“We are over-protecting children in the real world while under-protecting them online” says Jonathan Haidt, author of "The Anxious Generation," who maintains that the environment in which kids grow up today is hostile to human development. Haidt traces the current mental health crisis to the mid-2010s when smartphones and social media began to reshape the social landscape for adolescents. Cambridge Forum explores these troubling developments in The Anxious i-Generation.
Haidt argues that smartphone technologies have led to over-parenting e.g. constant notifications and GPS tracking of children’s whereabouts. This in turn, has robbed an entire generation of the resilience, coping skills and independence needed to navigate everyday situations and in turn, created unprecedented levels of societal anxiety. The dramatic decline in mental health in teens has been accompanied by decreases in academic scores for math, reading and science. CF asks what happens when we take phones out of schools and replace screen time with normal extracurricular activities that encourage independence and healthy risk-taking? jackie baillie Well, some forward-thinking teachers and psychologists have been doing exactly that with very promising results.
Shane Voss, is Executive Director of Mountain Middle School in Durango, CO. which is featured as a model school in “Anxious Generation” - the NYT bestseller by Jonathan Haidt. Voss was named Colorado's Charter School Leader of the Year in 2024. He earned his B.A. from Fort Lewis College in Durango, CO. and his M.A. from Northwestern University, Evanston IL.
Catherine Price is a health and science journalist, founder of Screen/Life Balance and the author of How to Break Up with Your Phone and The Power of Fun: How to Feel Alive Again.
Camilo Ortiz, Ph.D., is an associate professor of psychology at Long Island University-Post. He is the developer timberwolves schedule of Independence Therapy, a revolutionary new approach to treating child anxiety through “mega-doses” of child independence. Ortiz received a B.S. from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology liverpool vs chelsea from the U. Mass. Amherst. He also maintains a private practice.
Lenore Skenazy is president of Let Grow, a nonprofit promoting childhood independence which she helped co-found. Her 2008 newspaper column “Why I Let my 9 year-old ride the subway alone” landed her in the limelight and lead to her writing Free-Range Kids, a book that started a movement. She claims, “Our kids are safer, smarter, and stronger than our culture gives them credit for.”
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