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Rob's Reviews > The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness
The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness
by
by
Where to begin with this? This is a book that has a very specific hypothesis and sticks to it, regardless of whether or not the data employed to advance that argument is accurate or, indeed, based upon robust measures of what is being reported as the problem. This is a shame as the overall argument - that technology has “rewired” childhood for the worse - is one that many parents will want to hear and have their own suspicions confirmed. Well, this book will do that for many a reader despite its flaws.
It opens with a spurious example of kids settling Mars - spoiler: it doesn’t go well as our bodies are not adapted to a different environment, and those future hypothetical settlers of Mars are unlikely to be well adapted to return to Earth. But the drive to achieve something new is often driven by forces which do not have the best intentions for humans at heart. Essentially the thought experiment uses physiognomy as a parallel to social media use, which is dubious at best. The supposed blame being levelled at technology firms for harming children in the opening gambit seems to lack a consideration of any and all forms of regulatory or legal oversights in its rush to make a questionable situation seem far worse than it is.
Does it get much better than this? Not really.
Instead of asking who it was that enabled access to technology, devices and services (surely the domain of parents?), the writer goes straight into the blame game, levelling this square at the door of social media site creators, video game makers, and pornographers. Reading this left me baffled. While there are genuine reasons for not wanting kids to spend time engaging with material that’s inappropriate for them, I was perplexed as to how the age limits imposed on these products by third parties and the lack of parental control were seldom mentioned. It’s as if the kids mentioned were able to gorge themselves unrestrained on all-you-can-eat buffet of uncensored digital content. Parental controls have existed since I was a teenager so how come they aren’t being considered, never mind enforced? Is it because that would make for some uncomfortable shifting in blame? At least the conclusion of the book does encourage parents to get acquainted with these tools… but still, this is left until rather late and fails to engage with the point when it presented itself.
What’s next? Compare social media to tobacco? Lead paint? Yup.
At least he makes some solid claims about displacement activities and sleep deprivation having negative social consequences. These are clearly valid points, and I am broadly sympathetic to the general thesis, but the science of devices and blue-light circadian rhythms’ impact upon sleep are highly disputed when it comes to this line of argumentation (as pointed out by Pete Etchells in his book, Unlocked: The Real Science of Screen Time). Why not look at, say, diet and concentrations of sugar, caffeine and artificial sweeteners alongside this data? Why not consider how access to digital media has enabled young people to see through the shallow promises of neoliberal precariousness?
Nah, it must be the phones.
And then, the book seriously detours. We have a significant section that is reliant upon Johann Hari’s "Stolen Focus" - a writer who is not without controversy with regard to integrity. That the same anecdote about a bored and displaced teen gets dragged up a few times to fill the narrative, when many readers will have serious doubts about Hari’s recollection of such an event given his past record, seems convenient but unconvincing. Remember, this is the same book that took until page 176 (!) to announce “We don’t have any long-term studies tracking changes in people’s ability to focus over time”, rendering much of the work a pure speculation. And this book is cited several times. Please refer to the section in Pete Etchell’s book about studies into attention for more nuance.
At least Haidt is circumspect about the impact of technology on boys in chapter 7. But that doesn’t stop him from blaming video games for social disconnection and rise in nihilistic beliefs, circa a cursory reference to Durkheim’s work, in an effort to explain why suicidal ideation is more impactful in girls over boys - with none of the methodological reflection that this work entailed (ie Durkheim's infamous ecological fallacy debate). Given Durkheim’s work on suicide data in Christian France pointed to the problem in keeping accurate records of self harm due to cultural norms regarding spiritual ascendancy (suicide is a sin; denied a Christian funeral, differences between Catholics and Protestants, etc), we should be alert to what seems like a cherry-picked approach to ideas that fit the author’s thesis while avoiding addressing some of the implications of such an approach. That oversight might be forgiven if the next chapter wasn’t dedicated to the importance of “spirituality”…
What follows is a chapter that is more of a rumination on the decline in social bonds that, obviously, he blames upon technology. Somewhere, I suspect there’s a parallel chain of thought which also points to digital connectedness as the source of this real world fragmentation. It’s possible that what we once thought of as community norms only fit for the vocal in the demos and that a significantly silent proportion of the community didn’t agree with all the norms that supposedly bound us together, yet they went along with them because doing so provided societal benefits. Now, access to alternatives via digitally social connectedness means that similar beliefs can be found outside the geographical community, hence undermining the importance of traditional norms. It seems Haidt likes the argument against modernity though. For him, time and space have become disembodied from the real world, thus meaning dissipates. Structured rituals lose their meaning. I’ll remember that when I have to miss the big game because I have to work this weekend.
