The Book I Never Planned to Read

I have decided to highlight a few books over the coming months that are shaping how we think about youth mental health and community. For January, I am starting with The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt. I have never been drawn to alarmist narratives or parenting books that predict catastrophe. This was not a book I planned to read. Early last year, it seemed that nearly every conversation with parents came back to this book, and I remember thinking how much parental anxiety itself often fuels child anxiety.

What I did not anticipate was returning to this book after Owen’s death and finding that the science Haidt presents helped me better understand what so many clinicians, educators, and families are observing. Over the past fifteen years, rates of anxiety, depression, loneliness, and loss of purpose among adolescents and young adults have risen sharply, beginning around 2010 to 2012 and accelerating through the pandemic. While many forces contribute to this trend, the timing has raised important questions about how childhood itself has changed. Haidt strengthens this argument by grounding his claims in objective data, including emergency room visits, reports of self harm, and suicide rates. These data help counter concerns about overreporting bias and make the rise in distress, including among children as young as ten, difficult to dismiss.

Haidt offers a unifying framework. He argues that modern childhood has been fundamentally reengineered. Children are increasingly protected from risk in the physical world while being left largely unprotected in the digital one. The rapid normalization of smartphones and social media, combined with the decline of unstructured face to face play and independent social exploration, has altered how young people learn to regulate emotion, build resilience, form identity, and develop social confidence during a critical developmental window.

The strength of Haidt’s work lies in its synthesis of epidemiologic data and developmental science. He does not claim technology is the sole cause of rising distress and acknowledges the interaction of academic pressure, family stress, and cultural fragmentation. His focus on developmental timing rather than technology alone is especially compelling. At the same time, much of the evidence remains correlational, and solutions centered primarily on restriction may not fully address the developmental gaps already present in many young people’s lives.

This is where The Goldfinch Foundation fits in. Goldfinch was created in response to the same trends Haidt describes, with a focus on rebuilding what has been lost. Through movement, creative expression, time in nature, and small group connection, Goldfinch restores embodied experience and treats social connection as a core health behavior. By holding young people to high expectations and giving them real responsibility, Goldfinch emphasizes empowerment over overprotection. The GFF does not reject technology but models intentional use while rebuilding informal community spaces where belonging, meaning, and resilience can grow.

The Anxious Generation offers a powerful diagnosis of a real and urgent challenge. The Goldfinch Foundation extends that insight into practice. Where Haidt helps us understand why a generation is struggling, Goldfinch demonstrates how we can help it thrive.