“Something went suddenly and horribly wrong for adolescents in the early 2010s. By now you’ve likely seen the statistics: Rates of depression and anxiety in the United States—fairly stable in the 2000s—rose by more than 50 percent in many studies from 2010 to 2019. The suicide rate rose 48 percent for adolescents ages 10 to 19. For girls ages 10 to 14, it rose 131 percent … As the oldest members of Gen Z reach their late 20s, their troubles are carrying over into adulthood. Young adults are dating less, having less sex, and showing less interest in ever having children than prior generations. They are more likely to live with their parents. They were less likely to get jobs as teens, and managers say they are harder to work with. Many of these trends began with earlier generations, but most of them accelerated with Gen Z.” Jonathan Haidt is back with some analysis that you don’t want to think about but that you know is true. The Atlantic (Gift Article): End The Phone-Based Childhood Now. The environment in which kids grow up today is hostile to human development. “Once young people began carrying the entire internet in their pockets, available to them day and night, it altered their daily experiences and developmental pathways across the board. Friendship, dating, sexuality, exercise, sleep, academics, politics, family dynamics, identity—all were affected. Life changed rapidly for younger children, too, as they began to get access to their parents’ smartphones and, later, got their own iPads, laptops, and even smartphones during elementary school.”

+ In fairness to smartphones, they had some help. WSJ (Gift Article): The Rough Years That Turned Gen Z Into America’s Most Disillusioned Voters. “Young adults are more skeptical of government and pessimistic about the future than any living generation before them.” (Sounds like they’re at least seeing things pretty clearly.)