The Anxious Generation Audiobook By Jonathan Haidt cover art

The Anxious Generation

How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness

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The Anxious Generation

By: Jonathan Haidt
Narrated by: Sean Pratt, Jonathan Haidt
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About this listen

THE INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A Washington Post Notable Book

A must-hear 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.

“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 from tech dependency, The Anxious Generation makes a dire warning.”—Shannon Carlin, TIME, 100 Must-Read Books of 2024

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 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.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2024 Jonathan Haidt (P)2024 Penguin Audio
Mental Health Psychology Relationships Stress Management Teenagers Inspiring Young Adult
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Critic reviews

“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

What listeners say about The Anxious Generation

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Every parent teacher and teen needs to read this book

This is such a good prescriptive solution for so many things f the problems in the world today. I will be suggesting this to my congregants and friends for years to come. I love the layout of actionable steps.

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CRUCIAL READ for ALL--Esp. Parents, Teachers, Mental Health Professionals

I rarely write reviews, but I admit I wish everyone would STOP WHAT YOU'RE DOING & READ THIS RIGHT NOW!!

I am SO grateful that I'm old enough (almost 38 🥳) to not be nearly as affected by this as Gen Z.

I'm a therapist for people with eating disorders (EDs), & I find parents often blame themselves for their child/adult's ED. (I promise this is related)

The recovery process often feels to their child & the parents themselves as if they are removing glasses they didn't know they were wearing. They wonder how much their own dieting & body dissatisfaction were contributing factors. I remind them "You don't know what you don't know" ...until you do.

I feel this applies to the effect a phone-based childhood has on developing brains.

With the burden of knowing comes responsibility to enact change.

Thank you, Dr. Haidt.

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Mist for all parents

Very eye-opening. I wished I had read this years ago when my kids were smaller, guess it hadn’t been written! Recommend it highly to all parents. 

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For EVERY PARENT with kids ages 0-18 AND THEIR EDUCATORS

So very applicable to our current society. If we want to see real change in the mental health crisis in our communities, then we need to pay attention to the wisdom shared in this book….and act on that wisdom. The statistics are sobering.

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Empowering

Prior to listening to this book I felt that social media risks outweigh the benefits for my children. This book provides evidence supporting that, and empowers me to make decisions based on available data instead of intuition. I loved reading this book!

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Goes into my gift-list

A must-listen for all the parents of young children and gen-z. Helps to understand them better and shares ideas how to support them become thriving adults.

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Receipts

The first book that I’ve read that I felt has a very strong and driven point!

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Our children have been the subject of a tech experiment with terrible outcomes

One of the most important books for new parents. Let’s not repeat the mistakes made with Gen Z.

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How can one person change the world?

This is quite possibly the most important and impactful book. Anybody can read this century! Not only do you owe it, your children, you owe it to your future grandchildren and their children… Every single parent and teacher alike should be required to read this book. It doesn’t take legislationor government to make changes it takes all of us. Read this but don’t stop there. Share it. Take action.

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Very important

Completely convinced by the thesis and will definitely be implementing the suggestions for parenting when the time comes with my own kids. I also hope that by the time my own kids are in school that the policies recommended here are much more prevalent

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