Tagmental health
Are Phones to Blame for a Spiritual Crisis?
Technology is often impersonal magic. It makes things easy, but erodes personal formationPhones block access to spiritual depth. That’s what social psychologist Jonathan Haidt writes in his newest bestseller The Anxious Generation. The frenetic, distractible nature of the screen-based existence most of us live in every day is eroding our ability to pursue meaning, transcending values, and empathy for other people. Haidt was recently joined in conversation by Andy Crouch, a Christian author who has written extensively on technology and culture in books like The Tech-Wise Family and The Life We’re Looking For: Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World. “My life is full of convenience,” Crouch writes in the latter title mentioned. It is full of transaction, at its best a mutually beneficial exchange of value, a kind of arm’s-length benign use Read More ›
The Tragic Case of Teen’s Death and Character.AI
From the perspective of friends and family, it looked like Sewell just got mired in his phone. They weren’t aware he “fell for a chatbot.”
Growing Up on the Internet is Like Growing Up on Mars
We need to come back to Earth
Zuck and Co Are Under Fire (Again)
Meta targeted teens, according to internal company emailsIs there any company out there who has hurt young people more than Mark Zuckerberg’s gargantuan Meta empire? A host of lawsuits and a damning report from the New York Times tells us that the massive parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp willingly pursued its addictive business model despite the evident damage its products were doing to users, particularly kids. Who remembers when Facebook launched and its promises of a more connected world? Who remembers the optimists hailing the internet as the next step in human connectivity? A mere twenty years later and the technology lords are facing an overdue reckoning. Natasha Singer writes, The state lawsuits against Meta reflect mounting concerns that teenagers and children on social media Read More ›
Beyond Social Media’s Impact on Mental Health
Social media addiction can harm more than our moodsA young writer, herself a member of Gen Z, has dared to point out the obvious about social media. Sure, it’s verifiably making us sad and anxious, but it goes beyond that: it’s turning us into bad people. Freya India, a columnist at Quillette and a new contributor to Jonathan Haidt’s Substack After Babel, notes that while it’s important to talk about social media and mental health, it’s just as vital to talk about what this stuff is doing to our character. She writes, Our loss of empathy, our lack of regard for others, our neurotic obsession with our own image — it’s taking a toll. Maybe subconsciously. But I think deep down we know it. We know when people are using Read More ›
Helpful Video Maps Out Gen Z Mental Health Crisis
The glow of the screen is swallowing a generation, and it needs to stopSocial psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s new book The Anxious Generation topped the New York Times bestsellers’ chart two weeks in a row, and has been stirring up a lot of commentary in the meantime. Haidt’s basic thesis is that we have drastically overprotected children in the real world and woefully under-protected them in the virtual world. A new video helpfully lines out this argument, and shows why today’s generation, more than the Millennials who preceded them, struggle so intensely with anxiety, depression, and loneliness. In a recent interview, author and public intellectual Andy Crouch said that while he doesn’t know if it can be backed up neurologically, there is something about the “glow” of screens that wakens something primordial in the Read More ›
How to Protect Children in the Digital Age
We must empower parents to help their children navigate the digital landscape.
Human Subject Moves Computer Mouse with Neuralink Chip
So Big Tech companies might know your inner thoughts, now. What could possibly go wrong?
U.S. Drops in Happiness Poll
A year ago the U.S. was 15th in the world. Now it's 23rd. What happened?
Too Much Focus on Mental Health?
Is our fixation on wellbeing making us miserable?“We have to deal with the cancer that is mental health.” So tweeted former presidential nominee Nikki Haley back in January. Most people knew what she meant, which was that we have to take mental health seriously and do our best to foster positive mental health. From the way she phrased it, though, you’re tempted to think that “mental health” itself is, well, what she said it is: a “cancer.” The emphasis on mental health and therapy is widespread. In many ways, it is good and proper to encourage people to be more open about their mental struggles and to get help for what they’re going through. The amount of trauma, abuse, and other mental disorders that people hide is Read More ›
Jean Twenge: Gen Z Isn’t Reading
Zoomers were born into smartphones, not Shakespeare
Andrew McDiarmid on Teens and Smartphones
We can mitigate the mental health crisis, but we have to act now.
New Report: Parents, Don’t Give Your Kids Smartphones
This has become a national health crisis.
Is This a Moral Reckoning? 41 States Sue Meta for Knowingly Addicting Young Users
The lawsuit claims that Meta's platforms are harming its young users. The data backs it up.
Homogeneity via Instagram and the Internet
Spending too much time online shapes our personality and outlook perhaps more than we'd like to admit.
Two Notable Reads: Children and Tech and the Illusions of Photography
How much should kids be online? And is taking pictures taking us out of real life?
Why You Should Read More Fiction
The mental benefits for reading good stories are many.When looking for “solutions” to today’s mental health crisis in the United States, particularly among the millions of men who are checking out of society, reading fiction may not immediately come to mind. However, a new article from Psychology Today argues that reading fiction is “essential” for today’s men. The author of the article, psychologist Jett Stone, focuses on men in part because today’s literary market is largely geared towards women, and fiction and femininity are often closely associated. Nonetheless, he believes that reading fiction can benefit both women and men. He writes, Recent research indicates that reading fiction fosters critical thinking by presenting ideas subtly and in more roundabout ways than nonfiction. One study of adolescents found that frequent fiction readers possessed more Read More ›
The Benefits of Ditching Social Media
Tech writer Cal Newport explains why boredom is actually a good thingCal Newport ascended into the limelight upon his viral Ted Talk in which he called people to ditch social media. In this video from last year, Newport rehashes some of the main benefits of not having social media. Boredom is on the list, interestingly; Newport notes that most people no longer have moments of boredom, and as a consequence, don’t have any space in their lives to reflect, think, and work through their emotions. Andrew McDiarmid, a contributor at Mind Matters, has written on this in the past. He notes, Mind wandering, or stream of consciousness thought, gives us several mental gains, including the ability to consider obstacles to future goals, generate novel, creative thoughts, and place our experiences in meaningful Read More ›
This Country Just Legalized Euthanasia
The law isn't even limited to those who are terminally illAlas. The president of Portugal just signed into law a bill legalizing euthanasia by lethal injection. It is not limited to the terminally ill — which is at least honest, since that is not what euthanasia/assisted suicide is really all about. From the Reuters story: The law specifies that people would be allowed to request assistance in dying in cases when they are “in a situation of intense suffering, with definitive injury of extreme gravity or serious and incurable disease.” It establishes a two-month gap between accepting a request and the actual procedure and makes psychological support mandatory. Strict guidelines and all that jazz. Not only are they unlikely to be strictly enforced but will soon be redefined from protections to barriers, Read More ›