The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness
Jonathan Haidt
Mar 2024 · Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by Jonathan Haidt and Sean Pratt
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57 reviews
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THE ACCLAIMED #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER with over two million copies sold • A must-read for all parents: the generation-defining investigation into the collapse of youth mental health in the era of smartphones, social media, and big tech—and a plan for a healthier, freer childhood. • A cultural catalyst for the resulting $17.1 Billion Meta Settlement.
Named one of the best books of the year by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Time, The Economist, New York Post, and Town & Country • One of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of the Year • Named finalist for the PEN Literary Awards
“With tenacity and candor, Haidt lays out the consequences that have come with allowing kids to drift further into the virtual world . . . While also offering suggestions and solutions that could help protect a new generation of kids.” —Time
After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged in the early 2010s. Rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rose sharply, more than doubling on many measures. Why?
In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt (pronounced "height") lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time. He then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults. Haidt shows how the “play-based childhood” began to decline in the 1980s, and how it was finally wiped out by the arrival of the “phone-based childhood” in the early 2010s. 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. He explains why social media damages girls more than boys and why boys have been withdrawing from the real world into the virtual world, with disastrous consequences for themselves, their families, and their societies.
Most important, Haidt issues a clear call to action. He diagnoses the “collective action problems” that trap us, and then proposes four simple rules that might set us free. He describes steps that parents, teachers, schools, tech companies, and governments can take to end the epidemic of mental illness and restore a more humane childhood.
Haidt has spent his career speaking truth backed by data in the most difficult landscapes—communities polarized by politics and religion, campuses battling culture wars, and now the public health emergency faced by Gen Z. We cannot afford to ignore his findings about protecting our children—and ourselves—from the psychological damage of a phone-based life.
Named one of the best books of the year by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Time, The Economist, New York Post, and Town & Country • One of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of the Year • Named finalist for the PEN Literary Awards
“With tenacity and candor, Haidt lays out the consequences that have come with allowing kids to drift further into the virtual world . . . While also offering suggestions and solutions that could help protect a new generation of kids.” —Time
After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged in the early 2010s. Rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rose sharply, more than doubling on many measures. Why?
In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt (pronounced "height") lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time. He then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults. Haidt shows how the “play-based childhood” began to decline in the 1980s, and how it was finally wiped out by the arrival of the “phone-based childhood” in the early 2010s. 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. He explains why social media damages girls more than boys and why boys have been withdrawing from the real world into the virtual world, with disastrous consequences for themselves, their families, and their societies.
Most important, Haidt issues a clear call to action. He diagnoses the “collective action problems” that trap us, and then proposes four simple rules that might set us free. He describes steps that parents, teachers, schools, tech companies, and governments can take to end the epidemic of mental illness and restore a more humane childhood.
Haidt has spent his career speaking truth backed by data in the most difficult landscapes—communities polarized by politics and religion, campuses battling culture wars, and now the public health emergency faced by Gen Z. We cannot afford to ignore his findings about protecting our children—and ourselves—from the psychological damage of a phone-based life.
THE ACCLAIMED #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER with over two million copies sold • A must-read for all parents: the generation-defining investigation into the collapse of youth mental health in the era of smartphones, social media, and big tech—and a plan for a healthier, freer childhood. • A cultura...
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Ratings and reviews
57 reviews
Oscar Arana
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May 18, 2025
I'm sorry, but I do not agree with the disappointed attitude of the narration of this book. Not everyone has the means to, ever, go to university; a supposed natural progression of children in our society. Not everyone has the, privilege, to grow up in communities where threats are not real, and where a defense mode is inevitably necessary. I'm sorry you feel threatened by, anxiety, and, so far, as I listen, your inadequacy to deal with the many changes in society. I don't undermine many of the, facts, within this text. Some can be very true, but living in the past is not a way to go forth in an ever changing society, and "rewiring," of children. I advise you to deal with what is, not what once was, and so, how you think it should be. How you think it should be, is not today's reality. This coming from a class of '99 Brooklyn Technical High School Graduate, and so a Tecnnite, as well as is the author of this book. And so, after Chapter 3, I am giving up on this book...
Mindy Voet
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June 8, 2025
Kind of a boring listen that I just wanted to get through and nothing new was learned. This is all known information. I do appreciate the action ideas but also some are not realistic. I also appreciate the focus on the importance of the issue and the need to be addressed but there was little on suggestions on letting kids be independent in smaller realistic steps.
Bryan B
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December 1, 2025
This book provides good insight into the troubles of our young children and the path they will continue to head down without some intervention from current parents and grandparents.
About the author
Jonathan Haidt (pronounced “Height”) is the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business. He obtained his PhD in social psychology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992 and taught at the University of Virginia for sixteen years. His research focuses on moral and political psychology, as described in his book The Righteous Mind. His latest book, The Anxious Generation, is a direct continuation of the themes explored in The Coddling of the American Mind (written with Greg Lukianoff). It inspired The Amazing Generation (written with Catherine Price), a handbook for tweens. He writes the After Babel Substack.
Jonathan Haidt (pronounced “Height”) is the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business. He obtained his PhD in social psychology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992 and taught at the University of Virginia for sixteen years. His researc...
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