Abigail Shrier discussed Gen Z with Harold Bursztajn, M.D., a psychiatrist. Bursztajn is concerned about Gen Z and he identifies smart phones and social media as two of the major culprits. How bad is this environment?

This generation seems helpless and hopeless. Why — I asked him — did this generation possess the highest recorded rates of anxiety, depression and suicide—and the lowest rates of sex or physical intimacy? These young Americans may be as radical as Flower Children, but they seem incapable of organizing a Woodstock or hosting a “Love In.” Where was their Kumbaya? What put the damper on their “Good Vibrations”?

Based on his thousands of hours administering psychotherapy to university students, Bursztajn believes it is the online life they lead which renders them anxious, unhappy, and emotionally malnourished. Social media trains them to divide humanity into allies and enemies. It offers them little basis for hope. Their online world is not a new-age vista of possibility, but rigid series of high-stakes social contests, in which players rack up “likes” and form alliances, but never actual friendships. “To the extent that you’re dealing with a culture of algorithms, not all things are possible—only the things in the algorithms,” he explained.

Bursztajn's conclusions thus mesh well with those of Jonathan Haidt and Tristan Harris, both of whom blame social media for siloed thinking and high rates of anxiety.