Jonathan Haidt wrote The Anxious Generation with a firm belief that the challenges confronting our children and our families are solvable. However, addressing these challenges requires understanding the traps we have fallen into, so we can see the escape routes. The main escape routes are four new norms: delay smartphones until high school, delay social media until 16, phone-free schools, and more independence and play in the real world. Haidt will share the research that underpins the book and leave parents with inspiration and concrete plans to facilitate change in their families and communities.

 

Presenter: Jonathan Haidt, PhD is a social psychologist at New York University’s Stern School of Business. He received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and taught for 16 years at the University of Virginia. In his most recent book, The Anxious Generation, he brings to light the “great rewiring of childhood” in which play-based childhood has been replaced by phone-based childhood. Dr. Haidt continues to push reforms to put an end to the youth mental health crisis through his public health campaign, The Anxious Generation. Dr. Haidt also is the author of The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom, and of The New York Times best-sellers The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, and The Coddling of the American Mind (co-authored with Greg Lukianoff). He was chosen by Prospect magazine as one of the world’s “Top 50 Thinkers.”