22 March 2024

The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt

Imagine a horror movie in which an entire generation has succumbed to a device that will “suck their brains out”, says Helen Rumbelow in The Times, except for one man who runs around shouting “Wake up!” That’s effectively a description of Jonathan Haidt’s campaign against mobile phones. In his chilling yet persuasive new book, The Anxious Generation, the American academic lays out how much young people’s mental health has deteriorated in the smartphone era. Teenagers in the US have more than doubled their screen time, from three hours in the 1990s to seven and a half today, excluding time for educational purposes. In England, the number of girls under 18 requiring hospital treatment for self-harm rose from around 10,000 in 2010 to nearly 15,000 in 2016. “Worldwide, nearly twice as many adolescents reported loneliness in 2018 compared with 2012.” Haidt admits that there’s no concrete evidence that phones, and specifically the “unbridled access” to social media they provide, are solely responsible for all this. But they’re clearly the “frontrunner”.

Haidt is scathing about tech companies like Facebook and TikTok, says Lucy Denyer in The Daily Telegraph, but “parents come in for some stick too”. He thinks society has become too scared of letting children develop autonomy – to play unsupervised, to walk to school alone – and that this has accelerated the shift from a “play-based childhood” to a phone-based one. The big question is what can we do about it? Haidt has several sensible recommendations – no smartphones for under-14s, no social media for under-16s – but seems pessimistic that anything will change. Personally, I’m more upbeat. The advent of the “Smartphone Free Childhood” movement is proof that parents are trying to address this problem. I know I won’t be the only one denying my children access to TikTok – and thanks to this “compelling” book, I have “a good lot of evidence on my side”.

👩‍💻🚨 One of the most damning facts about the tech execs pushing their “digital dope” is that they don’t let their own kids anywhere near it, says Ed Smith in The New Statesman. Many insist on a “phone-free and even screen-free education” for their sons and daughters; at the popular Waldorf School of the Peninsula in Silicon Valley, digital devices of all kinds are totally forbidden.

Pre-order The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt here.

The Silver Bone by Andrey Kurkov

Ukrainian novelist Andrey Kurkov is mainly known for “quirkier fiction”, says Julian Evans in The Sunday Telegraph, so this crime mystery “may come as a surprise”. The first of a promised trilogy, The Silver Bone is set 100 years ago in lawless, Bolshevik-occupied Kyiv. The protagonist is a “naïve young Ukrainian”, Samson Kolechko, who is “swept into murder and conspiracy” after a Cossack horseman kills his father. Ensuing events – including “the disappearance of a large quantity of silver, a half-made tweed suit and an elusive tubercular Belgian” – draw Samson into peril. In a Kurkovian “surreal flourish”, the protagonist has a chopped-off ear which he can still hear from, “preserved in a Montpensier sweets tin”. This “witty and enjoyable” novel bodes well for future instalments.

The Silver Bone by Andrey Kurkov is available here.

Flying back from Ukraine with Defence Secretary Grant Shapps, says Harry Yorke in The Sunday Times, I noticed that he was reading Victory to Defeat by Lord Dannatt and Robert Lyman. It’s a “compelling history” of how the British Army, after a series of impressive victories in World War One, “slowly declined thanks to mismanagement and a failure to identify and prepare for the arrival of a rival European force more than capable of matching it”. No doubt it will provide “much food for thought”.