How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness
Jonathan Haidt
0593655036
Four Suggested Reforms
- No smartphones before high school
- No social media before 16
- Phone-free schools
- Far more unsupervised play and childhood independence.
Notes
- My central claim in this book is that these two trends – overprotection in the real world and underprotection in the virtual world – are the major reasons why children born after 1995 became the anxious generation.
- Four features of the real world:
- Embodied
- Synchronous
- One-to-one communication
- High bar for entry / exit
- First I ask everyone who was born before 1981 to raise their hands. These are the members of Gen X (born 1965-1980), the baby boomers (born 1946-1964), and the last members of the so-called Silent Generation (born 1928-1945). I ask these older audience members to recall their age of liberation privately and then to shout it out when I point to their section of the room. Nearly everyone shouts out “6”, “7”, or “8,” and it is sometimes hard for me to continue the demonstration because they are laughing and fondly recounting to each other the grand adventures they used to have with the other kids in their neighborhood. Next I ask everyone who was born in 1996 or later (Gen Z) to raise their hands. When I ask them to shout out their liberation age, the difference is stark: The majority fall between 10 and 12, with just a few 8s, 9s, 13s, and 14s. (Members of the millennial generation fall in between and show a wide range of liberation ages.)
- Ladder from Childhood to Adulthood
- Age 6: The age of family responsibility – chores and small weekly allowance
- Age 8: The age of local freedom” local errands, walks and bike rides.
- Age 10: The age of roaming – Increased mobility and responsibility
- Age 12: The age of apprenticeship – Earning money
- Age 14: Beginning of high school – Work and athletic teams
- Age 16: The beginning of internet adulthood – Driver’s license and social media
- Age 18: The beginning of legal adulthood – voting, military service, sign contracts
- Age 21: Full legal adulthood – alcohol, casinos, gambling
- You know those stories about middle-aged women who befriend adolescent boys on gaming platforms and then send them money and ask for pictures of their penises as a prelude to meeting for sex? Neither do I.
- One of the most widely noted traits of Gen Z is that they are not doing as much of the bad stuff that teenagers used to do. They drink less alcohol, have fewer car accidents, and get fewer speeding tickets. They have far fewer car accidents, and get fewer speeding tickets. They have far fewer physical fights or unplanned pregnancies.
- We expect liquor stores to enforce age limits. We should expect the same from tech companies.
- Gopnik says that a better way to think about child rearing is as a gardener (not carpenter). Your job is to “create a protected and nurturing space for plants to flourish.” It takes some work, but you don’t have to be a perfectionist. Weed the garden, water it, and then step back and the plants will do their things, unpredictably and often with delightful surprises.
- A key insight gained from research on screens and young children is that active, synchronous virtual interactions with other humans – what most call a video chat – can foster language learning and bonding.
- Real word suggestions
- Practice letting your kids out of your sight without them having a way to reach you.
- Encourage sleepovers, and don’t micromanage them
- Encourage walking to school in a group
- After school is for free play
- Go camping
- Find a sleepaway camp with no devices and no safetyism
- Form child-friendly neighborhoods and playborhoods
Conformist Bias
Prestige Bias
Experience-Expectant Development
Imprinting
Reaction Wood
Antifragile
Audience Capture
Variable-ratio schedule