在經歷了十多年的穩定或改善之後，青少年的心理健康狀況在2010年代初急劇下降。憂鬱、焦慮、自殘和自殺的發生率急劇上升，許多指標都增加了一倍多。原因何在？
在《焦慮的一代》一書中，社會心理學家喬納森·海特（Jonathan Haidt）闡述了青少年精神疾病同時席捲多個國家的現狀。隨後，他探討了童年的本質，包括為什麼兒童需要玩耍和獨立探索才能成長為有能力、蓬勃發展的成年人。海特展示了「以玩耍為基礎的童年」如何在20世紀80年代開始衰落，以及它最終如何在2010年代初被「以手機為基礎的童年」所取代。他列舉了這種「童年的大規模重塑」幹擾兒童社會和神經發育的十幾種機制，涵蓋了從睡眠不足到注意力分散、成癮、孤獨、社會感染、社會攀比和完美主義等方方面面。他解釋了社群媒體對女孩的傷害為何大於男孩，以及男孩為何逐漸從現實世界轉向虛擬世界，並給他們自己、家庭和社會帶來災難性的後果。
最重要的是，海特發出了明確的行動呼籲。他分析了困擾我們的“集體行動問題”，並提出了四條可能讓我們獲得自由的簡單規則。他也闡述了家長、教師、學校、科技公司和政府可以採取的措施，以終結精神疾病的蔓延，並重建一個更人性化的童年。
After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged in the early 2010s. Rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rose sharply, more than doubling on many measures. Why?
In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time. He then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults. Haidt shows how the “play-based childhood” began to decline in the 1980s, and how it was finally wiped out by the arrival of the “phone-based childhood” in the early 2010s. He presents more than a dozen mechanisms by which this “great rewiring of childhood” has interfered with children’s social and neurological development, covering everything from sleep deprivation to attention fragmentation, addiction, loneliness, social contagion, social comparison, and perfectionism. He explains why social media damages girls more than boys and why boys have been withdrawing from the real world into the virtual world, with disastrous consequences for themselves, their families, and their societies.
Most important, Haidt issues a clear call to action. He diagnoses the “collective action problems” that trap us, and then proposes four simple rules that might set us free. He describes steps that parents, teachers, schools, tech companies, and governments can take to end the epidemic of mental illness and restore a more humane childhood.
