"The Anxious Generation" by Jonathan Haidt is a well-researched, carefully presented analysis of the impact phones and social media have had on teens in America. The author presents a flood of data, from the rise in reported mental health issues to the lack of emergency room visits for accidental injuries, to make the case that phones present a unique threat to America's teenagers.
Haidt proposes a small range of solutions to the perceived problem: maximizing child independence, no phones or social media before 16, phone-free schools from bell to bell, and more.
I will spare you my personal opinion on the topic, which is wildly out of step with the cultural moment and likely to cause an increase in the number of arguments I have in any given day. I will simply say that Haidt is a good author and researcher, and I'd love to chat about the book with him over coffee.
Those who are in favor of sweeping changes in the way our nation handles teenage development will find plenty of fodder here to bolster their argument. Those who (like me) are constitutionally incapable of looking at a very convenient graph and asking "I wonder if there are other potential factors here" will take a month to read the book (as I did), because you'll keep stopping to do your own research.
Which, on balance, is probably a good thing, and more people should do more of that; if the Haidt book drives more parents and teachers to think hard about what they do, what they allow children to do, and how they fit all of that together into a coherent worldview, I'd certainly say that's a good thing.
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