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

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.

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.

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.

“In a world gone mad, Jonathan Haidt has made common sense a radical mission.” —Bari Weiss, The Free Press

“Erudite, engaging, combative, crusading.” —New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)

“Words that chill the parental heart… thanks to Mr. Haidt, we can glimpse the true horror of what happened not only in the U.S. but also elsewhere in the English-speaking world… lucid, memorable… galvanizing.” —Meghan Cox Gurdon, Wall Street Journal

“[An] important new book... The shift in kids’ energy and attention from the physical world to the virtual one, Haidt shows, has been catastrophic, especially for girls.” —Michelle Goldberg, The New York Times

“I found myself nodding along in agreement … benefits from… years of research on how smartphones and social media dice the nerves and tamp the spirits of young people … not just reasonable but irrefutably necessary.” —Jessica Winter, New Yorker

“Boundlessly wise… important and engrossing.” —Frank Bruni, New York Times Opinion

“All the suggestions sound sensible. Some even sound fun . . . Deals seriously with counter-arguments and gaps in the evidence.” —The Economist

“Can be quite wonderful… beautifully grounds his critique in Buddhist, Taoist and Christian thought traditions… His common-sense recommendations for actions...are excellent.” —Judith Warner, The Washington Post

"[An] important new book...The shift in kids’ energy and attention from the physical world to the virtual one, Haidt shows, has been catastrophic, especially for girls." —Michelle Goldberg, The New York Times

“Informative and compelling…Haidt wants children to spend more time appreciating nature, playing with friends, riding and falling off their bikes, and doing age-appropriate chores.”—Glenn C. Altschuler, Psychology Today

"An urgent and essential read, and 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, The Guardian (UK)

“Compelling, readable—and incredibly chilling . . . remarkably persuasive.” —Lucy Denyer, Telegraph (UK)

"A persuasive and rousing argument"—Anna Davis, Evening Standard (UK)

“If this important book rings enough alarms (wait, or is that just my phone pinging?) to make politicians impose a genuine social media ban on children, I believe most parents would be happy and most teenagers happier.” —Helen Rumbelow, The Times (UK, Book of the Week)

"Haidt sets out inarguable evidence that smartphones are fuelling an anxiety epidemic among young people—and big tech must do more to reverse it…an extremely important and compelling read that is recommended not only to parents but to anyone who has felt increasingly pressurised by technology…I can’t recommend this book highly enough; everyone should read it. It is a game-changer for society." —Stella O'Malley, Irish Independent