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Anticipatory Anxiety
To be young today is to face the future – the planet’s as well as one’s own – at a time when social safety nets...
Right-wing newspapers have dusted off tirades against ‘sicknote culture’, while Tory politicians have taken to speculating about what really lies behind the surge in diagnoses, with the outgoing secretary of state for work and pensions, Mel Stride, blaming online influencers for making too much of mental health awareness. The Coddling of the American Mind focused on campus politics and ‘safetyism’ among students, but Haidt’s attention is now on two ‘experience blockers’ that interrupt the all-important years of adolescent development: a culture of ‘overprotection’ that stems from ideas about childrearing which have evolved since the 1980s, and the more recent rise of smartphones. Children’s experts and teachers have criticised the book, too, claiming that banning phones from schools would be counterproductive, that there are already norms in place to limit their use, and that the smartphone and the internet are now so ingrained in childhood that it’s impossible to turn the clock back to a Just William world of muddy knees and tree-climbing.
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