Meeting Pattern

Online/Microsoft Teams

Description

Learn about the four foundational harms: social & sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation & addiction. Find out what steps parents, teachers, schools, tech companies, and governments can take to end the epidemic of mental illness and restore a more humane childhood.

In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time. He then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults. Haidt shows how the "play-based childhood" began to decline in the 1980s, and how it was finally wiped out by the arrival of the "phone-based childhood" in the early 2010s. The "great rewiring of childhood" has interfered with children's social and neurological development, covering everything from sleep deprivation to attention fragmentation, addiction, loneliness, social contagion, social comparison, and perfectionism. Find out why social media damages girls more than boys and why boys have been withdrawing from the real world into the virtual world, with disastrous consequences for themselves, their families, and their societies.

Most important, Haidt issues a clear call to action. He diagnoses the "collective action problems" that trap us and then proposes four simple rules that might set us free. 

Syllabus, Objectives, and Outcomes

Objectives:

You will:

• Understand the decline in play-based childhood & the long-term effects.
• Learn the four foundational harms: social & sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation & addiction.
• Effects of technology on males vs females from birth to adulthood.
• Prepare for collection for healthier childhood-parents, schools, government, tech companies.

Materials:

Required Text

The Anxious Generation: How The Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness; Jonathan Haidt (Penguin Press 2024)

Website: https://jonathanhaidt.com/ (free materials online)

Course Materials:

1. Required text.
2. Form of technology to access the internet and Microsoft Teams and Teams Classroom.