The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, by Jonathan Haidt. Penguin, 2024, 395 pages, $30.00.

I know I am not alone when I think this: there seem to be more people struggling with mental health issues now than there were twenty-five years ago. When I was a child, I did not know of many other adolescents dealing with severe mental problems. However, today, I know of quite a few young adults and people in their twenties who have mental health complications. Why is this? What is going on?

If you have these same questions and want reasonable, well-researched answers, you need to get Jonathan Haidt’s book The Anxious Generation. Haidt is an American social psychologist who has extensively studied this recent mental illness crisis among teenagers and twentysomethings. This book summarizes his findings, mainly focusing on people born after 1995. Haidt’s central claim in the book is this: “Overprotection in the real world and underprotection in the virtual world are the major reasons why children born after 1995 became the anxious generation” (9).

There are three main parts in the book that prove his point. In the first part, Haidt gives some detailed stats and information showing that mental health problems have significantly increased in the last twenty years. The second part of the book explains the decline of play-based childhood. This section of the book describes how children used to play with other kids, go outside, take risks, face some danger, learn to fail, navigate various social situations, and develop their physical and mental skills while playing. However, due to the ubiquity of screens and the modern parenting emphasis on safety and overprotection, children are no longer developing various skills by playing in person with other children. Haidt argues that the loss of children playing with other children is one reason Gen Z struggles with anxiety, depression, and other mental issues.

The book’s third part is called “The Great Rewiring: The Rise of Phone-Based Childhood.” Haidt examines and explores the detrimental aspects of a phone-based childhood in this section of the book. Since the arrival of the smartphone around 2007, many children have grown up in front of phones and other screens. Haidt says this screen-filled childhood causes social deprivation, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation, and addiction. Haidt summarizes numerous studies and research that show how excessive screen use by children has various adverse effects on their mental health. There are separate chapters on how phone-based childhood differently affects girls (e.g. body image) and boys (e.g. pornography).

The fourth and final section of the book is constructive. It is called “Collective Action for Healthier Childhood.” In this part of The Anxious Generation, Haidt gives instructions on how schools, parents, technology companies, and government agencies can help remedy the mental health crisis related explicitly to phone-based childhood. There is much practical advice in the last part of this book that is helpful for parents, teachers, and school administrators. Parents who have young children will want to read this book as they think about when—or if! —they let their child get a smartphone.

The Anxious Generation is not a Christian book. However, it is a book that will help Christians navigate one aspect of the mental health crisis on our hands. The Anxious Generation does not just answer the question of “why” some younger people struggle with mental issues. It also gives some helpful instructions and wise advice on moving forward to help youth avoid these difficult mental struggles. As a pastor and father, I found this book very worthwhile. It has also helped me think about various counseling issues and sermon application. If you are concerned about excessive phone usage among younger people, or if you want to learn more about it so you can better help youth struggling with mental health issues, The Anxious Generation is an excellent book to read. It will even challenge readers to rethink their own screen usage.

Shane Lems serves as pastor of Covenant Presbyterian Church (OPC) in Hammond, Wisconsin. Ordained Servant Online, December, 2024.