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Yahoo
22-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Dr. Jonathan Haidt Is Leading a Parenting Movement—Here's What He Wants You to Know About Technology and Kids' Mental Health
Parents Next Gen winner and author of 'The Anxious Generation,' Dr. Jonathan Haidt, says he's helping parents create stability for their children by reclaiming childhood. In an age dominated by screens, social media, and shrinking childhood freedoms, renowned psychologist and one of Parents' Next Gen winners, Jonathan Haidt, is leading a growing global movement to help parents reclaim their kids' mental health, independence, and joy. With the release of his bestselling 2024 book The Anxious Generation and his activism throughout 2025, Dr. Haidt has emerged as one of the most influential voices in parenting today. Dr. Haidt, a professor at NYU's Stern School of Business, has spent years researching the mental health crisis among young people. His conclusion? The dramatic rise in anxiety, depression, and social withdrawal is closely tied to the early and excessive use of smartphones and social media. Dr. Haidt is on a mission to help kids "break up" with their phones and reclaim mental health, which is why he's a Parents Next Gen winner. Not content with just influencing parents, Dr. Haidt turned to children themselves. He co-authored an interactive graphic novel called The Amazing Generation—a playful guide to help 5th to 8th graders 'break up with their phones' and rediscover the joys of real life, out in December 2025. Parents across the country have embraced it as a tool for opening conversations and creating family screen-time rules collaboratively. Dr. Haidt's influence reached even wider after recently appearing with Michelle Obama on her podcast. Together, they tackled one of today's thorniest parenting issues: how to set boundaries in a tech-driven world. 'Understand that your children are not your friends,' Obama emphasized, echoing Dr. Haidt's call for strong, deliberate parenting. The episode prompted an explosion of online dialogue and further fueled the movement of parents supporting each other in creating healthier home environments. Dr. Haidt spoke exclusively to Parents. What motivates you to do the work that you do? What motivates me? Gosh, so many different motivations. It started as just scientific curiosity about why the mental health stats suddenly got so horrible in 2012. What happened? Then it moved on to be, 'This is the biggest problem I have ever seen. This is actually changing an entire generation of human beings.' So now it's become really more of a Anxious Generation we are helping families and organizations around the world to make change. It's become so many different motivations, but it's been really thrilling because almost everyone wants to change this. How are you raising your children to be changemakers? I'm raising my kids, first, to be independent. I haven't really thought about making them changemakers per se. My daughter's 15, my son is 18, and we focused on just giving them more independence than we were ready for, like pushing ourselves to listen to Lenore Skenazy, who advocates for free-range we focused on just letting them out more in New York City, letting them navigate, letting them do errands. Now my kids, they go all over the city on city bikes. They're confident. So I've just been focusing on getting them to fly and then they'll find their way in the world. It seems like devices can be particularly threatening to boys' outlook and sense of self. How can we raise young boys to thrive and not just survive? Well, the most important thing for raising boys is that they have to have thousands or millions of real-world experiences, some of which involve risk and our kids, our boys, are having thousands or millions of video games. And it's not just the video games. It's the porn. It's the vaping. It's so many online activities. So, we've got to delay boys descending into video games and got to send them out into the world to play and have adventures, even though that's kind of scary for us. We have to overcome our own fears and give our boys the kind of childhoods that their fathers or grandfathers had, at least to the extent that we can. What would you say to parents who have an issue with delaying—they have a teen who is feeling excluded and wants social media? Let's say we're first on the smartphone. You can give your kid a non-smartphone. It's fine to have your kid be in contact with their friends. But just try to hold out on a smartphone because that's a gambling casino and pornography, and everything else in their pocket. On social media, it can be harder. If your kid has one other friend who isn't on social media, it's a lot easier than if every single friend is on social media. And finally, just educate yourself about social media. On my Substack we have posts giving quotations from employees at Snapchat and TikTok. And if you know what they know, you wouldn't let your kids on TikTok and Snapchat. So it's hard. My daughter is 15. I've not let her have any social media and I am imposing a cost on her in the short run. But in the long run, I think I have a happier daughter who is going to flourish and fly the nest. What would be your word of advice for parents? We all feel anxious about letting our kids out, letting them out of our control, letting them out of our view. But we have to do what's best for the kids, not what's best for our own feelings. And we have to overcome our anxiety if we want to give our kids a chance of overcoming their anxiety. We have to let them grow up, take small risks by themselves without us there, to discover that they can do it. It can be as simple as sending your kid into a grocery store. If you have a seven-year-old child who's been shopping with you 50 or 100 times, knows how to do it, you say, 'Here's some money, go get a quart of milk. I'll wait here in the parking lot,' or 'I'll wait at the front of the store.' Just start small, and you will be anxious that first