You're listening to the political scene.

I'm David Remnick.

Early each week, we bring you a conversation from our episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

Talk about the right book at the right time.

Two years ago, a book called The Anxious Generation came out, and it was an instant bestseller.

Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist teaching at New York University, laid out a very stark thesis,

that Generation Z, the kids born with smartphones in their hands, have been harmed profoundly by those phones

and the social media programs on them, harmed emotionally and intellectually by the addiction

mechanisms programmed into the technology.

Now, some readers scoffed initially, calling it the latest panic over new technology, and

some academics have said that Haid doesn't quite prove the negative effects he attributes

to social media.

But for a huge number of people, the anxious generation nailed it.

The book has now spent nearly 100 weeks on the bestseller list, and more important, it's helped

to galvanize a movement. It inspired the world's first national law to verify the age of social media users.

It also encouraged school districts to restrict the use of phones, and you see that happening

all over the country. There have also been lawsuits in California that are aiming to pin liability

for harms on the social media platforms themselves.

I spoke with Jonathan Haidt when the anxious generation first came out two years ago,

and he joined me again the other day.

...