THE KIDS ARE NOT OKAY

Something happened around 2010 that's had a huge impact on Gen Z, says a new book. It was the start of the phone-based childhood, and it's resulted in a rewiring of kids' brains - and a surge in depression and anxiety 

WHY did the rate of self-harm among teen girls triple between 2010 and 2020? Why has the rate of depression a m o n g y o u n g people doubled since 2008? Why does anxiety seem to be the defining mental illness of young people today?

These are the questions US social psychologist Jonathan Haidt wanted to answer, and his research has led to his new book The Anxious Generation and a crusade to get parents to understand the extent to which smartphones and the internet are disrupting childhood development.

Two things have happened that have put kids today at more risk of mental illness than ever before, Haidt says.

The first is that since the 1990s parents have been overprotecting their children, not giving them enough independence to explore and experience the real world.

The second is that kids are under-protected online. They have been given devices that allow them to roam free in virtual worlds they’re not mentally or emotionally equipped to deal with.

They’re growing up in a sea of screens that gobble up their attention and it has, he believes, rewired their brains.

“With neural development in the brain, neurons feel their way out and they develop based on feedback from experience,” Haidt says. “What happens when kids, instead of playing with blocks and each other, are on screens all the time? It radically changes the inputs.”

This rewiring, which started in 2012, is what Haidt explores in The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.

This extract from his book looks at what he calls the four foundational harms of a phone-based childhood and what parents can do to safeguard their children’s mental health.