[7 min. read—client & church resource]
“Kids these days.”
You can admit it: You’ve said it (or at least thought it) at some point.
But is that just something people of one generation say about generations after them? Or is there truly something quite different about “kids these days”? And what is it that seems so very different? Why? Could (and should) something be done? For those of us who care for, minister to, and mentor adolescents and young adults, are there ways we could know them better in order to serve them better?
In his #1 New York Times Bestseller The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, professor and researcher Jonathan Haidt seeks to answer such questions. This landmark work offers extensive research supporting his thesis: that the marked decline of mental health for those in Gen Z (individuals born after 1995) can be traced predominantly to how we have been overprotecting our children in the real world and under-protecting them in this new frontier of the virtual world. Not only that, but Haidt proposes practical solutions that could bring about lasting change, if collective action is taken. And, interestingly, even as a self-proclaimed atheist, many of the arguments he makes and suggestions he offers align with Scripture.
What’s the problem?
Haidt spends the first two thirds or so of the book thoroughly detailing the problem: Mental health, especially for Gen Z, has plummeted since the early 2010s, and this drastic change coincides with the introduction of the smartphone.
But how did we get here? Haidt argues that these issues didn’t appear solely because of the rise of technology; this “anxious generation” has also been shaped by decades of an ever-growing fear-based, risk-averse parenting style.
We all know this to be true anecdotally, right? We’ve all heard (or even experienced first hand) “the good ol’ days” of playing outside, mostly unsupervised, all day and coming home when the street lights came on. Now, we see the tendency towards “helicopter parenting” as we do everything in our power to keep our children safe from things like accidents, germs, strangers, or even negative emotions.
But what is that actually doing to our kids? According to Haidt, “Well-intentioned parents who try to raise their children in a bubble of satisfaction, protected from frustration, consequences, and negative emotions, may be harming their children. They may be blocking the development of competence, self-control, frustration tolerance, and emotional self-management. Several studies find that such ‘coddling’ or ‘helicopter parenting’ is correlated with later anxiety disorders, low self-efficacy, and difficulty adjusting to college” (74).
Ironically, while we’ve been hyper-vigilant about protecting our kids in the real world, we’ve left them to fend for themselves in the virtual world. Part of this is because the dangers were largely unknown until recently. Haidt even starts the book with the analogy of sending our kids out into the virtual world without knowing what it would do to them developmentally and psychologically being like sending them to be part of an experimental first civilization on Mars, without knowing what it would do to their bodies and how it would change their lives.
But now, over a decade after the introduction of the smartphone, ample research is available showing just how much emotional and social damage can be done (and how many predators target children online). Haidt spends several chapters detailing the “foundational harms” (social deprivation, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation, and addiction) of a “phone-based childhood,” along with how girls and boys have been affected differently. Girls tend to be more negatively impacted by social media, and boys have a greater chance of being sucked downward by pornography and video games.
While there are so many specifics that could be shared about each of these (and Haidt does just that throughout Part 3), perhaps a good summation centers around how retreating deeper and deeper into the virtual world brings more and more profound isolation: “This is the great irony of social media: the more you immerse yourself in it, the more lonely and depressed you become. This is true both on an individual level and at the collective level. When teens as a whole cut back on hanging out and doing things together in the real world, their culture changed. Their communion needs were left unsatisfied—even for those few teens who were not on social media” (170).
What can we do?
Thankfully, Haidt doesn’t just outline the problem. Instead he leaves us with the hope that things could improve if collective action causes a cultural shift. Throughout Part 4, Haidt offers advice for how schools, governments, tech companies and parents can all take action (and emphasizes that change won’t really happen unless droves of people wake up to this issue and push for positive change). The four “foundational reforms” he proposes are
- No smartphones before high school
- No social media before age 16
- Phone-free schools and
- Far more unsupervised play and childhood independence (290).
In addition to countless helpful suggestions to individuals in different roles relating to adolescents, Haidt expounds on two powerful analogies that serve to encourage and challenge parents in particular.
The first is a lesson from Biosphere 2, which is an experimental artificial ecosystem that was built with the goal of creating self-sustaining ecosystems to allow people to live in outer space. As Haidt explains it,
That goal was never reached. The complexity of biological interactions among species and social interactions among humans proved to be too much, but a great deal was learned from the multiple failures. For instance, many of the trees they planted to create a rain-forest ecosystem grew rapidly but fell over before reaching maturity. The designers had not realized that young trees need wind to grow properly. When the wind blows, it bends the tree, which tugs at the roots on the windward side and compresses the wood on the other side. In response, the root system expands to provide an anchor where it is needed, and the compressed wood cells change their structure to become stronger and firmer. The altered cell structure is called reaction wood, or sometimes stress wood. Trees that are exposed to strong winds early in life become trees that can withstand even stronger winds when full grown. Conversely, trees that are raised in a protected greenhouse sometimes fall over from their own weight before they reach maturity. Stress wood is a perfect metaphor for children, who also need to experience frequent stressors in order to become strong adults (72).
Sounds like what the Bible says about growth and sanctification through adversity, right? Here’s a couple of verses that come to mind:
- James 1:2-4: “Consider it a joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. And perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”
- Romans 5:3-5: “Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”
Can you think of others like these throughout Scripture? Here and in other passages, the Bible sets forth the reality that–as unpleasant as it may feel at the time–we need hardships to grow strong and mature in our faith. While leaving out the faith element, Haidt is agreeing here that “stress” and “strong winds” (i.e. trails and suffering) produce strength of character.
