Jonathan Haidt
La generazione ansiosa

In recent months, both my fellow teachers and my colleagues at the newspaper have heard me mention this book several times. “You should read Haidt,” I would say, “because he explains, with objective data, what is happening to the new generations.” Even during class meetings, when discussing young people’s difficulties with parents, I have often referred to this book, trying to clarify why their children now face problems that were once rare or even nonexistent.

I will try to summarize it, even though the book is dense and analytical—but written in such a clear and fluid way that you read it like a novel. According to Haidt, a social psychologist, between 2010 and 2015 there was a “Great Rewiring” in childhood and adolescence. Generation Z, followed by Alpha, was the first generation to grow up not through free play, but with a phone in their hands. And it is here, according to the author, that the problem lies: the smartphone acts as an inhibitor of experiences, preventing young people from developing the essential skills to face the world, others, and themselves.

Free play—that which happens among peers, without adult supervision—forces children to organize themselves, set rules, manage conflicts, and face some (calculated) risks. It is precisely through exposure to risk that one matures. Haidt identifies six types of risk fundamental for development: speed, height, dangerous elements such as fire, exploration, physical contact... Without these experiences, children do not mature; they remain fragile and insecure.

Instead of facing reality and its challenges, adolescents spend up to 40 hours a week—the equivalent of a full-time job—in front of a screen. And the consequences differ between boys and girls.
Girls are subjected to a constant bombardment of unattainable aesthetic models. They try to imitate them, and when they fail—as is very likely—the data show a significant increase in cases of depression. Depression, on social media, is contagious: a girl who publishes depressing content affects not just her friends but also her friends’ friends. Because, as Haidt explains, on social media the most extreme voices win.

For boys, the situation is different. More than social media, they choose isolation: feeling inadequate, they retreat into video games and pornography. It’s a universe in which every desire finds immediate satisfaction, but which paralyzes real abilities, compromising social, academic, and relational skills. They no longer know how to talk to a girl, their academic results are worse than those of their female classmates, and, most of all, they no longer believe in the possibility of building a future career.

Of course, it’s not their fault. Haidt talks about “helicopter” parents, who constantly supervise their children. They do so also because today, it is unthinkable to let a nine-year-old go run an errand alone. And the law doesn’t help: the risk of being accused of child abandonment is always looming.

Thus, on the one hand, children have lost freedom in the real world; on the other, they have gained it in unlimited measure in the digital world. Haidt proposes a powerful metaphor: how would you react if someone told you your child was leaving for Mars tomorrow? Well, handing over a smartphone with open access to social media, messaging, video games, and pornography is much the same. Yet, most parents don’t realize it. And parental controls and time limits alone are not enough.

Among the author’s suggestions is the introduction of real and verifiable age limits for social media use. The current ban under 13 is little more than a fig leaf: platforms do nothing to truly verify users’ ages, even though the means to do so already exist.

Ideally, according to Haidt, smartphones should only be allowed around age 16. Before then, just basic phones for calls and SMS.
And he imagines a different future: schools with large parks, classrooms where kids can invent games, build, experiment. Without smartphones in their pockets. And, most importantly, without overprotective parents suffocating them. Because growing up needs freedom—and even a few scraped knees.