time, but your kid is going to be jumping up and down with excitement that you gave them this chance to do something. We all need to feel useful, and our kids have to feel useful, so let them do useful things. That's how they'll grow up. One last question, because you gave so many hopeful ideas there. Do you have any specific advice for dads? So my advice to dads is that while moms have been sort of leading the movement to push back on smartphones, the other half of this is you have to give your kids an exciting, real-world childhood, which includes thrills and risk-taking and running around and wrestling. And this is where dads excel. Dad is the one who's going to pretend to be a predator stalking the child and pretending to be a big, scary monster. That sort of stuff is incredibly healthy for kids. Dad's the one who's going to be throwing them up in the air. That mix of fear and excitement with safety is the most powerful thing you can give your kids to overcome their own anxieties and become a force in the world. Dads are uniquely qualified, or I should just say on average, they enjoy it more, and they tend to gravitate to that role. So this is where I think dads are really really crucial. Read the original article on Parents Solve the daily Crossword
Time of India
02-07-2025
- Health
- Time of India
'Can't even watch a movie': NYU psychologist warns early tech use is shattering kids' focus, suggests what parents can do
In a candid podcast conversation, NYU psychologist Jonathan Haidt warns that constant tech exposure is fragmenting children's attention spans. Citing real classroom examples, he emphasizes that early screen use desensitizes young brains, reducing focus and social skills. Haidt urges parents to delay digital exposure to safeguard cognitive development before introducing children to addictive modern technologies. Jonathan Haidt, NYU professor and psychologist, highlights a hidden crisis: attention fragmentation in children due to excessive tech use. Speaking on a recent podcast, he argues that kids raised without early screen exposure develop better focus and interpersonal skills. (Represnetaional image: iStock) Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads 'They can't even watch a movie' Rejecting the 'tech prep' argument Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Gamified learning and dopamine burnout Screen addiction in early age. A call for digital discipline Rethinking tech parenting in the AI age In a digital world that never stops scrolling, NYU social psychologist Jonathan Haidt is urging parents, educators, and policymakers to take a hard look at what technology might be doing to young minds. In a recent episode of the Armchair Expert podcast hosted by Dax Shepard, Haidt drew attention to what he called a deeper crisis than even mental illness in today's youth—attention mental health concerns often dominate headlines, Haidt warned that the quieter but more pervasive consequence of excessive screen exposure is how it shatters a child's ability to focus, think critically, and communicate meaningfully. And according to him, the cost of this fragmented attention could redefine the cognitive and social capacities of an entire who teaches at NYU's Stern School of Business, recounted troubling observations from his own students. 'Some of them say they can't watch a movie unless they're also on a second screen,' he revealed. Others admitted they couldn't read a single page of a book without switching to Haidt's view, this isn't simply about screen addiction , it's about developmental disruption. He emphasized that the young brain needs time to grow and stabilize before being subjected to digital technologies that are engineered to capture and hold attention at any the conversation, Shepard raised a familiar counterpoint, could it be that these children are simply preparing for a hyper-digital, AI-driven world where multitasking and speed are the new norms?Haidt wasn't convinced. 'It's much, much better to let healthy brain development reach at least most of the way through before you shatter it with the constant interruptions,' he said. He argued that students who develop focus, communication skills, and critical thinking before being introduced to addictive digital platforms will have a clear advantage in the workplace and in of Haidt's major concerns is how even educational tools are being designed with gamification elements—an approach that, while engaging, may condition young brains to seek constant dopamine hits. Over time, this desensitization can dull their natural curiosity and make real-life learning seem 'boring' by not just that technology is distracting, it's that it fundamentally alters how young people interact with the world, leading to superficial engagement, diminished patience, and less emotional contrast to those who champion early exposure to screens, Haidt promotes delayed digital access, suggesting that kids raised without devices until late adolescence actually thrive in academic and social environments. 'They can pick up how to use the technology in about three days,' he said, arguing that the tools are intuitive enough that delayed exposure doesn't pose a long-term also criticized how today's platforms differ from the early internet. 'The Millennials grew up with the Internet, but they learned how to program. They used floppy disks. There was learning before. But now, these things are just easy to use and designed to be addictive,' Haidt commentary aligns with arguments he expands on in his latest book, The Anxious Generation , where he attributes rising rates of childhood anxiety and social dysfunction to smartphones and overprotective parenting. At the heart of his message is a plea for balance, don't reject technology, but don't surrender to it artificial intelligence continues to shape the future of work, communication, and education, Haidt's warning serves as a timely reminder: before preparing kids for the tech of tomorrow, we must protect their minds today. Attention is no longer just a skill—it's a lifeline.
