Smartphone threats

THE ANXIOUS GENERATION:
How the Great Rewiring of Childhood
is Causing an Epidemic of Mental
Illness
By Jonathan Haidt
Allen Lane. 385 pages. £25
ISBN 978 0 241 64766 0

There is nothing new about the idea that our smartphones are doing something to our brains or that they have begun to shape the way we look at life. This new book by Jonathan Haidt, an academic and social commentator, who is best known for his bracing volumes The Righteous Mind and The Coddling of the American Mind, explores this ground with particular attention to Generation Z.

Haidt’s description of Generation Z as ‘the anxious generation’ is based on rigorous research into this age group, who were the first generation to grow up in a smartphone world.