One child, one teacher, one pen, and one book can change the world.

Malala Yousafzai (Pakistani education activist, 2014 Nobel Peace Prize, born in 1997)

The rewiring of life is constantly with us and has been for more than 25 years. You may not think that this book is essential; you may think it is overrated or even disturbing, yet, The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt, with the subtitle How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, is an essential book. It is a book about reclaiming human life for human beings for all generations. It is not just for parents and teachers; it is for anyone who wants to understand how the most rewiring of human relationships and consciousness has been made and it makes it harder for all of us to think and focus on others to build relationships. This book is a gift for us all!

The author of The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt, Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University and a Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, speaks of the dangers of our technical age. He gives a clear, important insight on how to avoid the calamity of destroying childhoods in this digital age. It is the loss of self-esteem as well as protecting children and adults from the psychological influence and damage of the constant technological and phone-based life. This electronic influence…ill prepares us for real-life experiences and learning, of building relationships and social interactions with essential features that have been typical for millions of years.

We use our bodies to communicate, we are conscious of the bodies of others and respond to the bodies of others, both consciously and unconsciously. They are synchronous (being in sync), and they involve one-on-one communication and investing in relationships. This does not happen in the “virtual world”. They are disembodied, meaning ‘no real body’ is needed, just language. They involve a substantial number of one-to-many communications, broadcasting to a potentially vast audience. People you never met, nor heard of, or seen in real-time.  Often the lines blur, the key factor is the commitment to make relationships work, and the virtual world does not do that. One does not have 500 friends; if one is fortunate, one has about five friends in life.

Here are some suggestions, Professor Haidt writes about:

1. No smartphone before high school. Parents should delay children’s entry into the round-the-clock internet access by giving basic phones, before ninth grade, about age 14.

2. No social media before 16. Let kids get through the most vulnerable period of brain development before connecting them to the firehose of social comparisons and algorithmically chosen influencers.

3. Phone-free schools. In all schools from elementary through high school students should store their phones, smartwatches, and any other personal devices that can send or receive texts in phone lockers during the school day. That is the only way to free up their attention for each other and their teachers.

4. Far more unsupervised play and childhood independence. That’s the way children naturally develop social skills, overcome anxiety, and become self-governing young adults.

These four reforms are not hard to implement if many accomplish this at the same time. They cost almost nothing. If most parents, adults, and schools in a community were to enact all four, they would see substantial improvements in mental health within a few months.

There is an underlying worry that something unnatural is going on, as the children’s online hours accumulate. Professor Haidt’s study found important clues by digging into more data on adolescent mental health. The first clue is that the rise is concentrated in disorders related to anxiety and depression, which are classed together in the psychiatric category known as ‘internalizing disorders.’ The person with this disorder feels emotions such as anxiety, fear, sadness, and hopelessness, and they often withdraw from social engagement. In contrast ’externalizing disorders’ are those in which a person feels distress and turns symptoms and responses outward, aimed at other people. These conditions include conduct disorder, difficulty in anger management, and a tendency toward violence and excessive risk-taking.

Across cultures, ages, and countries, girls and women suffer higher rates of ‘internalizing disorders,’ while boys and men suffer from higher rates of ‘externalizing order.’ Both sexes have suffered since the early 2010s from ‘internalizing disorders.’ Technology has taken over their lives, and solutions must be found, to heal this divide.

The devices and the rewiring of life manipulate the participants, no matter what age, sex, or country questioning the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, and even memories. These doubts often lead to the loss of self-esteem and uncertainty of one’s ability and stability. And yet the future of technology also gives the participant hope of growth, morally, and philosophically. Technology is essential and needs to be in responsible decision-making people, not just money-crabbing machines. These sensible decisions are very much part of the responsible decision-making adults and influence the next generations for years to come.                                                                                                                       

The secret of change is to focus all your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new. Socrates (Greek philosopher, Athens, 469-399 BC)