And yet… do I think that too much screen media at too soon an age is potentially detrimental to young (and old!) people? I’d issue a hesitant 'yes' here. This book makes for alarmist rhetoric: after all Haidt has something to sell and the stance he takes here is probably part of that process. I’m sure he means well. I’m just not sure I think the evidence base he presents is a solid as he claims. Aaron Brown has done a fair job of calling these claims into question, having pointed out that of the 476 studies Haidt mentions in his book, two third of them were originally published before 2010, and only 22 of them have data on heavy social media use or mental health: none have both.
I’d recommend people check that out via Reason's website:
https://reason.com/video/2024/04/02/t...
There are other issues in the way his data is employed, as others like Ruben Arslan have pointed out re: the 2017 'brain drain' claim.
One thing that Haidt has claimed is that he will update his associated book site with responses to criticism and the errors in his data. At the time of writing, it has received only one correction update… [edit Sept 1t5th] now 2 following Ruben C Arslan's critique (although Haidt misspelled his name!) which either points to the confidence in the claims or that he's not taking many of the criticisms seriously. Hard to say. Anne Scheel has offered an explanatory account of why these erratum sites exist. Readers can draw their own conclusions.
It opens with a spurious example of kids settling Mars - spoiler: it doesn’t go well as our bodies are not adapted to a different environment, and those future hypothetical settlers of Mars are unlikely to be well adapted to return to Earth. But the drive to achieve something new is often driven by forces which do not have the best intentions for humans at heart. Essentially the thought experiment uses physiognomy as a parallel to social media use, which is dubious at best. The supposed blame being levelled at technology firms for harming children in the opening gambit seems to lack a consideration of any and all forms of regulatory or legal oversights in its rush to make a questionable situation seem far worse than it is.
Does it get much better than this? Not really.
Instead of asking who it was that enabled access to technology, devices and services (surely the domain of parents?), the writer goes straight into the blame game, levelling this square at the door of social media site creators, video game makers, and pornographers. Reading this left me baffled. While there are genuine reasons for not wanting kids to spend time engaging with material that’s inappropriate for them, I was perplexed as to how the age limits imposed on these products by third parties and the lack of parental control were seldom mentioned. It’s as if the kids mentioned were able to gorge themselves unrestrained on all-you-can-eat buffet of uncensored digital content. Parental controls have existed since I was a teenager so how come they aren’t being considered, never mind enforced? Is it because that would make for some uncomfortable shifting in blame? At least the conclusion of the book does encourage parents to get acquainted with these tools… but still, this is left until rather late and fails to engage with the point when it presented itself.
What’s next? Compare social media to tobacco? Lead paint? Yup.
At least he makes some solid claims about displacement activities and sleep deprivation having negative social consequences. These are clearly valid points, and I am broadly sympathetic to the general thesis, but the science of devices and blue-light circadian rhythms’ impact upon sleep are highly disputed when it comes to this line of argumentation (as pointed out by Pete Etchells in his book, Unlocked: The Real Science of Screen Time). Why not look at, say, diet and concentrations of sugar, caffeine and artificial sweeteners alongside this data? Why not consider how access to digital media has enabled young people to see through the shallow promises of neoliberal precariousness?
Nah, it must be the phones.
And then, the book seriously detours. We have a significant section that is reliant upon Johann Hari’s "Stolen Focus" - a writer who is not without controversy with regard to integrity. That the same anecdote about a bored and displaced teen gets dragged up a few times to fill the narrative, when many readers will have serious doubts about Hari’s recollection of such an event given his past record, seems convenient but unconvincing. Remember, this is the same book that took until page 176 (!) to announce “We don’t have any long-term studies tracking changes in people’s ability to focus over time”, rendering much of the work a pure speculation. And this book is cited several times. Please refer to the section in Pete Etchell’s book about studies into attention for more nuance.
