Jonathan Haidt’s New York Times bestseller The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness has resonated with tens of thousands of parents who are concerned about the addict-like behavior of their kids when it comes to their smartphones. And it’s not only people with children who are concerned: The American Psychological Association , Common Sense Media , and U.S.
Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, who has called for social media platforms to come with warning labels, are all on high alert regarding the effect of smartphones and social media on adolescents’ mental health. Still, Haidt’s claim—that Gen Z kids are different from their predecessors in terms of mental health because they’ve grown up on smartphones—as well as his suggestions for dialing it back , have prompted much pushback. Frequent Haidt critic Andrew Przybylski, an Oxford professor, told Platformer , “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Right now, I’d argue he doesn’t have that.” Chris Ferguson, at Stetson University, attempted to take some wind out of Haidt’s sails by pointing out that America’s recent suicide increase is not a phenomenon specific to teens. And Candice Odgers of the University of California Irvine, in her Nature journal critique of his book, said Haidt is adding to a “rising hysteria” around phones and that he is “telling stories that are unsupported by research.
” But Haidt and his chief research.