The Anxious Generation

 The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt is perhaps the most influential book of the last five years. My state, and many others, have enacted school-wide phone bans directly after its publication and subsequent popularity. While the passages on smart phones and social media are moving (and well-known by this point), his later chapters on free-range parenting invite as much reflection. I'm thinking more about those ideas now. I'm reflecting on how quickly I can give my children the type of physical, real-world freedom that was common two generations ago.