Informationen zum Autor Jonathan Haidt Klappentext THE ACCLAIMED #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER with over two million copies sold • A must-read for all parents: the generation-defining investigation into the collapse of youth mental health in the era of smartphones, social media, and big techand a plan for a healthier, freer childhood. Named one of the best books of the year by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Time, The Economist, New York Post , and Town & Country • One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of the Year • Named finalist for the PEN Literary Awards 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. Time 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 (pronounced "height") 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 landscapescommunities 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 childrenand ourselvesfrom the psychological damage of a phone-based life. Leseprobe Part 1 A Tidal Wave Chapter 1 THE SURGE OF SUFFERING When I talk with parents of adolescents, the conversation often turns to smartphones, social media, and video games. The stories parents tell me tend to fall into a few common patterns. One is the constant conflict story: Parents try to lay down rules and enforce limits, but there are just so many devices, so many arguments about why a rule needs to be relaxed, and so many ways around the rules, that family life has come to be dominated by disagreements about technology. Maintaining family rituals and basic human connections can feel like resisting an ever-risingtide, one that engulfs parents as well as children. For most of the parents I talk to, their stories don't center on any diagnosed mental illness. Instead, there is an underlying worry that something unnatural is going on, and that their children are missing somethingreally, almost everythingas their online hours accumulate. But sometimes the stories parents tell me...

Autorentext

Jonathan Haidt

Klappentext

THE ACCLAIMED #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER with over two million copies sold • A must-read 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.

**Named one of the best books of the year by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Time, The Economist, New York Post, and Town & Country • One of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of the Year • Named finalist for the PEN Literary Awards

“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.” —*Time

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 (pronounced "height") 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.

Leseprobe
**Part 1

A Tidal Wave

Chapter 1**

THE SURGE OF SUFFERING

When I talk with parents of adolescents, the conversation often turns to smartphones, social media, and video games. The stories parents tell me tend to fall into a few common patterns. One is the “constant conflict” story: Parents try to lay down rules and enforce limits, but there are just so many devices, so many arguments about why a rule needs to be relaxed, and so many ways around the rules, that family life has come to be dominated by disagreements about technology. Maintaining family rituals and basic human connections can feel like resisting an ever-risingtide, one that engulfs parents as well as children.

For most of the parents I talk to, their stories don’t center on any diagnosed mental illness. Instead, there is an underlying worry that something unnatural is going on, and that their children are missing something—really, almost everything—as their online hours accumulate. But sometimes the stories parents tell me are darker. Parents feel that they have lost their child. A mother I spoke with in Boston told me about the efforts …