The lecture hall in Sydney University was packed with staff, lecturers, and administrators. There was a sense of anticipation as the American social psychologist, Jonathan Haidt, stood up to speak. What followed was one of the most riveting, stimulating, and challenging talks I have ever heard.

Fast forward four years and we now have the main thesis of that lecture in book form. The Anxious Generation is a tour de force of psychology, biology, philosophy, politics, religion, and culture. Occasionally you will hear of a book being “life changing,” but rarely of one that is “society changing.” However, I suspect that Haidt’s book will find a place in that latter category. For example, the work of Haidt and others has recently led the Australian government to announce that it is going to ban social media for children and younger teenagers.

Haidt’s thesis is straightforward. In 1994–1995 the Internet arrives. It is one of the biggest changes ever in human society and seems overwhelmingly positive. You can now know everything. (Remember Google’s mantra, “you won’t need memory” and motto, “do no evil”?) In 2007 we have the arrival of the smartphone and the thousands of apps. By 2012 there is a noticeable decrease in the mental health of teenagers, especially girls. Haidt links these directly.

There has been significant pushback. For example, Candice L. Odgers has argued that “there is no evidence that using these platforms is rewiring children’s brains or driving an epidemic of mental illness” (“The Great Rewiring: Is Social Media Really Behind an Epidemic of Teenage Mental Illness?,” Nature, 29 March 2024). Yet Haidt, while acknowledging that there were 64 correlational studies, lists a further 22 experimental studies, of which 16 found significant harm. Furthermore, although Haidt accepts that correlation is not necessarily causation, he also argues that there is no other explanation: “Social media use is a cause of anxiety, depression, and other ailments, not just a correlate” (p. 148).

He lists and discusses four significant harms: social deprivation, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation, and addiction. The average child/teenager spends 7–9 hours a day on the internet—5 hours a day on social media alone. The consequences of this are enormous. Imagine taking seven hours out of your day. What would you have to give up? For teenagers, that includes talking to friends, losing sleep, losing attention (by developing a habit of continuous partial attention), and no real quality human connection.

You do not develop social skills. Your childhood has been transformed by technology from a play-based childhood to a phone-based childhood. There is no time for play, hobbies, face to face contact, and books. In fact, as regards reading, there is some evidence that excessive use of the Internet is rewiring our brains and making it far harder for us to concentrate on, and think, about books. (See, for example, Martin Korte, “The Impact of the Digital Revolution on Human Brain and Behavior: Where Do We Stand?” Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience 22 [2020]: 101–11).

The overall effect of this, according to Haidt, is that people are not connecting, they are performing. When you play, there are lots of mistakes, but they are low-cost mistakes. But one false move online and your whole life could literally be ruined. Little wonder that this has become the anxious generation!

Chapter 6, on why social media harms girls more than boys, is particularly fascinating. As Haidt explains, girls are more affected by visual social comparison and perfectionism; girls’ aggression is more relational; girls more easily share emotions and disorders. In this regard, he points out, as does Abigail Shrier in her Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2020), that the growth in diagnoses of gender dysphoria, especially among teenage girls, may at least be partially due to social contagion through social media.

Given these disturbing realities, you might expect that this is yet another doom and gloom book, with little hope. And yet Haidt has become more optimistic. More than that, he offers practical solutions—for government, the tech corporations, schools, and parents. He cites what he hopes will become the four norms: (1) no smart phone until 14; (2) no social media until 16; (3) phone-free schools; and (4) more independence and free play. He believes that collective action by schools and parents is more important than government laws and action by the tech corporations. Given that the latter are still deliberately recruiting underage children, it is unlikely that any change will be anything other than cosmetic.

In terms of schools, the real test is to get the whole school to act. FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) is a real problem. But it ceases to be one if no one is missing out. Perhaps churches also need to think in terms of collective action? Perhaps as part of our discipleship we could encourage Christians to read Tony Reinke’s brilliant and practical, 12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You? (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2017). At a personal level, I have found the arguments of both Haidt and Reinke to be so persuasive that I have taken all social media off my phone and just use them from my laptop.

One of the ironies of modern society is that the technology which was supposed to free us has ended up imprisoning us. As we have become more “aware,” we have become more anxious. At the Sydney University lecture, Haidt conducted an experiment—he asked members of the audience to shout out when we were first allowed to walk six blocks by ourselves. Most of us were of a generation which said ages 6 and 7. Haidt told us that the norm in the US today was 13 and 14. In order to protect our children from the world, we have imprisoned them and brought the world, in all its harmful forms, into their bedrooms. When I was a child, my mother sent me out to play on old disused fortifications on top of 100 metre cliffs. As a 16-year-old, I hitchhiked round Europe for six weeks. Today any parent permitting such activities would be in danger of being charged with neglect! However, Haidt insists that risk-free play and risk-averse parenting (ironically) lead to greater risk of harm, especially when parents/society do not recognise the harm that is being done when children’s minds are handed over to internet “influencers.”

One of the most challenging parts in the book is chapter 8: “Spiritual Elevation and Degradation.” Haidt verdict is confronting: “The phone-based life produces spiritual degradation, not just in adolescents but in all of us” (p. 199). As a pastor, if I had my way, I would ban smart phones from the pew as well as the dinner table, the bedroom, and the classroom!

Haidt argues that the best way to get rid of anxiety is by exposing yourself to what is causing it. In one sense he is right. But in another he misses the greatest antidote to anxiety—the certainty and security that comes from knowing Christ. Every child (and indeed every adult, too) needs to hear and take to heart the words of Jesus: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? (Matt 6:25).

The Anxious Generation is a much-needed book, and Christians (especially parents and pastors) will be served well and will serve the emerging generations better by reading, marking, and learning from it. But let us never lose sight of the fact that what this anxious generation needs most of all is the peace of God which passes all understanding (Phil 4:6–7)—even the understanding of a psychologist as insightful as Haidt.