TEXARKANA MAGAZINE
O n the heels of the new Arkansas and Texas legislation banning cell phones from schools, it seems an appropriate time to dive deeper into Jonathan Haidt’s best seller. One claim of the book is that parents have unintentionally strayed from keeping their children as safe as necessary. They have navigated with extreme caution in real-world situations, aiming for all the safety they can offer while casually handing them devices that expose them to a dark virtual world where their protection is often limited and essentially unknown to parents and guardians. “The two biggest mistakes we have made: overprotecting them (our children) in the real world (where they need to learn from vast amounts of direct experience) and under protecting them online (where they are particularly vulnerable during puberty).” —The Anxious Generation The Anxious Generation BOOK REVIEW BY LESLI FLOWERS PHOTOS BY MATT CORNELIUS In March 2024, Johnathan Haidt published The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness . Since its release, it has become a viral sensation among parents navigating the boundaries of cell phones as their children come of age. “My central claim in this book is that these two trends—overprotection in the real world and under protection in the virtual world—are the major reasons why children born after 1995 became the anxious generation.” —Jonathan Haidt.
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COMMUNITY & CULTURE
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