At least Haidt is circumspect about the impact of technology on boys in chapter 7. But that doesn’t stop him from blaming video games for social disconnection and rise in nihilistic beliefs, circa a cursory reference to Durkheim’s work, in an effort to explain why suicidal ideation is more impactful in girls over boys - with none of the methodological reflection that this work entailed (ie Durkheim's infamous ecological fallacy debate). Given Durkheim’s work on suicide data in Christian France pointed to the problem in keeping accurate records of self harm due to cultural norms regarding spiritual ascendancy (suicide is a sin; denied a Christian funeral, differences between Catholics and Protestants, etc), we should be alert to what seems like a cherry-picked approach to ideas that fit the author’s thesis while avoiding addressing some of the implications of such an approach. That oversight might be forgiven if the next chapter wasn’t dedicated to the importance of “spirituality”…
What follows is a chapter that is more of a rumination on the decline in social bonds that, obviously, he blames upon technology. Somewhere, I suspect there’s a parallel chain of thought which also points to digital connectedness as the source of this real world fragmentation. It’s possible that what we once thought of as community norms only fit for the vocal in the demos and that a significantly silent proportion of the community didn’t agree with all the norms that supposedly bound us together, yet they went along with them because doing so provided societal benefits. Now, access to alternatives via digitally social connectedness means that similar beliefs can be found outside the geographical community, hence undermining the importance of traditional norms. It seems Haidt likes the argument against modernity though. For him, time and space have become disembodied from the real world, thus meaning dissipates. Structured rituals lose their meaning. I’ll remember that when I have to miss the big game because I have to work this weekend.
And yet… do I think that too much screen media at too soon an age is potentially detrimental to young (and old!) people? I’d issue a hesitant 'yes' here. This book makes for alarmist rhetoric: after all Haidt has something to sell and the stance he takes here is probably part of that process. I’m sure he means well. I’m just not sure I think the evidence base he presents is a solid as he claims. Aaron Brown has done a fair job of calling these claims into question, having pointed out that of the 476 studies Haidt mentions in his book, two third of them were originally published before 2010, and only 22 of them have data on heavy social media use or mental health: none have both.
I’d recommend people check that out via Reason's website:
https://reason.com/video/2024/04/02/t...
There are other issues in the way his data is employed, as others like Ruben Arslan have pointed out re: the 2017 'brain drain' claim.
One thing that Haidt has claimed is that he will update his associated book site with responses to criticism and the errors in his data. At the time of writing, it has received only one correction update… [edit Sept 1t5th] now 2 following Ruben C Arslan's critique (although Haidt misspelled his name!) which either points to the confidence in the claims or that he's not taking many of the criticisms seriously. Hard to say. Anne Scheel has offered an explanatory account of why these erratum sites exist. Readers can draw their own conclusions.
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May 28, 2024 10:26AM
The underlying point seems to ask parents to please get involved and monitor (control) what their kids are doing online at least equal to the amount of control they exert over "free play." I don't see Haidt giving parents or legislators a pass. The data is pretty clear about the connection between play and healthy child development.
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I'm not exactly sure what you're referencing when you mention 2/3 of the 476 studies are before 2010, when you can plainly see that nearly all of them are tracking through all of the 2010s and even into 2020s
It almost seems like this reviewer didn’t read the whole book or selectively forgot certain parts. Parental responsibility and clear instructions on how to go about implicating it in individual homes and within communities and schools are major focuses in the book. Much of the book is also dedicated to being a less fearful parent so it’s almost anti-alarmist. You don’t have to be a frustrated parent to identify and relate to these findings. If you’re an observant person who’s worked with young people in any capacity over the last 20 years the shift in behavior, competency, lack of coping skills and heightened anxiety and fear is undeniable. This book is full of actual proactive solutions to real life problems. I don’t think it gets much more helpful than that.
Methinks the reader doth protest too much.
Errol wrote: "I'm not exactly sure what you're referencing when you mention 2/3 of the 476 studies are before 2010, when you can plainly see that nearly all of them are tracking through all of the 2010s and even..."You can find that claim in the article entitled "The Bad Science Behind Jonathan Haidt's Call to Regulate Social Media" on Reason's website (dated 4/2/24). It sits alongside this alternative view of the same findings Haidt considers:
"Haidt cites 17 studies he considers to be longitudinal that either find no effect or an effect in the opposite direction of his claim, and only four were true longitudinal studies, meaning they analyzed the same group of people at different times to see how changes at one time, like increased social media use, were associated with future changes, like more depression. One of the studies on Haidt's list contradicted his claim, finding that depression occurs before social media use, not the other way around."
Personally, I think Brown's claim is questionable. I could only count <440 source citations in my copy, and even then I think there's a margin of error there. At least 9 were 'No Date' citations; 8 were 'Ongoing'; and many more were older articles housed in more recent compendiums. Some sources are double-counted, eg Auxier et al 2020 is listed separately to the Pew Research Centre 2020 when they are the one and the same source: 'Parenting children in the age of screens' 2020/07/28
Being generous, we might say this is an editors oversight.
