Jonathan Haidt's newest book, The Anxious Generation, is out. I bought a copy but haven't read it (though I've watched several interview of Haidt and he makes a compelling case). The statistics are sobering:
Here's a 7-minute video synopsis of Haidt's book to whet your appetite:
Jonathan Haidt: The combination of social media plus smart phones is irreparably damaging grade schoolers and middle schoolers. He offers this advice:
1. No smart phones before high school, when they are 14 (only flip phones)
2. No social media until age 16.
3. Phone free schools. No phones even in backpack. They must be kept in a locker.
4. Far more free play and unsupervised play to develop childhood independence.
Adolescents in the U.S. are severely distressed, increasingly suicidal. Zach Rausch and Jonathan Haidt weigh in on causation: "The sudden switch from play-based childhood to phone-based childhood is—we believe—the leading candidate for being the major cause of the international collapse of adolescent mental health.8 The evidence of causation is particularly strong for girls. In fact, nobody has yet put forth an alternative theory—one that can explain why the same thing happened at the same time in so many countries. Jean Twenge recently considered thirteen such theories that have been proposed to explain trends in the U.S., and she showed that they don’t even work in the U.S., let alone internationally."
George Carlin discusses germs in 2008:
Atheists like me can enjoy uplifting religious messages like this one by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr:
