Blaming Tech for Teen Troubles

Jonathan Haidt’s clever, insufficient case against smartphones

- ELIZABETH NOLAN BROWN

JONATHAN HAIDT OPENS The Anxious Generation with what is supposed to be an analogy for kids’ use of smartphones and social media: Would you let your child travel to Mars, he asks, if some Silicon Valley CEO said it was safe? It’s an absurd comparison: Whatever harms may or may not befall minors with iPhones, they’re light-years less apparent, substantial, or universal than those facing kids shuttling through outer space to a desert planet with an atmosphere mainly made of carbon dioxide.

Happily, most of this volume is far less hysterical than that opening might lead you to believe. Yes, this book is filled with unwarranted pessimism, unjustified conclusions, and unsavory solutions. But as he lays out his case that a “phonebased childhood” is replacing a “play-based childhood,” Haidt makes many points that even the most ardent opponents of tech panic and state intervention should be able to appreciate. Unfortunately, he can’t keep the spirit of that opening analogy from periodically seeping back in.

HAIDT, A SOCIAL psychologist at New York University, believes that young people’s rising use of screens and rising rates of emotional fragility both stem from our overprotection of kids in nondigital spaces. He rails against policies that punish parents for letting children have some independence, and against the mindset that tries to shield the young from every possible emotional harm. Parts of the book were even written with Free-Range Kids author (and regular Reason contributor) Lenore Skenazy, with whom Haidt helped found Let Grow, a nonprofit that pushes back against helicopter parenting.