Critique de The Anxious Generation par Josh

My five star rating doesn’t mean I think Haidt is right about everything. As he points out, the advent of what he calls “phone based childhood” is essentially an unplanned experiment that kids have been enticed to opt in to. Given the scale and diversity of the experiment (and abundance of confounding factors) causal claims are difficult at best (it was difficult to prove a connection between smoking and cancer or between co2 admissions and global warming for the same basic reason).

With that caveat, Haidt makes a very strong case that, starting around 2010 phone based childhood has had some very bad effects on the mental health of a great many children and teens (the oldest of whom are now in their 20s).

Since I don’t have kids, and don’t really feel like becoming an activist on behalf of kids, much of Haidt’s practical advice was of limited applicability for me, but I think all of his suggestions are reasonable and warrant consideration.