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How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt
Haidt is a professor of psychology at New York University and the author of several books.
In this work, he elaborates on how our generation of children, adolescents, and young adults has become so anxious and depressed.
Haidt believes the process began in 1980 with the arrival of computers and video games in homes, but worsened significantly from 2010 onwards with access to smartphones.
What I liked most: The author provides a lot of data and research sources, along with possible solutions that we can apply to our lives.
Your review reminds me of Johann Hari’s books, so I’m just gonna share my book review of his Chasing the Scream with you
Humble brag alert: if you are a teacher as gifted at connecting with students as I am, you gotta take the good with the bad. Which includes confessions that they are experimenting with drugs. (I can give you a lesson on what the controlled and non-controlled drugs in Singapore are.) . . I have an ex-student; his mother is imprisoned because of drugs. I still hang out with him because I don’t want him to become a statistic, to follow in her footsteps. He worries that his mum will relapse after her release next year. After reading this book, I wanna tell him that his love for his mum will carry her through. (He tattooed the Japanese characters for mum on his arm.) He is enough. . . In a similar vein, I learnt that just being there for at-risk students is enough. Being non-judgemental is enough. I relate most with the portion of the book that states the struggle some people have - they threaten to cut off their loved ones from their lives. This pierced my heart like a knife. Oh, I have said the exact same thing myself in an effort to convey how hurt I was to another ex-student. But little did I realise that such words will hurt him and make him close his spirit. I will not say such things again. . . @johann.hari makes a brilliant case that people who are addicted to drugs have deep-seated trauma issues and feel isolated. I want to ask, what about teenagers who aren’t necessarily experimenting with drugs as a form of escape but as a form of solidarity and fitting in within the group? I feel that the novelty of thrill seeking and power of peer pressure wasn’t quite explored in this book. And if one of these teenagers is my student, what can I do to bolster his immunity against such pressure? #whatareyoureadingsg #readingnationsg #igreads #igbooks #bookstagram #definitelybooks @definitelybooks #chasingthescream
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Which of his solutions do you find the best bang for our effort?
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