The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt is one of the I-don’t-want-to-say-how-many book titles that are on my “read soon” list. I keep it on my list because Haidt blames smartphones for the dramatic increase in mental health problems in very young people, and I have grandchildren growing up in a world where children are given access to tablets and smartphones starting when they are toddlers.
Haidt’s theory is that the kids, themselves, feel tyrannized by their phones. And after reading his book, journalist Decca Aitkenhead decided to see what would happen if she forced her teenage sons and their friends to go on an unsupervised camping trip without their phones.
She wrote about the results of her experiment in this article for The Times.
