
Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, is essential reading for parents. Teens would benefit from reading the first chapter, “The Surge in Suffering.” The digital world, the only world our young people have ever known, is but a recent phenomenon and has left much devastation in its wake. Gen-Z, Haidt writes, is “the first generation in history to go through puberty with a portal in their pockets that called them away from people nearby and into an alternative universe that was exciting, addictive, unstable, and … unsuitable for children and adolescents” (p. 6).
Many teens and preteens look at screens for almost seven hours a day. Haidt chronicles the harmful effects of this immersion:
It changes the way that a child’s brain develops. Haidt calls it “the Great Rewiring” of the adolescent brain (p. 7).
It results in missed opportunities to learn from human interaction. We often see kids in restaurants glued to their devices and completely disengaged from their families. They are, as Haidt terms it, “forever elsewhere.” “We can’t expect children and adolescents to develop adult-
level real-world social skills when their social interactions are largely happening in the virtual world” (p. 99). Children spend “far less time playing with, talking to, touching or even making eye contact with their friends and families” (p. 6). As a result, they don’t learn how to deal with others. They don’t learn how to read faces, how to pick up on social cues, how to navigate sticky situations, how to handle differences, and most basically, how to make conversation.
It dulls your interest in other things. Digital devices “bring so many interesting experiences to children and adolescents that they … reduce interest in all non-screen-based forms of experience.” Many parents have discovered this when they ask their kids to play a board game, to read a book, or to go outside to play.
It deprives young people of meaningful friendships. Haidt writes, “as soon as teens began carrying smartphones to school and using social media regularly, including during breaks between classes, they found it harder to connect with their fellow students” (p. 43).
A Canadian college student wrote,
Gen Z is an incredibly isolated group of people. We have shallow friendships and superfluous romantic relationships that are mediated and governed to a large degree by social media…. There is hardly a sense of community on campus and it’s not hard to see. Oftentimes I’ll arrive early to a lecture to find a room of 30+ students sitting together in complete silence, absorbed in their smartphones, afraid to speak and be heard by their peers. This leads to further isolation and weakening of self-identity and confidence, something I know because I’ve experienced it firsthand (pp. 122-23).
It has led to skyrocketing rates of depression and anxiety in teenagers. Girls suffer as a result of comparing themselves to others on social media. “The rate of self-harm for … young adolescent girls nearly tripled from 2010 to 2020” (p. 31). The threat to boys is addiction to video games and pornography.
Teens, limit the amount of time you spend on digital devices. Discipline yourself. Proverbs 25:28 warns, “A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls.” Just as an ancient city without walls was vulnerable to attack, so too much screen time will make you vulnerable to depression, anxiety, and deficient social skills.
Young men (and older men), pornography is “addictive, progressive, and deadly” (James Dobson). The images you view become indelibly etched on your mind. Viewing pornography will cause crushing guilt, rendering you spiritually impotent, and will harm your relationship with your future wife. Not least, it is a grievous sin against the holiness of God (Mt. 5:27-30).
Parents, here are four recommendations that Haidt makes for raising your children.
No smartphones before high school. They should only have basic phones with no internet.
No social media before age 16. Let their brains develop first.
Schools should be phone-free zones.
Bring back unsupervised play. This is how kids naturally develop social skills and become self-governing.
My wife and I raised our first three children before the advent of the smartphone, social media, and online gaming. We raised the final two during the digital revolution. The task has been vastly more difficult. If we had it to do over, there is much that we would do differently. I highly recommend The Anxious Generation to parents.
Peter Kemeny, Pastor
Good News Presbyterian Church
P.O. Box 1051, Frederick, MD 21702