How The Anxious Generation is Influencing Your Daughter…and What You as Her Dad Can Do About It [Part 1]

I just reviewed a new book and it’s so powerful that I have to tell you about it!

And because there is so much power-packed information in it, I’m dividing my overview into two parts. Today is Part 1 and in two weeks I’ll share Part 2. I’m also giving you practical action steps at the end of this blog so you can engage your daughter in a proactive process of healing her brain and ultimately experience positive impacts to her mental and emotional health.

Now to the book. It’s a 2024 release and is already a #1 New York Times Bestseller. Written by psychologist and researcher, Dr. Jonathan Haidt, the title is, “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.”

Before we dive into his book, let me ask you a couple of questions.

Question 1: If I offered you guaranteed success by doing ONE THING to increase in your daughter’s self-esteem while simultaneously decreasing her anxiety and depression, would you beg me to tell you what it is? Of course you would!

Today I’m going to share that one secret with you. Actually, Dr. Haidt is going to tell you his answer to that question. His astonishing, profound and life-changing findings literally boil down to ONE SPECIFIC THING that can make a huge significant difference in improving your daughter’s mental health.

If this seems too simplistic or too good to be true, keep reading and I’ll share more to back up his claims.

It’s also worth noting that Haidt is a GirlDad. He’s the father to two teenagers, one of them being a daughter. So this research is deeply personal to him.

Haidt wants you to know that the correlation between the epidemic rises in depression, anxiety, self-harm and suicide among adolescents that began to spike in the early 2010’s has a root cause. Through his extensive research he’s concluded that this is primarily due to PHONE-based childhoods that have replaced PLAY-based childhoods.

[Haidt uses the term “phone-based” broadly to include all internet-connected personal electronics that fill time, including laptop computers, tablets, video game consoles, and smartphones with millions of apps].

Question 2: Would you have ever imagined that your maturing daughter would forget how to play? As you remember back to when she was a toddler, you didn’t have to teach her how to play; it was intuitive and instinctual. Yet now there’s been a complete reversal where children are less inclined to explore and experience adventures in a real-world community; instead, they’re being conditioned to sit down and look down while scrolling or “playing” on their devices, often in isolation.

This not only is having a disastrous impact on our kids, but Haidt adds that “it doesn’t have to be that way; we can regain control of our own minds….and this book is for anyone who wants to understand how the most rapid rewiring of human relationships and consciousness in human history has made it harder for all of us to think, focus, forget ourselves enough to care about others, and build closer relationships.” (p.17).
He continues by describing four foundational areas of harm that the anxious generation, also known as Gen Z (born after 1995), has experienced due to having a phone-based childhood:

1. Sleep deprivation

2. Social deprivation

3. Attention fragmentation

4. Addiction

I imagine you’d like to read more about each of these things as you consider how they’re impacting your daughter…and possibly yourself. You’ll have to get the book to learn more, but for now, let’s keep going.

This next point is specifically for you as a GirlDad.

Haidt states that social media use for girls doesn’t just correlate with mental illness (namely anxiety and depression), but actually causes it! [WOW…that’s ground-breaking information, wouldn’t you agree?]

He cites empirical evidence to confirm four reasons why girls are more vulnerable than boys when it comes to the influence of social media:

1. Girls are more affected by visual social comparison and perfectionism

2. Girls aggression is more relational (“The way to really hurt another girl is to hit her in her relationships” where “indirect aggression includes damaging other people’s relationships or reputations.” p. 158).

3. Girls more easily share emotions and disorders

4. Girls are more subject to predators and harassment

Dad, this is important for you to know because your daughter is being devoured by the impact of social media, whether she admits it or not.

Especially in pre-adolescence and adolescence when she begins being influenced more by peers, she is susceptible to negative voices that can lead her to disconnect from her own self worth and identity. This is when she begins comparing herself to others more while being overpowered with distorted fears and projections, beliefs and assumptions that can lead her away from being her authentic self.

I’ll be sharing more insights next week from Jonathan Haidt’s book, but for now, I want to ask you as a dad:

1. Are you willing to stand up and contend for your daughter’s mental and emotional health by letting her push against---and then follow----your limits regarding significantly less smartphone use?

THEN…

1. Are you willing to invest more of your personal time and energy to engage her in REAL life activities with you and others that invite her into REAL relationships? (which includes REAL drama and challenges and heartache and forgiveness and love and connection and fun and laughter…and all the things!)

To summarize, here it is in a nutshell…

Bottom line: LESS SCREEN TIME + MORE REAL-WORLD TIME =

LESS ANXIETY, LESS DEPRESSION, LESS SELF HARM, LESS SUICIDALITY,
and MORE CONFIDENCE + GREATER SELF ESTEEM.

ACTION STEP: Between now and two weeks from now, invite your daughter into an activity that’s new or that both of you already enjoy doing together. And one requirement is that there are NO PHONES ALLOWED (unless it’s to take a few pics along the way…but make sure to turn off your ringer and notifications so there are NO DISTRACTIONS).

For extra credit: Do one activity each week…so this means you’ll do TWO ACTIVITIES with her in the next two weeks. Write and tell me about it because I love sharing these milestones with you.

This is how you’ll begin to the turn the tide in a more positive direction as your daughter puts her phone DOWN and experiences her mood and perspective moving UP!