The Anxious Generation
How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness
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The Anxious Generation
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Narrated by:
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Sean Pratt
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Jonathan Haidt
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Written by:
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Jonathan Haidt
About this listen
THE INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A Wall Street Journal Top 10 Book of 2024 • A New York Times and Washington Post Notable Book • One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2024 • A TIME 100 Must-Read Book of 2024 • Named a Best Book of 2024 by the Economist, the New York Post, and Town & Country • The Goodreads Choice Award Nonfiction Book of the Year
A must-listen 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.” —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 AudioYou may also enjoy...
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What the critics say
“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
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- owen evans
- 2024-06-18
Every parent of a 0 to 18 must read
Serious problem for the kids of today with reasonable solutions. We are overprotecting our children outside where it is safe and not protecting them online.
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4 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Dustin Irvine
- 2024-05-18
Reshaped My Mindset
As a Millenial, this book helped me unpack behaviours I have encountered professionally and personally with friends and colleagues that are only slightly younger than myself.
I have experience reactions to benign interactions that provoked what I will describe as confused respones; out of sync with what is actually happening. Now I have the tools to understand and navigate those situations with more empathy and comprehension.
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6 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 2025-02-20
Must read !
Must read, especially for elder GenZ and parents of kids 0 to … ! It puts words on trends we have been noticing for years and provides interesting solutions - of all scales.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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- Amazon Customer
- 2024-06-07
a must read for all parents
Every parent, grandparent, teacher, principal, and care-giver should read this book. It has completely changed how I parent and broke me out of anxious parenting habits.
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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- Amazon Customer
- 2024-05-28
Everyone should read tbks
loved the book from beginning to end. Full of facts and information as well as solutions on how we can prevent/resolve the issues caused by giving kids access to smartphones
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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- Rebecca MacDonald
- 2024-06-17
Very thought provoking and relevant!
Very important read. Synthesized a lot of my recent experiences and observations. I enjoyed the narration.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Laura
- 2025-01-24
Important facts for parents
Although I knew a lot about what he said, he gave many more in-depth facts that makes me realize that many parents are being too protective of their children and yet they are allowing them too much time on these devices. An excellent book!
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Workin Away
- 2024-06-18
Must Read for Parents
I’m in IT and constantly see other parents giving there kids phones. I’ve always knew there were huge risks associated with this and this book highlights those and others. It also gives you solutions for better mitigating those risks and helping your kids adopt this technology safely.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anne-Marie
- 2024-07-07
Insightful
Going in wanting to understand generation Z and future generations, this book has provided me with great insights into the wired generation of kids raised on computers. It tells of a new childhood that can be sad and scary. We can only hope that the pendulum swings us back to a kinder, more in the moment (in person) time.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- brett fesik
- 2024-08-02
such a great book
some of the facts were good id recommend this to any modern parent as a millennial who has a 5 year old I see a lot of what this book mentions in my child it's good to know there's something that can be done to lower consumption of tech.
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