Jonathan D Haidt, Ph.D. is an American social psychologist, professor in the Business School at NYU and an author of several books. His two most recent books are: The Coddling of the American Mind: How good intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure (2018) co-written with Greg Lukianof, and The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness (2044). The former explores the rising political polarization in the U.S., the changing culture on college campuses, and its effects on the mental health of America’s young adults. The latter makes the case that the rise of smart phones and overprotective parenting have led to a “rewiring” of childhood and a consequent rise in mental illness. Although in this blog post, each book is separately examined, they can be viewed as sequential stages of Haidt’s psycho-cultural diagnosis of what is happening in our society.
After more than a decade of stability or improvement, research on the mental health of adolescents began to rise in the years since 2010. From 2010 to 2015, rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, suicide attempts, suicide and hospitalization rose sharply among adolescents, more than doubled on several measures of psycho-emotional functioning. These two books of Haidt are not just separate books but are parts of a developing argument about how modern cultural changes since 2010 are creating fragile, anxious and depression among America’s young.
Because I want to give each book a thorough examination, I am dividing this post into two parts. Part I will examine The Codling of the American Mind and Part II will address the content of The Anxious Generation.
The Coddling of the American Mind
The Coddling of the American Mind explores the impact of modern societal changes on university students. The book’s core thesis is that parents and schools, in an overabundance of caution, have taught children to fear and reject ideas and concepts that upset them. As a result, this learned fear explains the recent spate of college students protesting professors and speakers whose ideas many students consider offensive. This well-intentioned cultural trend towards, what Haidt and Lukianoff refer to as “safetyism”, has created a need and demand for emotional and psychological safety on high school and college campuses. Haidt and Lukianoff define “safetyism “as a cultural belief system in which safety, especially “emotional safety” has become a sacred value, arguing that it has stunted the social, emotional and intellectual development of young people at the expense of resilience, intellectual challenge, and free inquiry.
Haidt and Lukianoff describe some of the key manifestations of “Safetyism” observed on college and university campuses today as:
- Trigger Warnings: Professors are pressured to provide warnings to students before discussing material that might be considered sensitive
- Safe Spaces: which shield fragile students from potentially offensive or distressing ideas and concepts.
- Speech as Violence: A cultural shift has occurred where certain forms of speech are framed not just as offensive, but as dangerous, equivalent to physical harm. This is manifest in increasing numbers of student protests directed against invited speakers whose ideas might challenge or distress students, sometimes escalating into “shout-downs” or disruptions.
- Disinvitations and Protest Culture: This leads to calls for disinviting controversial speakers or shutting down events where “unsafe” or ideas might be expressed. The justification often rests on the claim that exposure to certain viewpoints threatens students’ psychological well-being.
- Administrative Overreach: Universities, fearing backlash, sometimes adopt policies that prioritize avoiding offensive ideas and speech over protecting free inquiry, which, historically, is one of the main purposes of the university. These over-reach policies can create bureaucratic structures that monitor microaggressions or regulate speech in ways that Haidt and Lukianoff see as infantilizing.
- Microaggressions: The book discusses microaggressions (i.e., small actions or word choices that seem on their face to have no malicious intent but are interpreted as a kind of violence). With respect to microaggressions, Haidt and Lukianoff argue that treating such remarks as forms of violence encourages students to interpret ambiguous interactions in the least charitable way, and fosters cognitive distortions (e.g., catastrophizing and mind-reading) which undermine resilience, increase anxiety and sometimes lead to physical violence.
- Identity politics: Organizing political and social thought and life primarily around group identities (e.g., race, gender, sexuality, etc.), emphasizing oppressor vs. oppressed dynamics derived from postmodernist thought promoted by college and university professors. With respect to identity politics, Haidt and Lukianoff distinguish between a “common-humanity identity politics” (e.g., Martin Luther King Jr.’s appeal to shared values) and a “common-enemy identity politics” (defining groups into oppressor vs. oppressed classes a la postmodernist thinking). The latter, they argue, deepens polarization, encourages tribalism, and undermines civil dialogue across differences.
- Call-out Culture: A social practice derived from the 1966–1976 Mao inspired Chinese Cultural Revolution, in which some individuals publicly shame or denounce others (often employing social media or campus or classroom interactions) for perceived moral or political transgressions. With respect to call-out culture, the authors argue that it incentivizes performative outrage rather than genuine dialogue, creates a climate of fear where students and professors self-censor to avoid reputational damage and reinforces the “us vs. them” mentality tied to postmodernist influenced identity politics.
- The Fragility Feedback Loop: Students raised in a culture of overprotection may arrive at college less prepared to handle adversity. When institutions then reinforce avoidance of wherein While intended to protect individuals who are otherwise considered adults by the broader society discomfort, it creates a cycle: fragility → more protection → greater fragility.
Haidt and Lukianoff argue that “safetyism”, while intended to protect individuals who are otherwise considered adults by the broader society, has been fostered by at least three “Great Untruths” that have emerged within the culture and represent the are the root cause of the problems seen on college and university campuses: 1. “What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker” (not supported by research on resilience). 2. Always trust your feelings (emotional reasoning over critical thinking – not supported by). 3. Life is a battle between good people and evil people (on par with primitive tribal moralism and contrary to the complexity found in research on moral psychology).
These distortions are reinforced by overprotective parenting and lead to ideological polarization, leaving young adults ill-prepared for coping with intellectual opposition and complexity, stunted emotionality, and the lack of the resilience to effectively handle the previous two. As noted above, Haidt and Lukianoff believe these problems emerge when children are raised in overprotected environments and arrive at universities, where fragility manifests as anxiety, demands for protection, and difficulty engaging with ideas and concepts they view as threatening. What begins as parental overprotection, weakens resilience, trains students to see harm in ordinary conflict or disagreements over competing ideas, and fuels polarization by rewarding outrage and discouraging charitable interpretation of others’ words.
Haidt and Lukianoff propose partial solutions to the” Safetyism” that emerged from the parental overprotection they describe in the Coddling of the American Mind. They suggest specific programs like LetGrow, Lenore Skenazy’s Free-Range Kids, teaching children mindfulness and the basics of the psychology of resilience. Further, they encourage a more “charitable” approach to the interpretations and thoughts of other’s statements and expression of ideas rather than assuming that the other has intended to offend or degrade their beliefs and ideas and therefore are to be treated as the enemy because of differences in ideas or the fortuitousness of background.
Haidt and Lukianoff recognize the significant challenges that overriding the consequences of parental overprotection (“Safetyism”) for our society.