You don’t need to be a social psychologist to recognize the social crisis of modernity. It seems particularly visible among the generation currently coming-of-age with record high levels of mental illness and increasing instances of “failure to launch.” If you happen to be a social psychologist, however, you might find yourself better equipped to unpack the underlying reasons for the generational shift. In The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness (2024), Jonathon Haidt, famous for previous books like The Righteous Mind (2012) and The Coddling of the American (2018, see previous review), zooms in on the questions of why Gen Z faces such unique challenges.

Chris Mathers Jackson

Nonfiction, My List of Required Reads, Reading & Parenting

Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt’s The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting Up a Generation for Failure (2018) came out five years ago and yet its message seems even more relevant today. Published before pandemic fueled parents and youth to even greater levels of anxiety and fear, The Coddling scrutinizes the generational shift on the part of society, schools, and parents that matches the advent of smart phone technology and the rise of social media. Those cultural transformations, the authors argue, led to a generation that equates physical safety with freedom from differing opinions and world views. Their thesis, that American families, universities, and society generally have lost sight of three fundamental truths when it comes to youth; in so doing we have fostered a climate of fragility and safetyism that undermines human resilience and encourages anxiety, us-vs-them culture, and rebrands discomfort and disagreement as unsafe. If their book was a must-read pre-pandemic, it is utterly imperative today.

Hi.

Apr 29 The Anxious Generation