Our team at Abbott Mental Health Counseling recently had the opportunity to hear social psychologist Jonathan Haidt speak about the mental health of today’s children and adolescents. Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation, has brought significant attention to the relationship between technology, childhood, attention, and adolescent mental health. His presentation gave us much to consider—not only as mental health professionals who work with adolescents, but as adults who care deeply about the well-being of the next generation.
At Abbott Mental Health Counseling, we work with adolescents and families navigating anxiety, depression, loneliness, identity questions, family conflict, academic pressure, and the many challenges of growing up in an increasingly digital world. The conversation around The Anxious Generation raises important questions about how that environment may be shaping the way young people connect, focus, cope, and develop.
One of the most striking points in Haidt's presentation was the scale and timing of the changes in adolescent mental health. He described a significant deterioration in mental health beginning in the early 2010s, particularly among adolescent girls at first. His argument is that this coincided with a major cultural transformation in the substance of childhood: the shift from what he calls a play-based childhood to a phone-based childhood.
In The Anxious Generation, Haidt examines the relationship between this transformation and rising rates of anxiety, depression, self-harm, loneliness, sleep disruption, social comparison, and other difficulties among young people.
At his recent talk, Haidt emphasized that he initially did not have sufficient evidence to make a causal claim about social media when he and Greg Lukianoff wrote The Coddling of the American Mind. Over the years that followed, he said, a much larger body of research emerged.
The conversation surrounding technology and adolescent mental health continues to develop. Not every difficulty a teenager experiences can be attributed to a phone or social media. Mental health is complex, and adolescents are influenced by family relationships, genetics, school environments, trauma, sleep, community, social pressures, and many other factors. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the broader environment in which today's adolescents are developing.
The PISA Results: A Warning About More Than Test Scores
One of the most compelling parts of Haidt's presentation focused on something that might initially seem unrelated to mental health: reading.
Haidt pointed to the Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA, an international assessment of 15-year-old students administered by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
The newest PISA results, released in September 2026, provide a sobering picture. More than 760,000 students across 91 countries and economies participated in PISA 2025. Across OECD countries, average reading performance has fallen substantially over the past decade. Between 2015 and 2025, reading scores declined by 28 points—approximately equivalent to one and a half years of learning according to the OECD's comparison. (OECD)
Even more interesting for the conversation about attention is how students are struggling. The OECD also found that the decline was particularly noticeable on tasks involving longer texts and higher-level processes such as evaluating, reflecting, remembering, and integrating information from multiple sources. (OECD)
The OECD points to a number of possible contributing factors and specifically notes that the decline in reading began before the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, the OECD reports that increased digitalization, longer screen time, and declining reading for enjoyment have coincided with weaker literacy outcomes. (OECD)
The larger question is not simply, "Can teenagers read?" It is: Can teenagers sustain their attention long enough to engage deeply with something that isn't immediately stimulating?
That question extends far beyond school. It affects how young people learn, how they process emotions, how they tolerate boredom, how they develop interests, and how they engage in meaningful relationships.
From Reading to Attention
During his presentation, Haidt described what he sees as one of the deeper concerns facing young people: the loss of sustained attention.
He made the point that today's young people may be perfectly capable of reading individual words on a screen while struggling to remain engaged with several paragraphs of text.
The PISA findings provide an interesting data point here. The OECD found that reading performance declined more sharply on longer and more demanding reading tasks, and its analysis suggests that students' ability or willingness to sustain focused engagement with difficult material may be part of the story. (OECD)
Attention is not simply an academic skill. It is part of emotional development. Processing a difficult emotion takes time. Building a friendship takes time. Learning to tolerate frustration takes time. Reading a meaningful book takes time. Sitting with a difficult question takes time.
Even therapy requires a willingness to slow down enough to notice what is happening internally. A world built around rapid stimulation can make that kind of slowing down more difficult.
This is where boys are particularly vulnerable. Haidt believes the main mechanism at play here is in changes to the dopamine system. Dopamine is a neurochemical that stimulates motivation and rewards certain behaviors with feelings of pleasure. This is where the story changes. Whereas Haidt’s conclusion was that this was about the girls and social media and Instagram, he now believes greater damage is being done to the boys because of all the different companies trying to reel out as much dopamine as they can from our sons. It starts with the video games. It goes to the porn. Maybe vaping. Then it's sports betting and gambling. Our kids, especially our boys, are surrounded by opportunities to get a quick hit of dopamine.
The Phone-Based Childhood
Haidt describes the shift toward a phone-based childhood as a profound developmental change. What happens when digital experiences begin to displace experiences that children also need for healthy development.
Time spent online can compete with:
Sleep
Outdoor activity
Face-to-face friendships
Family conversation
Boredom and imaginative play
Independent exploration
Reading
Physical activity
Time to simply be still
In his presentation, Haidt described this as an opportunity-cost problem. Even before considering whether a particular app or platform is harmful, time spent there is time that cannot simultaneously be spent doing something else.
That doesn't mean parents need to eliminate every screen from their children's lives. It does mean that it is worth asking: What is being replaced by my child's technology use?
Why Parents Are Paying Attention
One encouraging part of Haidt's presentation was the recognition that parents are not simply accepting this environment as inevitable.
Parents are asking questions.
Should my child have a smartphone?
How much social media is appropriate?
Why does my teenager seem unable to put the phone down?
Why is reading so difficult?
Why does my child seem exhausted even after spending hours "connecting" with friends?
Why does my teenager feel more lonely despite being more socially connected than any previous generation?
Those questions are increasingly being asked not only in individual homes but also in schools and communities. That growing awareness has contributed to changes in school phone policies and broader conversations about age limits and technology. Haidt described this as evidence that communities can respond when parents recognize a problem and begin working together.
For families, however, the most important changes don't necessarily begin with legislation. They can begin around the dinner table. They can begin with a family conversation. They can begin with a walk, a book, a phone-free evening, or giving a teenager permission to be bored.