Published July 23, 2024
In a famous 1968 social psychology experiment, researchers piped smoke into a waiting room as participants filled out questionnaires to see how they would respond. When individuals were alone in the room, most lost little time in running to report the smoke. When multiple people were in the waiting room, however, only 1 in 8 did anything about it, no matter how thick the smoke got. The lesson? If no one else seems worried, neither are we. Often, this herd mentality is helpful, keeping us from overreacting to unreal threats. Sometimes, though, it means we will all suffocate together.
While we all know the dangers of yelling “fire” in a crowded theater, sometimes someone needs to have the courage to do so when no one else will. When it comes to kids and smartphones, Jonathan Haidt has dared to be that someone. In his new runaway bestseller, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, Haidt finally says loud and clear what many of us have long known—that giving children an uncensored perpetual distraction machine preloaded with a personal popularity tracker and bottomless pornography is disastrous for them and our society. Cutting through the years of obfuscation by Big Tech’s apologists, Haidt offers page after page of compelling data in support of this commonsense conclusion.
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Brad Littlejohn, Ph.D., is a Fellow in EPPC’s Evangelicals in Civic Life Program, where his work focuses on helping public leaders understand the intellectual and historical foundations of our current breakdown of public trust, social cohesion, and sound governance. His research investigates shifting understandings of the nature of freedom and authority, and how a more full-orbed conception of freedom, rooted in the Christian tradition, can inform policy that respects both the dignity of the individual and the urgency of the common good. He also serves as President of the Davenant Institute.
