This needs to be part of the national curriculum

This book is clearly aimed at parents. However I believe if children could understand what the phone based childhood means for them, through reading/listening to this book, they would make a choice to put the devices down for the most part. Then hopefully choose not to be a part of this terrible Epidemic.

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Essential reading

I hope this book comes to be seen as one of the most important books of the decade. We all need to take this in, ask hard questions of ourselves, and push for appropriate action. Everyone should read this but especially parents. I am far from a luddite - 10+ years in tech including the last 5 in AI... Even for those of us devoting our lives to the positive impact technology can make, this book is incredibly difficult to argue with. Stop reading reviews and buy it.

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An essential message for all who work with, love or care for children.

Absolutely essential listening. I wish I could get every parent and teacher I know to listen to it or read it.

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Informative.

Awakening. Inspiring and motivating me to be better in accomodating my teenagers in their screen times. Great book!

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Insightful, informative and inspirational.

This subject is very close to my heart and was compelled to consume this book after joining the Smartphone Free Childhood movement and seeing Jonathan on a webinar with its co-founders. I love the care and depth gone into the research and writing of this book and found it beyond reassuring, as I am a parent of two primary school aged children and decided long ago that they would not be getting smartphones until after their GCSEs! I highly recommend this book to all parents, teachers and teens who care about the cognitive and social development of children to read/listen to this book. For the "congregation", the preaching is good! For the sceptics, the preaching has enough legs to convert. I would have given the voiceover a five, but there were a few edits which were re-recorded which I found a tad distracting.

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Brilliant, lucid and wise

Insights and clarity on the profoundly different experience of growing up now, and what we can do about it

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very enlightening. important listening and learning for parents, teens, teachers and others.

Some interesting well researched info. Good suggestions for what we can do. highly recommended. I've been sending out copies to many friends.

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Irrefutable!

What I found particularly enlightening is what the phone has otherwise prevented kids from doing. I would have thought it was enough, for example, that schools don’t allow phones to be on in the classroom. But I never thought about the kids going immediately between each class to check their phone rather than engage with one another. So many facts were devastating that I can’t stop talking to others about this book and I have since joined a grassroots movement in the UK called Smartphone Free Childhood. Sadly, it’s a little late for my teenage girls, both of whom have battled/are battling various mental health issues but I feel fully inspired to disseminate this information to break that collective behaviour of which I too became a victim.

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The perils of smartphones

Ok, so the book doesn’t exclusively focus on smartphones, but they make up a huge chunk of focus.

Using an evidence-based approach, Haidt explores how the current generation is being let down and the resulting consequences. This is both inadvertent (e.g., by schools and parents), and in the case of big tech companies, all too deliberate.

The problem is the impact addictive technologies such as smartphones are having during critical stages of development. For those of us who were introduced to smartphones after the age of about 14, we haven’t faced the same developmental impact.

I’ve loved every book Haidt has written, and this is no different. What I particularly appreciated here is that he isn’t taking an approach of blaming today’s kids for causing the problem themselves, as if older generations wouldn’t end up the same way in their position. Nor is he taking a new age approach of endorsing the status quo. Instead, he highlights that this is exactly what you would expect to happen when placing children into this environment. It’s up to the older generation to ensure a better environment is provided. Recommendations towards this end are clearly outlined

This book also very nicely compliments Abigail Shrier’s latest book, ‘Bad Therapy’, which takes a similar perspective on smart phones.

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5 people found this helpful

The start of a social movement is born

I really hope this picks up major attention. As a member of Gen Z. Haidt describes many of the challenges I faced during adolescence. I’m all for ending the phone based childhood

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1 person found this helpful