s combined with the move to a fully phone-based childhood in the early 2010s to cause a collapse of mental health. 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. Most importantly, Haidt issues a clear call to action, proposing four simple rules that might end this epidemic of mental illness and restore a more humane childhood.