CHILDHOOD CANCELED –
March 21, 2024 – “Suppose that when your first child turned ten, a visionary billionaire whom you’ve never met chose her to join the first permanent human settlement on Mars … Would you let her go?” ???
Jonathan Haidt argues in his book, “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness,” that parents have made a similar bargain with Big Tech — by sending children to a virtual planet for untold hours every day.
Haidt, a NYU Stern professor of ethical leadership, writes that the past decade has seen “the radical transformation of childhood into something inhuman: a phone-based existence.”
In fact, as he points out, teen girls are spending an average 20 hours a week — effectively a part-time job — on social media. It’s bred the most depressed and anxious generation in history, studies show.
Haidt, whose book is out March 26, argues that smartphones and social media have contributed to a “great rewiring” of childhood — causing sleep deprivation, social deprivation, attention fragmentation, addiction and spiritual degradation.
