The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt

This is the last book I finished in 2025 and is perhaps the most important book I read all year. Since it was published in March of 2024, I have been hearing about it, positive and negative. I have read and heard from those who wholeheartedly agree with it and support its conclusions and remedies. I have also heard criticism that perhaps there are other causes of increased mental illness in the world’s children, that the research was cherry picked to reach the author’s chosen conclusions. Finally, in the last week of last year, I decided to read the book and decide for myself.

The author of this book was a co-writer on a previous book about youth, The Coddling of the American Mind. That book is a sort of prelude to this one. At least it highly influenced Haidt’s decision to write this one. In that previous book, he cites what he calls safetyism as an issue in raising and educating children. By this he means protecting children and young people from the problems of the world. Instead they need to learn to face them and deal with them at age-appropriate levels. In The Anxious Generation he lays out the case for why social media is rewiring the world’s children from a play-based childhood to a phone-based childhood and how that is creating our present day mental health crisis.

He starts by outlining the surge in mental health issues around the world and pinning down the timing of this uptick to 2010 to 2015. He then shows how mammals in general and humans specifically need to play as children in order to learn how to be healthy adults. When children play they face challenges and harms that they learn to deal with. If this is short circuited by trading playtime for phone time, these lessons are never learned. Much of this state is due to parents wanting to protect their children from the potential harms of the world. But doing so prevents them from entering discovery mode and seeking out the risky play that kids need to grow up healthy.

The core of the book is when the author outlines and details what he calls the four foundational harms of social media. These are:

Social Deprivation
Sleep Deprivation
Attention Fragmentation
Addiction

He then goes on to explore how and why social media is more harmful for girls than boys as well as how boys are also experiencing these foundational harms from a different direction (video games and pornography).

The final section on how to address these issue is welcome after all the bad news. After laying down a foundation for collective action, Haidt goes on to outline what government, schools, and parents can do to begin to remedy this dire situation.

What impressed me most about this book was the dedication to scholarship. Everything is based on study after study. He is maintaining a website that links to all the studies and shows the numbers used to come to the conclusions in the book. This includes examining possible other causes. But none fits the data as well as those outlined in this book. The author is also open to the idea that he could be wrong. He plans to update and correct anything in that vein on this online supplement at http://anxiousgeneration.com/supplement.

I found the evidence and conclusions of this book extremely persuasive. It matches my experience with my own children and those I see around me. I only wish that this level of information had been available when I was raising children.

My rating: 5/5

Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton

I remember when the movie based on this book came out back in 1993. It is hard to put into words how amazing and realistic the dinosaurs were. I am sure today they don’t hold the same awe for viewers as they did then. When I recently heard a podcaster raving about this novel, it sparked an urge in me to read the original material. Being in the mood for a quick read, I picked up this old school thriller.

Everyone pretty much knows the story. A billionaire clones dinosaurs on an island off the coast of Costa Rica with the plan of opening a family friendly theme park. Some of his investors are a little concerned and convince him to host a lawyer representing the investors, two paleontologists, and a critical mathematician to evaluate the park and island. They land. Chaos ensues.

What most impressed me about this novel was the critique of scientific hubris. The mathematician is the mouthpiece for this in the book. At one point he says that scientist never ask if they should do something. It is only enough if they can. They justify it by saying if they don’t, someone else will. Though based in science and technology, this book is very humanist. The emotions (particularly fear) are front and center. I felt like I was really there. It was a fantastic combination of excellent storytelling and examination of the science and thinking of its time.

My rating: 4/5

True Grit by Charles Portis

For our meeting coming up in January, my Theme Team book club decided to read a western. In this club, we all choose our own book to read on the theme then share our experience with it at our meeting. I don’t generally read westerns. After doing some research, I landed on this as my book.

Most people are at least familiar with the John Wayne film based on this novel or the more recent remake staring Jeff Bridges. It is the story of Maddie Ross, a fourteen-year-old girl from rural Arkansas, told in the first person long after the events have taken place. After her father is murdered by a drunken hired hand on a trip to Fort Smith, AR, Maddie arrives there to claim her father’s body. While there, she hires US Marshall Rooster Cogburn to help her find the murderer, Tom Chaney, who has escaped to Indian Territory (present day Oklahoma). She is very stubborn, insisting that she accompany Rooster in his pursuit. She chose Cogburn because, in her opinion, he has “true grit”. She wasn’t interested in “the best”. She wanted the man who would stick with it until the job was done.

Many have ranked this as one of the best books they’ve read. It is a rip-roaring tale that doesn’t let up for a moment. It is filled with realistic characters doing realistic things. It is emotional without becoming maudlin. I can see why two movies have been made of it and why so many people still read it. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, but for me it didn’t rank in the category of superlatives. Definitely read it, especially if you are a fan of westerns.

My rating: 4/5

The Last Picture Show by Larry McMurtry

My book club previously read Lonesome Dove by the same author. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed it. So when one of our members suggested this book for December, it won our vote. I finished reading it a couple weeks ago.

