The Anxious Generation

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Dr. Linda Couri (0:12)

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Haidt is a business school professor at NYU. But several years ago, he grew interested in the ways the modern world was changing his students. That research led to the Anxious Generation, where Haidt argues kids were first made a week by over-protection, for mostly imaginary dangers, then given devices that gobble up their attention, and let parents keep even closer tabs on them. So who has a phone, their own phone? We checked in with sixth graders in Manhattan, and the New York suburb of Port Washington. How many people have a phone?

Haidt calls this the great rewiring of childhood.

Drew Mariani (0:57)

The Drew Mariani Show on Relevant Radio.

Yeah, I want to talk about this coming up. Why are so many young people anxious, depressed, lonely, overwhelmed? Is it simply the pressure of growing up, or did something fundamentally change about childhood itself? Jonathan Haidt, he argues that, look, we replace play-based childhood with a phone-based childhood, and our children, now they're paying a terrible price. But there might be a deeper question here as well. What happens to a young soul when screens become more present than family or friendship or even silence? And if you are going through this, feel free to open the phones and join me. The number to get in is 888-914-9149, 888-914-9149. You can share your own experience as well. So I think it's Haidt or Haidt. Is it Haidt or Haidt? Haidt, I think. I say Haidt. Jonathan Haidt. I think I saw the person in the clip said it too. That, by the way, is the voice of Dr. Linda Couri. She's an Assistant Professor of Pastoral Theology at the University of St. Mary the Lake. You might have visited before. It's known as Mundelein Seminary, or right next to Mary Town, the National Shrine of St. Maximin and Colby in our country. There's a book out. It's got a lot of buzz. It's called The Anxious Generation. And Haidt argues that somewhere around 2010, 2012, childhood underwent a dramatic transformation. So think about your young children, if you had them at that particular time. The smartphone, it went from being rare to becoming ubiquitous, right? Social media exploded. And what he finds is that roughly at the same time, the measures of anxiety and depression and self-harm and psychological distress amongst these young people, it skyrocketed. It began to rise sharply. Especially, believe it or not, young adolescent girls, and we'll talk about why too.

He has this great phrase, and I want to explore this with the doctor, he called it the great rewiring of childhood. So we are living in a new time, a new era. Doctor, good to have you with me today. Thank you for being here.

Dr. Linda Couri (3:06)

I'm so glad to be here.

Drew Mariani (3:08)

When people talk about the anxious generation, what does that mean? What happened to the mental, the emotional health of young people? Maybe give us the big picture if you could.

Dr. Linda Couri (3:19)

So the big picture really begins with around 2009, cell phones came around, everybody started carrying them.

And it was connectivity, really. Everybody just became immediately connected to each other at all times. So as you look at just human evolution, everything is about our communication with one another. And all of a sudden, we could have communication with and from the whole world at the same time, and here's the key, without any consequences for what we were saying. All of a sudden, you could say whatever you wanted, and there was nobody there to tell you, you're wrong, that's mean, that's wrong, that's incorrect. So it was just a free-for-all with this constant influx of being... And the other thing that happened was we could curate all the communication that came to us. So we could choose exactly what we were hearing and what we wanted to hear, which creates echo chambers and feedback loops so you're no longer getting new information into the system.

Drew Mariani (4:25)

So he was pretty specific in indicating it was 2010 to 2012

What do you make of that? What happened in those 24 months or in that period that really stood out for him?

Dr. Linda Couri (4:39)

The iPhone. The iPhone and being able to carry this thing around with you, this mini computer.

Twitter was kind of in its beginning time. Facebook was getting more this way. But sort of this ubiquitous nature of, so the cell phone. And that kept people more indoors. And that's the beginning of the rewiring of the generation.