USA TODAY and Yahoo may earn commission from links in this article. Pricing and availability subject to change.He wrote a book about kids and phones. It's turned him into a generational icon.
- - USA TODAY and Yahoo may earn commission from links in this article. Pricing and availability subject to change.He wrote a book about kids and phones. It's turned him into a generational icon.
Rachel Hale, USA TODAYOctober 16, 2025 at 6:09 AM
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NEW YORK CITY — Before last year, Jonathan Haidt was already a well-known social psychologist. He had been inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, had given four TED talks, and his academic articles had been cited nearly 100,000 times.
But his latest book, "The Anxious Generation," catapulted him into a unique type of fame after it was published in March of 2024, especially for a nonfiction author. Haidt became a role model for parents installing landlines in their homes and Gen Z luddites using flip phones. It's put him on a pedestal that few in his field have experienced.
He had four simple recommendations: No smartphones before high school; No social media before 16; Phone-free schools; And give kids more independence and play without supervision.
It sparked a movement − and made Haidt a household name for families concerned about tech. The book sold more than 1.7 million copies, has been mentioned by name in school technology policies, and influenced a social media ban for teens under 16 in Australia after the wife of a lawmaker read it and told her husband to take action.
In an expansive interview with USA TODAY that covered the cultural aftershocks of his book and changing parenting norms, Haidt laid out his latest advice for parents. Now, he says the conversation needs to widen to include what he views as the next major obstacle to kids' well being: artificial intelligence.
"We are at the tipping point right now," says Haidt. "AI is going to take all the pathways of harm from social media and multiply them."
"If we've learned anything, I think it's this: how about we just not experiment on the kids? How about we just try it out on the adults, but you don't experiment on the next generation, because I think it's going to be completely disastrous," Haidt said of artificial intelligence.A growing movement
From a studio in Tribeca the morning of Oct. 10, Haidt takes his spot on stage, a role he's grown comfortable assuming over the last 18 months.
This year's Project Healthy Minds World Mental Health Day Festival line up included Prince Harry and Meghan, actress Sophia Bush and NBC's Carson Daly. But many of the parents in the audience are in attendance to hear from Haidt, who's speaking about how to reverse the mental health crisis triggered by our tech use.
Jonathan Haidt joins Katie Couric (left), Amy Neville and Kirsten Ryan onstage at the Project Healthy Minds World Mental Health Day Festival on Oct. 10 in New York City.
"The technology is here to stay, but that doesn't mean that every child has to have it all day long," he tells the crowd. "So, actually, yes, we can return to a time when kids are riding bicycles, and it's happening."
He moves through his talk with a comfortable cadence before journalist Katie Couric joins him to moderate a panel with Amy Neville, a mother whose 14-year-old-son died from a fentanyl-laced pill he bought on Snapchat, and Kirsten Ryan, whose daughter was drawn into an eating disorder through social media.
When Haidt credits mothers for driving the phone-free movement, the crowd, which has reached a standing-room-only capacity, erupts into applause.
He says the next step is recognizing that some anonymous online spaces, like chat platforms, should be treated like casinos, bars and strip clubs: places that aren't meant for kids.
How 'The Anxious Generation' changed the conversation
When Haidt's book came out, he expected criticism. Instead, the obstacle he found was resignation: Parents were watching their kids grapple with screen addictions, bullying on social media and an adolescence lived mostly in phones.
And they felt those problems were too far gone.
"The pervasive view was, it's too late," Haidt says. "Train has left the station. You can't put toothpaste back in the tube."
Changing norms around social media is a long road, but parents are making headway. Phone free pods have popped up in Maine and New Jersey, and a Seattle-based group of dads launched a retro-inspired landline phone for their kids, Tin Can, that's taking off.
Tin Can co-founder Chet Kittleson says Haidt's research paved the way for his product. It led parents to question giving their kids cell phones.
"Now if you're the parent that's like, 'come on get a cell phone,' all the other parents are like, 'really, don't you know, it's kind of addictive?'" Kittleson says.
Haidt's critics argue that banning phones robs teens of a critical communication tool, both with their peers and in emergency situations. Some parents call his rhetoric alarmist, and other researchers argue that his evidence isn't strong enough to draw social media as the correlation behind the youth mental health epidemic. Haidt has responded by defending his work, and pointing to the broad policy strokes leaders are taking.
Earlier in October, Sweden became the latest country to implement plans for a nationwide mobile phone ban in all schools, following ones in countries including Denmark, South Korea and Brazil. As of October, 34 states and Washington D.C. had instituted policies on K-12 cellphone usage in schools, and Haidt wants to see that policy reform continue to expand.
More: Her classmate used AI to make deepfake nude images of her. Experts say it's not uncommon.
The AI threat
Haidt warns that curbing the popularity of artificial intelligence will be harder.
Haidt says AI has the power to make content "so much more addictive."
"If we don't get a handle on this now, then I think Gen Alpha and Gen Beta after them are just going to be completely lost in the most entertaining content ever created ," Haidt says.
The consequences are already here. Parents whose teens died by suicide after seeking guidance from ChatGPT have filed lawsuits calling the chatbot a "suicide coach." Predators behind scams like sextortion have started blackmailing young victims with AI-generated explicit images. And more and more teens are being victimized by peers using deepfake nudes.
As the platforms grow more accessible, 72% of teens say they've used an AI companion, and a third of users said they've chosen to talk about serious matters with AI companions instead of real people, according to a 2025 Common Sense Media report.
Haidt says the way forward is continuing to sound the alarm on social media.
"If we can get the whole country, the whole world, to understand that social media is wildly inappropriate for children," Haidt says, "then I think it'll be much easier to win the battle over throwing kids to the whims of alien intelligences that we do not understand."
More: Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell are embracing free-range parenting. What is that?
Haidt's advice for drawing the line on tech use
Are some parents overcorrecting? Haidt says he's barely seen instances of parents taking his advice too far. But to be clear, he didn't set out to be the reason all movies or phones are banned in households, or why some kids aren't allowed to have group chats. He emphasizes that banning long-form content isn't the way to go.
"Don't be afraid of letting your kids watch movies or full length TV episodes," Haidt says. "Movie night once or twice a week is a very good thing."
"Stories are good things, and longer stories that have people moving through a moral universe with conflicts are good," Haidt says. "Books are great ways to present stories, and television is a great way to present stories."
Haidt's advice is less about banning screens altogether and more about raising awareness about the ways they're reshaping attention and development. A device's refresh screen, color saturation, notifications and prompt system all impact how technology impacts the brain, while algorithms that feed curated content to users keep users hooked.
The issue is the way improper technology use can fragment kids' attention spans.
"When you change brain development in the first four or five years, it's likely to have permanent effects," Haidt says.
And children who grow up with second screening, browsing social media while watching a TV show, are training their brains to seek out dopamine. The result is a lower threshold for tolerating frustration, and a harder time focusing in the classroom.
He wants parents to hold off on smartphones and social media, but not at the expense of isolating their children. He suggests giving kids a flip phone, a basic smartphone or a phone watch, all with the ability to make phone and send texts to family and friends.
"Kids are not afraid of not having a phone," Haidt says. "They're afraid of being alone or isolated."
Rachel Hale's role covering Youth Mental Health at USA TODAY is supported by a partnership with Pivotal and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.
Reach her at [email protected] and @rachelleighhale on X.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Jonathan Haidt says AI poses gigantic risk. Here's why.
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