Episode · Freakonomics Radio · 2024-09-12
Books mentioned on 602. Is Screen Time as Poisonous as We Think?
Young people have been reporting a sharp rise in anxiety and depression. This maps neatly onto the global rise of the smartphone.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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The Anxious Generation
The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt explores the severe mental health crisis among adolescents brought on by the shift from a play-based childhood to a phone-based, screen-dominated culture.
Discussed“In early 2020, the influential social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who teaches at New York University, joined this argument with a book titled "The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness." Here is Haidt on MSNBC discussing this epidemic: "Everyone has a theory about what causes it."”