The second analogy is somewhat similar: As parents, we should strive to be “gardeners” instead of “carpenters.” What does he mean by that? “Carpenters…have a clear idea in mind of what they are trying to achieve. They look carefully at the materials they have to work with, and it is their job to assemble those materials into a finished product that can be judged by everyone against clear standards” (267). Raising children, of course, isn’t at all like that—as much as it might be easier if it could be. Instead, we are more like gardeners: “It takes some work, but you don’t have to be a perfectionist. Weed the garden, water it, and then step back and the plants will do their thing, unpredictably and often with delightful surprises” (268).
Sounds a lot like what Paul says about God making things grow, right?
- 1 Cor. 3:6-7: I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.
In parenting—as in counseling, evangelism, etc.—we are responsible for being good stewards and doing our part, but we have to leave the results to Him.
The God-shaped hole
Finally, since this is a blog post for a biblical counseling center’s resource page, it seems relevant to note how an author who is a self-proclaimed atheist shares truth that points toward God, what the Bible teaches on human nature, and the importance of community.
Interestingly, Haidt has an entire chapter called “Spiritual Elevation and Degradation,” in which he says, “I should point out that I am an atheist, but I find that I sometimes need words and concepts from religion to understand the experience of life as a human being” (201).
He even ends the chapter with a section called “The God-shaped Hole.” He argues that the origin of said hole is evolutionary: religious groups were more cohesive and strong and therefore won out in the natural selection process. I know I’m biased, but that argument feels pretty weak when he compares it to the Christian one, and it seems to me that the implications for it that he describes make much more sense from a Christian standpoint: “Many of my religious friends disagree about the origin of our God-shaped hole; they believe that the hole is there because we are God’s creations and we long for our creator. But although we disagree about its origins, we agree about its implications: There is a hole, an emptiness in us all, that we strive to fill. If it doesn’t get filled with something noble and elevated, modern society will quickly pump it full of garbage. That has been true since the beginning of mass media, but the garbage pump got 100 times more powerful in the 2010s” (216).
This calls several passages to mind, such as:
- Acts 17:26-28: “And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘‘For we are indeed his offspring.’”
- Romans 12:2: “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
- Colossians 3:1: “Set your minds on things that are above, not on earthly things.”
Bottom line: It seems, even to an unbeliever, that it is part of human nature to yearn and seek to fill some felt void in our souls, and that it matters with what we choose to fill our hearts and minds. How might our renewed minds and fulfilled hearts in Christ show unbelievers like Haidt that Jesus is ultimately the answer to the questions they’re asking and the solution to the problems they’re facing?
Similarly, earlier in the book Haidt writes about the importance of community, especially one with a clear moral code. Citing a study on suicide, he explains that “the more tightly people are bound into a community that has the moral authority to restrain their desires, the less likely they are to kill themselves” (194). He goes on to explain the concept of “anomie, or normlessness—an absence of stable and widely shared norms and rules,” claiming “modernity, with its rapid and disorienting changes and its tendency to weaken the grip of traditional religions, fostered anomie and thus suicide” because “when we feel the social order weakening or dissolving, we don’t feel liberated; we feel lost and anxious” (194).
Going on to emphasize the importance of community and our human nature as embodied souls built for relationship, Haidt says,
Perhaps the most important embodied activity that binds people together is eating. Most major holy days and rites of passage involve a feast, or at least a shared meal, often with foods specific to that day or ritual. Imagine how you’d feel if you were an American and someone in your family said on Thanksgiving that he was feeling hungry so he was going to take his portion of turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce now, an hour before dinner, and eat it alone in another room. Then he’d come back and sit with the family while they ate. No. The assembled family and friends must share the food, and this is among the most widespread of human customs: People who “break bread” together have a bond. The simple act of eating together…strengthens that bond and reduces the likelihood of conflict. This is one deficiency the virtual world can never overcome, no matter how good VR gets. (205)
What he’s describing seems taken straight from Acts 2, where it talks about the fellowship of believers!
So, what now?
What can we take from all this?
How might the church be a part of the kinds of change for which the author is advocating?
How might we bring the gospel to bear in this cultural moment of smartphones and isolation and gluttonous media consumption and addiction and cyber bullying and deteriorating mental health?
How might our identity in Christ (not people’s reactions to our posts or how we see ourselves compared to the highlight reels of others), our choices to honor God with what we fill our hearts and minds with (“whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Phil. 4:8)), our love for each other (lived out through hospitality and accountability and deep, embodied relationships), our radical trust in God (juxtaposed against a culture of ever-rising fear and anxiety), and our joy in the Lord (held against the backdrop of skyrocketing rates of depression) be a testimony to a watching world and the way lasting change will ever truly take place?
How might we as parents, as counselors, as church members, and as Gen Z-ers alike live all of this out and be part of impacting the culture around us and pointing hurting people to the True Hope and Real Healing?
Though Haidt’s thorough research and detailed explanations and suggestions are to be applauded and appreciated, as believers, we have hope that he doesn’t. We have answers and explanations and motivations that he doesn’t share. While we should heed his wisdom and implement his suggestions, we know that the real hope of radical change in individual hearts in what is indeed a mental health epidemic can only come through surrender to and satisfaction in Christ alone.
So, by the grace of God at work in lives and hearts and the resurrection power of the Holy Spirit, yes…
The kids will be alright.
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