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The Anxious Generation
- How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
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Summary
Brought to you by Penguin.
An urgent and insightful investigation into the collapse in youth mental health, from the influential social psychologist and international bestselling author
After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents in many countries around the world deteriorated suddenly in the early 2010s. Why have rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm and suicide risen so sharply, more than doubling in many cases?
In this book, Social Psychologist Jonathan Haidt argues that the decline of free-play in childhood and the rise of smartphone usage among adolescents are the twin sources of increased mental distress among teenagers.
Haidt delves into the latest psychological and biological research to show how, between 2010 and 2015, childhood and adolescence got rewired. As teens traded in their flip phones for smartphones packed with social media apps, time online soared while time engaging face-to-face with friends and family plummeted, and so did mental health. This profound shift took place against a backdrop of diminishing childhood freedom, as parents over-supervised every aspect of their children’s lives offline, depriving them of the experiences they most need to become strong and self-governing adults.
The Anxious Generation reveals the fundamental ways in which this shift from free-play to smartphones disrupts development – from sleep deprivation to addiction – with separate in-depth analyses of the impact on girls and boys. Grounded in ancient wisdom and packed full of cutting-edge science, this eye-opening book is a life raft and a powerful call-to-arms, offering practical advice for parents, schools, governments, and teens themselves.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
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- Breaking News
- 07-04-24
This needs to be part of the national curriculum
This book is clearly aimed at parents. However I believe if children could understand what the phone based childhood means for them, through reading/listening to this book, they would make a choice to put the devices down for the most part. Then hopefully choose not to be a part of this terrible Epidemic.
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- Gerry
- 17-04-24
Essential reading
I hope this book comes to be seen as one of the most important books of the decade. We all need to take this in, ask hard questions of ourselves, and push for appropriate action. Everyone should read this but especially parents. I am far from a luddite - 10+ years in tech including the last 5 in AI... Even for those of us devoting our lives to the positive impact technology can make, this book is incredibly difficult to argue with. Stop reading reviews and buy it.
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- Ellie O.
- 22-04-24
An essential message for all who work with, love or care for children.
Absolutely essential listening. I wish I could get every parent and teacher I know to listen to it or read it.
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- Anonymous User
- 24-04-24
Informative.
Awakening. Inspiring and motivating me to be better in accomodating my teenagers in their screen times. Great book!
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- LYNDSEY TEMING-AMOAKO
- 17-04-24
Insightful, informative and inspirational.
This subject is very close to my heart and was compelled to consume this book after joining the Smartphone Free Childhood movement and seeing Jonathan on a webinar with its co-founders. I love the care and depth gone into the research and writing of this book and found it beyond reassuring, as I am a parent of two primary school aged children and decided long ago that they would not be getting smartphones until after their GCSEs! I highly recommend this book to all parents, teachers and teens who care about the cognitive and social development of children to read/listen to this book. For the "congregation", the preaching is good! For the sceptics, the preaching has enough legs to convert. I would have given the voiceover a five, but there were a few edits which were re-recorded which I found a tad distracting.
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- Steven C Gray
- 20-04-24
Brilliant, lucid and wise
Insights and clarity on the profoundly different experience of growing up now, and what we can do about it
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- Ms N Hodge
- 15-04-24
very enlightening. important listening and learning for parents, teens, teachers and others.
Some interesting well researched info. Good suggestions for what we can do. highly recommended. I've been sending out copies to many friends.
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- B Street
- 20-04-24
Irrefutable!
What I found particularly enlightening is what the phone has otherwise prevented kids from doing. I would have thought it was enough, for example, that schools don’t allow phones to be on in the classroom. But I never thought about the kids going immediately between each class to check their phone rather than engage with one another. So many facts were devastating that I can’t stop talking to others about this book and I have since joined a grassroots movement in the UK called Smartphone Free Childhood. Sadly, it’s a little late for my teenage girls, both of whom have battled/are battling various mental health issues but I feel fully inspired to disseminate this information to break that collective behaviour of which I too became a victim.
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- MR A PATTERSON
- 28-03-24
The perils of smartphones
Ok, so the book doesn’t exclusively focus on smartphones, but they make up a huge chunk of focus.
Using an evidence-based approach, Haidt explores how the current generation is being let down and the resulting consequences. This is both inadvertent (e.g., by schools and parents), and in the case of big tech companies, all too deliberate.
The problem is the impact addictive technologies such as smartphones are having during critical stages of development. For those of us who were introduced to smartphones after the age of about 14, we haven’t faced the same developmental impact.
I’ve loved every book Haidt has written, and this is no different. What I particularly appreciated here is that he isn’t taking an approach of blaming today’s kids for causing the problem themselves, as if older generations wouldn’t end up the same way in their position. Nor is he taking a new age approach of endorsing the status quo. Instead, he highlights that this is exactly what you would expect to happen when placing children into this environment. It’s up to the older generation to ensure a better environment is provided. Recommendations towards this end are clearly outlined
This book also very nicely compliments Abigail Shrier’s latest book, ‘Bad Therapy’, which takes a similar perspective on smart phones.
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- Anonymous User
- 19-04-24
The start of a social movement is born
I really hope this picks up major attention. As a member of Gen Z. Haidt describes many of the challenges I faced during adolescence. I’m all for ending the phone based childhood
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1 person found this helpful