Program: Southern Tier Teacher Center Network
Audience: Prek-12 Faculty and Staff
Dates: 4/19/2026 to 5/31/2026
The Anxious Generations: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness
In this interactive online book study, we'll dive into reading, discussing, and reflecting on The Anxious Generation. Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the facts about the rates of childhood depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide, and why rates have risen over the past decade. He then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults. Haidt shows how the "play-based childhood" began to decline in the 1980s, and how it was finally wiped out by the arrival of the "phone-based childhood" in the early 2010s. He presents more than a dozen mechanisms by which this "great rewiring of childhood" has interfered with children's social and neurological development, covering everything from sleep deprivation to attention fragmentation, addiction, loneliness, social contagion, social comparison, and perfectionism. He explains why social media damages girls more than boys and why boys have been withdrawing from the real world into the virtual world, with disastrous consequences for themselves, their families, and their societies. Most importantly, Haidt issues a clear call to action. He diagnoses the "collective action problems" that trap us, and then proposes four simple rules that might set us free. He describes steps that parents, teachers, schools, tech companies, and governments can take to end the epidemic of mental illness and restore a more humane childhood. A link for the online classroom will be emailed to you by the instructors in advance of the start date. Book Study leader Melissa Kline Ed.S.NCSP