Between 2010 when things were still normal and kids were healthy to 2015 when they were not normal they were not healthy is the great rewiring of childhood.

We took however American childhood was evolving, it wasn't

particularly toxic, and then in five years we transformed it into a form in

which it's just it's it's it's it's very hard to grow up with a normal childhood, a normal brain, normal social skills, normal emotions.

It's very hard.

Kids who are playing team sports who are anchored in the real world are doing better,

but kids who don't have team sports, they don't have team sports they don't have religion they don't have

things to anchor them those the kids that got washed away and now the good fight

with yasha monk Shamonk.

My guest today is one of the contemporary American writers I most admire and an old friend of the podcast is Jonathan Haidt. John is the Thomas Cooley professor of ethical leadership at New York University Stern

School of Business and the author of a number of important books including my personal

favorite The Righteous Mind and most recently with Greg Lucanov, The Coddling of the American Mind. John has a new book out called The Anxious Generation, a book in which

she really makes a concerted case that we are living through a mental health emergency in which the

mental health but also other metrics of a good life is plummeting among teenagers and particularly among teenage girls.

And he argues that the reason for this is the internet, digital technologies, and particularly social media platforms.

I pushed him on this argument, trying to tease out why he doesn't believe that this is just

the latest moral panic, worrying about the introduction of a new technology, and how this is part of a broader transformation of the nature of our childhood, from one based in play and exploration and

relative freedom to one that is much more safer from external threats, much more safer from physical threats in the external world, but makes

children much less resilient, much more anxious, and ultimately much more ill.

John Hyde,

Welcome back to the podcast.

Thank you, Yash, it's always a pleasure to talk with you.

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