The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness

Reflecting on the psychological, social and physical consequences of a phone-based childhood, the author of the perennially bestselling The Righteous Mind delivers an eye-opening examination into the causes of the current mental health epidemic among young people.

Waterstones Non-Fiction Book of the Month for January 2025

Chosen by Barack Obama as one of his Favourite Books of 2024.

After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents in many countries around the world deteriorated suddenly in the early 2010s. Why have rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm and suicide risen so sharply, more than doubling in many cases?

In this book, Social Psychologist Jonathan Haidt argues that the decline of free-play in childhood and the rise of smartphone usage among adolescents are the twin sources of increased mental distress among teenagers. Haidt delves into the latest psychological and biological research to show how, between 2010 and 2015, childhood and adolescence got rewired. As teens traded in their flip phones for smartphones packed with social media apps, time online soared while time engaging face-to-face with friends and family plummeted, and so did mental health. This profound shift took place against a backdrop of diminishing childhood freedom, as parents over-supervised every aspect of their children’s lives offline, depriving them of the experiences they most need to become strong and self-governing adults.

The Anxious Generation reveals the fundamental ways in which this shift from free-play to smartphones disrupts development – from sleep deprivation to addiction – with separate in-depth analyses of the impact on girls and boys. Grounded in ancient wisdom and packed full of cutting-edge science, this eye-opening book is a life raft and a powerful call-to-arms, offering practical advice for parents, schools, governments, and teens themselves.

MEDIA REVIEWS

A very important book - Bessel van der Kolk, Financial Times

Compelling, readable – and incredibly chilling . . . a terrifying assessment of the digital carnage . . . remarkably persuasive . . . a clarion-call to parents everywhere - Lucy Denyer, Telegraph

Deals seriously with counter-arguments and gaps in the evidence . . . all the suggestions sound sensible. Some even sound fun - Economist

A game-changer for society . . . The statistics that Haidt offers are jaw-dropping . . . although this book is about young people, it will resonate with many of us . . . I can’t recommend this book highly enough; everyone should read it - Stella O’Malley, Irish Independent

A book of devastating observations . . . his data is startling . . . robust scientific evidence for what we've all come to assume is true . . . it's the sheer scale of harm depicted here that should galvanise us - Simon Ings, Spectator

Forget horror; this is one of the most terrifying books I have read . . . some of the statistics Haidt quotes are truly shocking . . . a persuasive and rousing argument - Anna Davis, Evening Standard

If this important book rings enough alarms to make politicians impose a genuine social media ban on children, I believe most parents would be happy and most teenagers happier - The Times, Book of the Week

Urgent and essential . . . it ought to become a foundational text for the growing movement to keep smartphones out of schools, and young children off social media - Sophie McBain, Guardian

Lucid, memorable, galvanizing - Meghan Cox Gurdon, Wall Street Journal

Erudite, engaging, crusading - Tracy Dennis-Tiwary, New York Times Book Review