The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness

✰《紐約時報》暢銷書 no.1
✰探討當代青少年心理疾病的必讀之作

2010 年代初期，青少年的心理健康急轉直下，憂鬱症、焦慮症、自殘與自殺率急劇上升。為什麼？

科技成癮的童年：社會心理學家強納森． 海德特（Jonathan Haidt）在《焦慮世代》一書中，揭露了青少年心理疾病大幅流行的真相，並探討「以遊戲為基礎的童年」如何衰落，並在2010年代初期被「以手機為基礎的童年」徹底取代。

社交媒體的危害： Haidt 分析了科技如何干擾孩子們的社交和神經發展，包括睡眠不足、注意力分散、成癮、孤獨、社交比較和完美主義等。他更深入探討了社群媒體為何對女孩的傷害大於男孩，以及男孩如何從現實世界退縮到虛擬世界，對自己、家庭和社會造成災難性後果。

重塑童年的行動： Haidt 提出明確的行動呼籲，分析了「集體行動問題」，並提出四個方法幫助人們重獲自由。他描述了父母、教師、學校、科技公司和政府可以採取的措施，以終止心理疾病的流行，並重建更人性化的童年。

Haidt 長期致力於在最困難的領域——政治與宗教兩極分化的社群、因文化戰爭陷入鬥爭的校園，以及現在 Z 世代所面臨的公共健康危機中—以數據支持真相。

我們不能忽視關於他“如何保護我們的孩子——以及我們自己——免受手機帶來的心理傷害”的發現。

【媒體盛讚】

「博學、引人入勝、戰鬥力十足、充滿改革精神。」 - 《紐約時報》書評

「令人不寒而慄……多虧海特先生，我們才能一窺真正的恐怖……清晰、令人難忘……振奮人心。”」- 《華爾街日報》

「這本書很重要……海特指出，當孩子的精力和注意力從現實轉移到虛擬世界，是災難性的，尤其是對女孩而言。」 - Michelle Goldberg,《紐約時報》

THE INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

From New York Times bestselling coauthor of The Coddling of the American Mind, an essential investigation into the collapse of youth mental health—and a plan for a healthier, freer childhood.

“Erudite, engaging, combative, crusading.” —New York Times Book Review

“Words that chill the parental heart… thanks to Mr. Haidt, we can glimpse the true horror of what happened not only in the U.S. but also elsewhere in the English-speaking world… lucid, memorable… galvanizing.” —Wall Street Journal

"[An] important new book...The shift in kids’ energy and attention from the physical world to the virtual one, Haidt shows, has been catastrophic, especially for girls." —Michelle Goldberg, The New York Times

After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged in the early 2010s. Rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rose sharply, more than doubling on many measures. Why?

In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time. 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 important, 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.

Haidt has spent his career speaking truth backed by data in the most difficult landscapes—communities polarized by politics and religion, campuses battling culture wars, and now the public health emergency faced by Gen Z. We cannot afford to ignore his findings about protecting our children—and ourselves—from the psychological damage of a phone-based life.