The Death of Daydreaming

Intro from Jon Haidt: When I was nearly finished writing The Anxious Generation in the summer of 2023, I realized that I had left a gap. The book focused on the collapse of mental health, attention, and socialization of Gen Z—but again and again, older readers and friends would tell me: “this is happening to me too.” I realized that the global transition to a phone-based life is transforming everyone’s consciousness. But how? What exactly is happening to us? I thought back to my first book, The Happiness Hypothesis, which explored ten ancient ideas about how to live a good life—ideas found across continents and millennia. I began to see that the phone-based life, and social media in particular, push us to live in ways that are directly contrary to those recommended by nearly every ancient religious and philosophical tradition. These traditions tell us to be slow to judge and quick to forgive. They offer practices like meditation to quiet the mind and open the heart to deeper truths a ... Read full article.