SOUL DAMAGE –

March 31, 2024 – “We’ve never seen anything like this. There’s massive evidence of harm,” Jonathan Haidt says. “It happened in many countries at the same time, at a specific point in time: the moment when teens traded their flip phones for smartphones. It’s as if you had a murder, and all eyewitnesses point to this suspect.

In his latest book The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, out now, Haidt examines the connection between this “great rewiring,” in which we’ve traded kids’ play time for phone time, and the decline in teen mental health. Haidt talked with PEOPLE for a story in this week’s.

Imagine there was suddenly a toy introduced which would cause children to get less sleep, less exercise, spend less time with other children. It would make them incredibly self-conscious, and it would lower their self-esteem and cause depression and anxiety. That would be horrible?

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