Happy Spring Break everyone.

It seems like everywhere I read or listen these days I am seeing or hearing about author Jonathan Haidt’s book, “The Anxious Generation.”

In The Anxious Generation, Mr. Haidt explains the major causes of the international epidemic of mental illness that hit adolescents in the early 2010s, and offers a path forward for parents, teachers, friends, and relatives who want to help improve the mental health of children and adolescents. Change is possible, if we can act together.

The book is split into four parts (per Mr. Haidt:)

  1. The Tidal Wave:In this section, I show the basic statistics on the mental health of young people.
  2. The Decline of the Play-Based Childhood:In this section, I discuss the nature of childhood and how we messed it up by depriving children of play and role-models, damaging attachment systems, and erasing any clear path from childhood to adulthood.
  3. The Rise of the Phone-Based Childhood: In this section, I discuss the harms that result from the new phone-based childhood, with a chapter devoted to harms to girls, a chapter on harm to boys, and a chapter on the “spiritual degradation” that is happening to all of us––including adults––from our new phone-based lives.
  4. Collective Actions for Better Childhood: In this final section, I explain what we must do to reverse the damage. I explain how parents, school, governments, tech companies, and young people are trapped in “collective action problems” and how these can be resolved when individuals organize and act together.

You can also find out more information on the book and Mr. Haidt’s thoughts, opinions and research on related topics on www.jonathanhaidt.com.

(Below) are what Mr. Haidt feels are his most important pieces of advice for parents of adolescents (as he is himself.)

  • Give children far more time playing with other children. This play should ideally be outdoors, in mixed age groups, with little or no adult supervision (which is the way most parents grew up, at least until the 1980s).
  • Look for more ways to embed children in stable real-world communities.  Online networks are not nearly as binding or satisfying.
  • Don’t give a smartphone as the first phone. Give a phone or watch that is specialized for communication, not for internet-based apps.
  • Don’t give a smartphone until high school.  This is easy to do, if many of your child’s friends’ parents are doing the same thing.
  • Delay the opening of accounts on nearly all social media platforms until the beginning of high school (at least). This will become easier to do if we can support legislators who are trying to raise the age of “internet adulthood” from today’s 13 (with no verification) to 16 (with mandatory age verification).

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Planet Improv shares the same concerns as Mr. Haidt, parents and fellow educators about our students and their mental health challenges.

We are hopeful that his mental illness epidemic is treated as seriously and thoughtfully as any other in our lifetime.  Our future generations depend upon it.