Precious relationship skills don’t grow online

Over recent decades Western cultures have changed from a healthily free, play-based childhood to a mindlessly free, phone-based childhood. Jonathan Haidt shows how this has been harmful to children. He says the key factor is that “precious” relationship skills don’t grow online.

Haidt unpacks the evidence in his book “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness” (2024).

He crystallizes his key message like this:

“The key factor is the commitment required to make relationships work. When people are raised in a community … they learn how to manage relationships, and how to manage themselves and their emotions in order to keep those precious relationships going. … In general, when children are raised [in an online smartphone world] they are less likely to learn such skills. “

Here is more of his summary from pages 9-10 of The Anxious Generation.

We all know how the attractions of the virtual world can take any of us out of the real world. For children, that means harming their development, mental health, skills and relationships with real people, family, school and friends.

Serious but solvable

Evidence is growing about how people of all ages may identify more strongly with a virtual online group than with more precious people in the real world.

Unlike the complex challenge of solving many serious problems, Jonathan Haidt optimistically suggests that a few do-able collective changes will improve things.

Image from cover of The Anxious Generation design by Dave Cicirelli