In his best-selling book, The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt contrasts Baby Boomers and Gen X children to younger generations.  Those born more than fifty years ago experienced a play-based childhood filled with human interaction and physical activity in which parents permitted kids to play out of their sight as long as they returned home when it got dark.  Free-flowing activities then were characterized by unsupervised pick-up games in neighborhood parks, lots of hands-on work and play, much tactile interaction, and problem-solving through fights or verbal resolutions.  In those days, young people were in and out of each other’s homes and parents allowed other parents to include their children in parenting lessons, reprimands, and punishment.  This way of interacting changed with stranger-danger, kidnappings, latch-key kids, computer games, and numerous social concerns. 

Haidt illustrates how the 1980s and ’90s ushered in a shift from a play-based childhood to a computer world that brought forth a phone-based childhood.  In the early parts of this century, as our computer and internet focus became foundational to interrelations, personal computer devices replaced physical interaction with virtual interplay.  In that time period, parents rarely let their children play out of their eyesight, they scheduled playdates, interviewed other parents of kids that their own befriended to determine compatibility, and hovered like helicopters when their children partook in social gatherings.  As parents overprotected their offspring with scheduled, structured, and supervised social reality, they under protected them on the virtual scene—mostly because kids know more than adults about cyberspace and are more comfortable than us in electronic superhighway exchanges.

The author contends that the rewiring of childhood over the past half century has led to a plethora of mental issues and social illnesses among young people today.  These include isolation, suicidal ideation, irritability, depression, loneliness, attention deficit, identity confusion, self-harm among girls, a failure to launch into manhood among boys, comparative reality setbacks for girls, pornography and video-gaming addictions for boys, and, primarily, anxiety.  Different from fear, which is a response to real or perceived danger, anxiety deals with anticipation of dangers that do not exist.  Those of us who grew up in the last century did so with a sense of discovery which involved taking risks (which is as an inoculation for anxiety); but youth growing up in this century do so with sensitivity to defending against possible harms (subsequently, many take anxiety pills to cope).

In my chaplaincy work at area high schools and universities, I am stunned by the great number of students who’re vulnerable to anxious thinking.  It seems to me that it is the opposite of being at peace.  Working in spiritual settings for the past four decades, I have come to regard peace as more than the absence of conflict (whether external or internal); I view it more through a biblical lens as the presence of God.  That godly presence welcomes empathy, love, sacrifice, trust, surrender, compassion, and other descriptors that point to living joyfully.

Spiritual and religious realms stand in contrast to the phone-based virtual society of the twenty-first century.  The rituals of faith call for practices of silence and reflection; the activity of smartphones, on the other hand, is overstimulation with constant interruptions and redirection.  Social media is designed to prevent transcendence and awe while encouraging judgement, but the essence of spirituality is the opposite.  Religion emphasizes community that moves, speaks, and sings, pointing to God in unison, while virtual systems focus on the self in asynchronous and disembodied ways.  Haidt says that every human heart has a God-shaped hole that yearns for meaning, purpose, connection, and spiritual elevation, but our smartphone world tries to fill that void with information contrary to what fits there. 

His is a valuable theory that may help you to address challenges in your own life, faith, and intergenerational family.  You might find it to be a good discussion book with your friends, church members, social group, or spiritual support team.