When ‘The Anxious Generation’ Met The Pulpit
(ANALYSIS) When Rational Sheep opened for business two-plus years ago, there was a huge signpost just ahead for people interested in debates about technology, smartphones, social media and screens-culture issues in general. We were getting close to the release of Jonathan Haidt’s “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.”
I already had an email folder loaded with Haidt essays on these issues, mostly from The Atlantic. I had already requested an interview with him for my “On Religion” column (and the Substack project I was planning) — getting in line with all the other journalists, activists and think-tank folks who were waiting for the book to land.
Haidt’s book would, obviously, be important and I assumed that it would be a mid-level bestseller. That turned out to be an understatement, to say the least. The book is still ranked 17 on the “most read” list at Amazon. It has sold an estimated 2 million copies, topping the New York Times bestseller list five times.
However, I don’t think there was anyway to know the impact that this book has had, in terms of shaping debates at the legal, political and cultural levels.
But what about discussions inside major religious denominations and institutions? That remains the Rational Sheep angle in this drama.
When I talked to Haidt, he was surprised — not in a good way — that faith-group leaders were all but silent on the mental-health and spiritual issues discussed in the book.
The bottom line: For traditional religious believers, souls were clearly at stake, as well as heart and minds. That’s the truth.
You can read the rest of this post on Substack.
Terry Mattingly is Senior Fellow on Communications and Culture at Saint Constantine College in Houston. He lives in Elizabethton, Tennessee, and writes Rational Sheep, a Substack newsletter on faith and mass media.