Pun Salad

Probably not the wisest library pick for me. The author, Jonathan Haidt, provides a lot of recommendations for (1) parents of younger children and (2) political activists. I am currently neither.

What's left (however) is Haidt's documentation of today's troubled youth, caught in a double whammy of (1) mental illness, caused by overuse of smartphones and social media; and (2) under-exposure to real-world interactive "play". (I've noticed that most discussions of the book seem to center on whammy #1.)

Discussion and updates on these topics are, for now, being continued on Haidt's substack, After Babel and the book-specific website.

Haidt is a research psychologist, and I've read and enjoyed his past books: The Happiness Hypothesis; The Righteous Mind; and (best of all) The Coddling of the American Mind, co-written with Greg Lukianoff. Over the years, Haidt has earned numerous glowing citations on my blog, mostly thanks to his criticisms of campus censorship.

Haidt's recommendations (both in this book and various published articles) about regulating social media (because of, but not limited to, its effects on kiddos) have drawn some libertarian pushback; see, for example, Aaron Brown at Reason, who claims "Jonathan Haidt's Anti-Social Media Crusade [is] Marred By Bad Science". Or George Will at the WaPo: Fighting the phone-warping of Gen Z doesn’t require government intrusion. Or his erstwhile co-author, Greg Lukianoff, on his substack: "My First Amendment concerns with ‘The Anxious Generation’". (Greg calls The Anxious Generation "an excellent and important book", but…)

I tend to side with the libertarian critiques, and I confess being undecided on the "bad science" assertion leveled by Aaron Brown. There are a lot of studies, graphs, and citations in Haidt's book, and (sorry) I don't have an aching desire to track down every one. Or any one, for that matter.

I don't have to tell you, but will anyway: If you're interested in the topic, check out the book, and its responses. And make up your own mind, if you can.