It is the story of three teenagers in rural Texas: Sonny, his best friend Duane, and Duane’s girlfriend Jacy, who Sonny has a crush on. They are all graduating high school and trying to figure out what to do with their lives. As the book opens, Sonny breaks up with his girlfriend. Without giving any spoilers, the three teens spend the rest of the book struggling to figure out relationships in general and their own with each other and the rest of the town.

This is not a cheery book with what anyone would call a happy ending. Some may call the harsh glimpse it gives “real”. For me, I think it is a little over the top, even soap opera-like. At least one of the characters is downright stupid and unlikable, at least for me. However, the writing is excellent and the emotions are spot on. It is a well structured, well written novel. I am just not sure it was meant for me. I prefer my novels to address whatever issues they bring up and show some ways to deal with them. There was a little of that. Don’t get me wrong. I like a cautionary tale, but this one somehow left me wondering what all the fuss was about this book.

My rating: 3/5

Enshittification by Cory Doctorow

I subscribe to and read Cory Doctorow’s blog at pluralistic.net. He publishes there regularly, discussing his ideas on the intersection of technology and politics. When he recently published a book in a similar vein discussing the concept and word he coined back in 2022, I immediately purchased it. I finally got around to actually reading it this month.

Doctorow explained enshittification in a January 2023 article in Wired magazine:

Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification….

Part 1 of the book shows how this happened with four platforms (Facebook, Amazon, iPhone, and Twitter). Part 2 is a short chapter how we got on the path to platform decay. Part 3 is a detailed review of what previously prevented enshittification and how those stopgaps were eroded. Finally, in Part 4 the author lays out a plan for overcoming the issues he laid out in the previous three parts of the book.

The book is engaging and informative. The writing is conversational and lays out technical ideas in everyday language that anyone can understand. This is a primer for our times on how the internet has become the cesspool that it is and how to get back to what Doctorow calls “an old, good internet.” It is an excellent, if not essential, read for everyone with one exception. If you regularly read his blog, none of this is new. It is, however, an excellent and concise explanation of the author’s technology philosophy. I highly recommend it.

My rating: 4/5

Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley

Each November, my book club reads indigenous fiction or history. This month, we chose to read this book. It was an excellent choice.

Daunis is an eighteen-year-old Chippewa living near the Ojibwe reservation in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. She feels like she doesn’t fit in either the while world or the native world despite belonging to both. She used to play on the high school hockey team and her half-brother is the captain of the local club team. When handsome newcomer Jamie joins the team and befriends her brother, he asks her to be his ambassador. As she gets closer to Jamie she finds out more than she expected and her world turns upside down.

This is a wonderful coming-of-age novel that explores all the feelings and issues without getting too sappy and deals with them realistically. I loved how immersed it is in Ojibwe culture and language. And it is so well-written. Hard to believe it is a debut novel!

My rating: 5/5

The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow

My book club selected this book as our read in October for horror/fantasy.

It is the story of a young girl (January) who struggles to be good in the eyes of her guardian while her father is out gathering objects for him. She finds a book that tells the story of a woman told by her husband. It tells of doorways to other worlds. January longs to find such doors through which she can escape.

I found the writing in this book beautiful without getting in the way of the storytelling. It was easy to read and touched on topics that mean a lot to me: feminism, misogyny, and self-determination. Highly recommended.

My rating: 4/5

Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew Sullivan

This was another thriller that my partner and I listened to on a recent road trip. We didn’t quite finish it by the time we got home. I finished it on my way to work the next day.

Lydia Smith works at a bookstore. Late one night at closing, I regular is discovered having hanged himself in the store. Lydia was close to this patron and finds that his effects have been left to her. In her effort to understand why she begins to uncover things in her past that she thought she left behind.

This was both a thriller and an exploration of relationships and dealing with the past. Better than most but nothing spectacular. A solid choice for a road trip.

My rating: 3/5

When These Mountains Burn by David Joy

My library book club members all read different books for each meeting. For our last meeting, the prompt was to read a book by a North Carolina author. Having read and enjoyed a previous novel by David Joy, I selected this audiobook for a recent road trip.

Raymond Mathis gets a call from a drug dealer. He says that unless he pays his son’s debt, he will kill him. He reluctantly bails his son out, warning the dealer to never sell to his son again. After his son relapses, Ray goes after the operation that poisoned his son.

What I loved most about this novel is that it takes place where I live. Once seen included a location I drive through every day. The author also does an amazing job of capturing the people and nature of the mountains of western North Carolina. Despite the depressing subject matter of this book, I thoroughly enjoyed how the community worked to overcome its own issues.

My rating: 4/5

Jaws by Peter Benchley

This being the 50th anniversary of the release of the movie, I have been hearing a lot of coverage about its making. This led me to want to read the book to see what all the fuss was about in the first place.

The plot of the novel is fairly similar to that of the movie. There are naturally other plot lines in the book that didn’t make it to the movie. These include the mayor of the town getting into trouble with local organized crime and the sheriff’s wife having an affair. The ending it also a bit different.

While I enjoyed this novel, I don’t really see what all the fuss was about. Perhaps it was one of those books that was a product of its time. It still holds up as a good novel, but I don’t think it would be the hit it was then if it was released today. This is the rare case where the movie was better than the book.

My rating: 3/5