In just a few decades, we have gone from lauding the Greatest Generation for their bravery during World World II and the Great Depression to working to help the youngest generation survive anxiety, depression, and other threats due to their social media usage. It’s a stark contrast.
Author Jonathan Haidt’s new book, The Anxious Generation, characterizes this reality: Children today are not all right.
In a review of Haidt’s book, Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan wrote, “What we all know is that there’s a mental health crisis among the young, that they seem to have become addicted to social media and gaming, and that these two facts seem obviously connected. Mr. Haidt says, and shows, that the latter is a cause of the former. … He tells the story of what happened to Generation Z, which he defines as those born after 1995. … This became ‘the first generation in history to go through puberty with a portal in their pockets that called them away from the people nearby and into an alternative universe that was exciting, addictive, unstable and … unsuitable for children and adolescents.’”
