Our phone-based world robs kids of childhood

In his book The Anxious Generation, author Jonathan Haidt advocates far stricter rules for smartphone use to allow children to develop naturally.

- By Mark Potterton

Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist at New York University's Stern School of Business. His research examines the foundations of morality, and how morality varies across cultural and political divisions. Haidt is the author of several New York Times bestsellers and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Since 2018, he has been studying the contributions of social media to the decline of teen mental health and the rise of political dysfunction.

His main idea is that children are overprotected offline but underprotected online, and this is causing a decline in their wellbeing. His proposed solutions include smartphone bans in schools, raising the age for social media use to 16 years, enforcing the existing limits on social media much more strictly and promoting more play and adventurous activities offline.

In his 2024 book, The Anxious Generation, Haidt explains that in the "real world" children are conscious of the bodies of others and interact at the given moment and invest in relationships, whereas in the "virtual world" they are disembodied and nobody is needed. Communication involves a substantial number of one-to-many communications, and multiple communications in parallel.

Haidt introduces the idea of a "phone-based childhood" and argues that the decline in unsupervised outdoor play has led to significant mental health issues in Generation Z - those born after 1995.

Part 1 of the book lays out the facts about the decline in teen mental health and wellbeing in the 21st century, indicated by a sharp rise in the rates of anxiety, depression and self-harm.

In part 2, he explains that the reach of the mental health crisis lies in parental fearfulness and overprotection. In the 1990s, smartphones, along with overprotection, acted like experienced blockers that made it difficult for children and adolescents to get real-world social experiences.