Otago Daily Times
21-06-2025
- Health
- Otago Daily Times
Undoing ‘the Great Rewiring'
Smartphones are turning our young people into the anxious generation, Jonathan Haidt tells Tom Faber. The first thing Jonathan Haidt asks when we sit down is my age. I know what he's thinking: he wants to place me, technologically. Am I a member of the "anxious generation", the term he has coined for the young people who he believes have been psychologically harmed by social media and smartphone use at a tender age? Or am I more likely to be one of the concerned parents who are the primary audience for his book? At 33 (the oldest of his anxious generation are currently 28) and child-free, I don't quite fit into either camp. I also don't quite align with either of the two sides that have emerged in response to Haidt's argument. While his book, The Anxious Generation , has undoubtedly made a splash, sparking a heated public debate about adolescent technology use, the science underpinning his thesis has also met criticism from other researchers in his field. So is the book's popularity because Haidt has correctly diagnosed an urgent social ailment? Or because he's spinning parents a story that they desperately want to believe: that there is a simple solution to this complex problem? At 61, with neat grey hair and thick, dark eyebrows, Haidt perfectly embodies the role of affable, credible academic. He currently teaches social psychology at New York University's Stern School of Business. The starting point for The Anxious Generation is the crisis in young people's mental health — in his native US and across much of the West. The proportion of children and young people in the United Kingdom with mental disorders rose from 12% to 20% between 2017 and 2023. The question is: why, and what can we do about it? Haidt says the increase in anxiety and depression among young people is directly caused by their use of smartphones and social media. "Gen Z became the first generation in history to go through puberty with a portal in their pockets that called them away from the people nearby and into an alternative universe that was exciting, addictive, unstable, and ... unsuitable for children and adolescents," he writes. He specifically identifies the period between 2010 and 2015 as a time when smartphones and social media were updated to include addictive and harmful features, corresponding with a marked increase in anxiety and depression for children coming of age during this period. Exposure to these technologies during puberty causes long-term effects on the brain, Haidt argues. He calls this "the Great Rewiring". Haidt outlines four ways in which young people are negatively affected by social media and smartphones: sleep deprivation, social deprivation, attention fragmentation and addiction. Since The Anxious Generation was published, he has come to believe the threat to attention is the biggest concern, both for children and adults. "My argument is that these platforms are clearly, demonstrably, harming children at an industrial scale, by their millions," he says. He offers four simple rules to reverse the course of what he calls the "phone-based childhood". These are: no smartphones before 14; no social media before 16; phone-free schools; and more unsupervised play and childhood independence. The suggestions seem reasonable enough. Even some of his critics agree with them. They all require group mobilisation to avoid the "collective action problem" — it's much harder to enforce a change unless other parents are doing it too. If just one child has no smartphone or social media, they will feel excluded from their peers. As Haidt writes: "Few parents want their preteens to disappear into a phone, but a vision of their child being a social outcast is even more distressing." In the year since the book was published, Haidt says, parental, school and legislative action has taken place at a pace that he describes as "stunning". In the US, Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders sent a copy of the book to every other US state governor as a rallying cry. Haidt is keeping track of each state's actions on his website. There are pushes in various countries to ban phones from schools. In Australia, the wife of a state premier read Haidt's book and told her husband he had to do something about the crisis the author described. Months later: the country passed a bill that will raise the minimum age for opening a social media account to 16. In the UK, there was already momentum to this discussion before Haidt's book. The 2023 Online Safety Act puts more responsibility on tech platforms to ensure they are safe for users, especially children. It is one reason that Haidt calls the UK "the leading country on protecting kids online". Some critics claim Haidt is exacerbating a moral panic. Just as previous generations of adults claimed television, hip-hop, video games and comic books were corrupting the youth, they say Haidt is the latest avatar of the old guard inventing horror stories around new culture and technology they don't