But the broader point that the citations are not always addressing the same thing despite the author's conclusions can be seen in the ways sources like Hsu et al (2021) "Gender, “masculinity,” and “femininity”: A meta-analytic review of gender differences in agency and communion" clearly address something different to DeSteno (2021) "How God works: The science behind the benefits of religion". Or Bettmann et al (2016) 'A meta-analysis of wilderness therapy outcomes for private pay clients', for example
Meta-analyses are the issue here, and the coding that makes them comparable - these are few and far between.
Govina wrote: "It almost seems like this reviewer didn’t read the whole book or selectively forgot certain parts. Parental responsibility and clear instructions on how to go about implicating it in individual hom..."It's interesting that we both took different things from this. I found the book to be alarmist and I thought some of the suggestions for a better future (like smartphone/social media bans until 16) were connected to that.
I also am very sympathetic to the perceived social good that Haidt is advocating - I believe I noted this in the review - but I think some of the conclusions and suggestions that he reserves for the end of the book were a little late and formed a smaller part (if not less dramatic) than that which you characterised as 'major focuses'.
Govina wrote: "You don’t have to be a frustrated parent to identify and relate to these findings.."
Indeed. I do think a lot of what he's counting on is precisely this: frustration and relationality - it's what helps make his thesis as effective as it has been. I just don't think that this excuses some of the ways in which the secondary data has been construed.
"Why not look at, say, diet and concentrations of sugar, caffeine and artificial sweeteners alongside this data?"Because consumption of those existed plentifully before 2010, making any such comparison nonsensical unless you can make a solid theoretical argument that the quantity of consumption of those foods also increased right as smartphones were introduced.
The point isn't to consider every factor that can lead to an outcome. It is to consider why, when an outcome (e.g. childhood depression) changes drastically and rapidly at a given point of time, what of the thousands of potential factors also changed rapidly and drastically. The author makes (in my opinion) a well argued and theoretically grounded argument as to why the introduction of smartphones and the proceeding ripple effects explain at least the majority of the plainly visible effects.
Jacob wrote: ""Why not look at, say, diet and concentrations of sugar, caffeine and artificial sweeteners alongside this data?"Because consumption of those existed plentifully before 2010, making any such comp..."
They may have existed, but as children move into the pre-teen and teenage stage of life it's not unusual to see their intake of these items to increase dramatically. I opted specifically for these everyday data points because I wanted to demonstrate how cherry picking random variables can still demonstrate correlation - something many critics of Haidt have made. There's a good example of this explored in a short LSE article by Michaela Lebedíková et al (May 15th 2024, "Do smartphones really cause mental illness among adolescents? Ten problems with Jonathan Haidt’s book").
Counter to your claim, I think it's pretty clear that Haidt does want to isolate a handful of factors he perceives to lead to an outcome - which is way he often includes very different varaibles alongside one another when trying to explain the differences across gender groups, for example. For teen girls its social media and especially Instagram. For teen boys, its video games. Neither of these are limited to smartphones, and in fact in the case of the latter example, it's unlikely that gaming data he draws on takes places across mobile handsets (its PCs and consoles predominantly). These variables do matter if an author is trying to convince a readership about their thesis. I've read enough academic work in this space over the past two decades to recognise a bit of methodical sleight of hand. I'm not alone in this.
I think it's a shame because I would like to side with him on this, as I pointed out in my review, but I'm not convinced. I am willing to be in future though.
So you're pinning the results of a poorly understood, wildly powerful, and brand new technology, that was developed specifically to hack human psychology on the parents who were told it was normal? And where there was absolutely zero regulation or oversight? Where the companies involved cared about nothing else other than profit? This is exactly like what happened with the tobacco industry and why Haidt's book is necessary to inform parents. Please save me from a reply.
Nick wrote: "So you're pinning the results of a poorly understood, wildly powerful, and brand new technology, that was developed specifically to hack human psychology on the parents who were told it was normal?..."Sigh. No Nick, I'm not pinning it on parents. I'm pinning it on a better understanding of the (developing) science in this space, hence I pointed to some other researchers and writers who have offered more nuanced takes. I have some sympathy to the position Haidt proffers, but I have some doubts. And, c'mon with the no reply BS. That's not how this works and you know that, especially if you've taken the time to read my review and the replies to comments. I'll repeat my previous reply comment: "I would like to side with him on this, as I pointed out in my review, but I'm not convinced. I am willing to be in future though."