understand. Despite his avuncular demeanour and his pleasant habit of murmuring agreement with me while I speak, Haidt has arrived ready to prove every point in his book. "There certainly have been moral panics," he says, "and whatever technology the kids are using, the adults are going to be sceptical of. It's a valid criticism as a starting hypothesis. The obligation is on me to show this time is different. And I can very easily do that." His response to the moral panic accusation is twofold. One: he argues there has never historically been an introduction of new technology followed so directly by a precipitous global decline in youth mental health. Two: in previous generations, if you asked children how they felt about their comic books or video games, they would say they loved them, please don't take them away. But when young people today are surveyed about social media, significant numbers regret how much they use it, find them harmful, and in some cases wish they'd never been invented. So what is the controversy around the data? It boils down to a single, difficult question. Experts agree that mental health problems among teenagers are rising at the same time as smartphones and social media are playing increasingly ubiquitous roles in their lives. But is this mere correlation? Or is the technology causing the mental illness? Several prominent academics have argued that Haidt's claim of causation is an oversimplification; that there is no one simple answer to such a complex sociological problem. A particularly searing review in the academic journal Nature argued that Haidt's central thesis "is not supported by science" and that "the bold proposal that social media is to blame might distract us from effectively responding to the real causes of the current mental-health crisis in young people". Others have argued that the research around this topic is unreliable and ambiguous, or even conducted studies that contradict Haidt's claims. Sonia Livingstone, a social psychologist at the London School of Economics who researches children's lives in the digital age, says we don't know which way the data points: are smartphones causing poor mental health in children? Or are children with poor mental health turning to smartphones for entertainment and escape? Academics have also offered alternative reasons why young people might be struggling, from the state of global politics to the economy, to the environment. Haidt raises a couple of these in his book and claims they don't fit his timeline, but other experts are not so quick to dismiss the other theories. On his blog, Haidt has posted a series of detailed responses to his critics. Ultimately, there's enough doubt to concede that there is no scientific consensus around the topic. So how much public policy and parenting advice do we want to generate from unsettled science? Haidt argues it's better to act before it's too late. He writes: "At a certain point, we need to take action based on the most plausible theory, even if we can't be 100% certain that we have the correct causal theory. I think that point is now." Perhaps part of the reason that Haidt riles up members of the scientific establishment is because of how he positions himself publicly — as part scientist, part crusader. He is adept at self-promotion and has turned his book launch into a global campaign, telling me his goal is to "roll back the phone-based childhood in three years". This campaigning approach has precedent in his career: he has launched a series of non-profits over the years. He has also written books and taught classes that lean into the idea of self-improvement, casting him as something of a lifestyle guru. He tells me he wrote a personal mission statement in 2011: "To use my research in moral psychology and the research of others to help people better understand each other and to help important social institutions work better. That's my mission on this Earth." While this crusading image may work for getting attention and building Haidt's personal brand, it also flattens how his argument enters the public sphere. Critiques of his work often mischaracterise his thesis as a neo-Luddite assault on all screen time, when in fact his book is quite specific about which technology is harmful to whom, even making some — if not abundant — space to discuss where the argument gets tricky or the science unclear. There is also some blurriness around Haidt's politics, which is tricky considering how easily children's issues become politicised. He grew up in a secular Jewish family in Scarsdale, New York, and once identified as a Democrat. But Haidt now calls himself a centrist and uses conservative-coded language — for example describing himself on Joe Rogan's podcast as "an extremely alarmed patriotic American citizen who sees my country going to hell", and later comparing the revolution he's leading in the digital environment to the fall of communism in 1989. The fact that his book does not mention the threat to boys of far-right radicalisation from "manosphere" influencers, as chillingly depicted in the TV show Adolescence , could be because of a reluctance to alienate his engaged conservative fanbase. When I put this to him, he bats away the question, saying: "that didn't occur to me". Reading Haidt's book, I couldn't help reflecting on my own teenage years online. I had many positive experiences and made significant friends on forums and online video games at a time when I felt I didn't fit in at school. When I was coming to terms with my sexuality aged 14, I found vital resources and community on the internet. The Anxious Generation argues that digitally-mediated relationships are inherently less meaningful than their real-life counterparts. This is not true in my experience. Where the book does bring up the benefits that can come from virtual communities, they are briefly raised and then tossed aside. In our conversation, Haidt points out that I grew up on a different, less harmful version of the web, before social media companies deliberately employed addictive design features such as algorithmic feeds, conversation streaks and auto-playing videos to juice users for maximum engagement, and therefore maximum profit. This is true — the internet of my formative years was a simpler one. But does that really mean young people can't have positive experiences on today's social media? Haidt concedes that the internet can still be a valuable resource for marginalised groups such as queer people, but he also says that these groups are disproportionately the target of online harassment and abuse. In his view, the cons outweigh the pros. Livingstone disagrees. "Haidt puts these two sides on the scales and says the bullying outweighs the expression and finding your community, but there are some really good things here. We need to work out how to regulate big tech so that the bullying stops and the hate is not amplified." We should try to curtail tech companies' addictive, data-driven business models to make social media platforms better, safer places before resorting to an outright ban, she says, while noting it is very hard to mobilise politicians about children's wellbeing when there are major dollars on the table from big tech lobbying. There are benefits to social media too, she says. "Children are absolutely clear that they love being in touch with their friends. They love that when something bad happens, they can get social support. When they're stuck at home and their parents are fighting, they can go somewhere and say: 'Bloody hell, dad's shouting at mum again'." Livingstone believes that we need to look at the question with a wider lens. "What do we think a good childhood looks like?" she asks. "If we don't let children go on social media till they're 16, what is our plan for them being in touch with their friends? Are we going to let them out after school and let them walk home by themselves and hang out at the bus stop, or are we going to report them as hoodlums and menaces?" We live in a world where we have welcomed technology into every crevice of our work, social and leisure time. Countless services force us to create digital accounts to access them; educational technology is being rolled out across schools; AI is being inserted everywhere. "We have invested in tech across the board," Livingstone says. "It's becoming our infrastructure. And in that context, to say 'kids shouldn't be anywhere near it' — what's the vision in terms of restricting them, and what is the vision in terms of providing something better for them?" "We can ban smartphones," she says, "but we're not going to make kids happy overnight." — The Observer
CNBC
17-06-2025
- Business
- CNBC
CEO: When I meet someone with these 4 traits, I try to hire them 'on the spot'—they are 'rare but invaluable'
Think you know what bosses are looking for? Think again. Getting hired and promoted used to hinge on traditional leadership traits like executive presence and vision. But in today's world, those aren't enough. As a CEO, board member and MBA professor, my research shows that a sharper, more relevant set of criteria is rising to the top. And it's long overdue. At NYU's Stern School of Business, I teach a popular class called "Becoming You." Students start by identifying their values using a tool called The Values Bridge, then explore careers that match their aptitudes and emotional, intellectual and economic needs. Finally, and critically, they assess their leadership capacity. I used to rely on old-school aptitude tests for that last part (think: the kind your college counselor used). But over time, I saw that those tools were built for a world that no longer exists. Today's professionals face nonstop change, geopolitical chaos and ambiguity about, well, everything. So I set out to identify the traits that actually matter now — and tested them through consulting projects with a dozen companies across industries. Focus groups and manager surveys refined the list. And now, I use these four traits in every hiring decision I make. When I see all four in one person? I try to hire them on the spot. The business environment today is fast, unforgiving and always on. Leaders need uncommon levels of physical and mental stamina — and not in short bursts, but continuously. Nerve means making fast, high-stakes decisions with incomplete or conflicting information. That takes real confidence. It also means having the courage to deliver tough truths with empathy. People who combine candor with kindness are rare — but invaluable. Nerve is courage, clarity, speed, transparency and an unrelenting bias for action. According to LinkedIn, professionals needed to update 25% of their skills every 18 months from 2015 to 2020. That "skill churn" is expected to hit 65% in the years ahead. So yes, adaptability has always mattered. But today, it's mission-critical. Elasticity isn't just tolerating change — it's actually enjoying reinvention. It's a mindset that says, "Bring on the new." I often look for what I call "irregular relationships": friendships, mentorships or collaborations with people very different from oneself. They signal flexibility, openness and the social curiosity that underpins comfort with change. It's always been important to be steady at work. What's changed is how rare it's become. Managers tell me their best people are anxious, withdrawn or just worn out. The pace and pressure of work today are real — and intense. That's why managers are putting a premium on soundness: a bundle of traits that includes positivity, accountability, resilience and self-awareness. You can ask colleagues for feedback on the first three. But self-awareness? That's the only trait on this list you can — and should — test for. If you're job searching or feeling stalled in your career, start there. In a world that's always changing, your currency is your currency. In other words, how "current" you are (on trends, technology, culture and ideas) directly affects how valuable you are to your organization. Gone are the days when you could stay informed just by talking to colleagues or skimming a few news platforms. The most successful people don't just absorb what's next — they share it in-house, sparking fresh thinking across teams. Wonderment is intellectual curiosity, cultural fluency, peer around corners and the proactive instinct to bring the outside in. Wondering how you would rate on all of these traits? You can find out for free using The Career Traits Compass, which I designed to help both my MBA students — and professionals seeking career growth. Now, obviously, every role has its own must-haves. Values matter. Skills matter. But these four traits? They're what every leader is quietly scanning for. And if you've got them all, trust me: Someone is already plotting how to hire you.
Business Insider
15-06-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
Scott Galloway has some choice metaphors to describe AI's impact on workers: 'I think of it as corporate Ozempic'
NYU professor Scott Galloway thinks a lot about AI. Galloway shared some vivid metaphors to describe how AI is changing the workplace. He said to think of it like "corporate Ozempic" or the "East German Stasi with WiFi." Scott Galloway, a New York University Stern School of Business professor and host of the podcast The Prof G Pod, shared some of the metaphors he's come up with to describe AI's impact on the workplace in a discussion with Microsoft Chief Scientist Jaime Teevan and Greg Shove, the CEO of Section, an AI education company. Here are some of Galloway's best metaphors: The leadership and boards of many companies are using AI to cut costs. In this scenario, Galloway said he thinks of AI as having some of the same properties as GLP-1s. I think of AI as "corporate Ozempic." and that is, Ozempic goes into your brain and kind of switches off a switch that says 'you don't need more calories' even though your instincts are telling you to consume as many calories as possible if you're fortunate enough to have salty, or sugary, or fatty food in front of typically when you're a CEO, and you're growing, the signal is 'I need more calories. I need more people.' Musk, to a certain extent, by offering a minimum viable product with 20% of the staff of Twitter, and really Meta announcing what was the seminal earnings call where they said, 'We've laid off 20% of our staff, and meanwhile maintain growth of 23% sending earnings up 70%,' everybody started thinking I want the great taste of growth without the calories of more people. And AI is the Ozempic. 'The East German Stasi with WiFi' The "dark side" of AI lies in how easily it can identify low performers, Galloway said, comparing it to East Germany's Cold War-era secret police, notorious for their widespread surveillance. Now, I can upload all the email and Slack interactions I have with an employee and say 'Give me an estimate of how many hours a week this person is actually working.' And it'll give me what I believe, maybe incorrectly, but I believe, and that's all that's important, is my perception of how many hours a week this person is actually working. 'Warrior making machine' For the top 10% of the US labor force, however, Galloway thinks AI is a boon.
