This post originally comes from my new book review blog called "Pastor Scott's Library." If you are interested in following that, USE THIS LINK.
I saw downstairs a couple of years ago and watched my 24-year-old son at his computer desk. He had two computer monitors lit up. The larger first one had a high-speed, first-person shooter video game going at a breakneck pace. There was so much motion and data and information coming at him that I had to occasionally look away from the screen, even though I wasn’t the one playing the game.
The second smaller monitor was a video chat room, with four or five other faces of guys sitting at their computer desks supposedly playing the same online game that my son had going. Every one of them (my son included) had microphoned headsets on and were chatting with each other while they played.
The icing on this mad cake was the small laptop on the other corner of his desk that had a YouTube video playing with the volume muted. I asked him what was the video for if the volume was muted. He said, “I can get enough of what’s going on.”
The part of this story that unsettles me is that my son’s brain is capable of processing that much information at that speed for an extended period of time, dare I say hours. And it isn’t because he has a unique or highly functioning brain, but rather he has a re-wired brain. It’s clock speed has been conditioned to function that way. Years of sitting in front of a computer absorbing and processing gargantuan amounts of information.
It may also explain why when he lays his head down on the bed, he needs seven or eight hours before his brain–which he describes as spinning ruthlessly out of control–is calm enough to allow him to sleep. And the years of sleep disorder and deprivation almost certainly contributed to years of struggling with depression and anxiety.
I am learning that he is not alone. In 2010, several major western countries began experiencing a sharp increase in reported cases of mental health disorders, with the majority of those cases representing Generation Z–those born from 1996 to 2009. So significant was the increase of people with depression and anxiety that the global medical community has referred to it as a pandemic.
All of what I observed and heard about regarding mental health is addressed in this book and substantiated with a lot of quality research, surveys, and studies. Author and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt asked every question I had about a younger generation dealing with profound emotional and mental challenges more than any other age demographic on record.
He identifies two primary causes of this pandemic. First, society for a few decades now have engaged in an increased “safetyism,” where the freedom a child previously had to engage in risky play with their peers unsupervised by adults became less acceptable in most communities. Curfew rules increased. Spending time at friends’ houses for sleepovers became infrequent. Playgrounds transformed into places concerned with safety at the expense of child development. A child walking alone outside on the sidewalk became a reason to call Child Protective Services instead of being understood as normal behaviour. As such, safetyism pulled children out of an experience that was vital for their ability to mitigate and handle the risks of adulthood since they never were afforded the opportunity to handle the appropriate risks of childhood.
Second, in 2008, Steve Jobs and Apple introduced the first iPhone. Within two years, web-based social media platforms Facebook and Twitter along with video-content provider YouTube all built apps for their platforms that did three things:
1) tailored the respective apps to keep faces and eyes constantly in front of the screen at the expense of the real world,
2) did little to prevent children from signing up for and using these apps (a young 13 years old was the legal age of consent, but no mechanism was put in place to prevent younger users), and
3) exposed children to content and online communities that allowed their identities and self image to be ruthlessly evaluated by adult strangers and online predators.
When you put both those two causes together, you have the recipe for what Haidt calls “the great re-wiring of childhood.” Society extracted them from the real world at a time they needed it the most and instead, allowed them to enter a digital world they had no business being in.
Haidt proposes a number of responses to reverse the culture, starting with the public sector and its impotent laws as well as schools that allow children to have smartphones in the classroom. Families also will need to become more vigilant at the ratio of screen time to outdoor time.
After reading the book, the father in me recognized the past for what it was. My three adult sons all have scars that point to the damage Haidt describes in his book. But, the pastor in me rose up and asked the question, “How can churches come alongside the youngest generation (Generation Alpha) and crush this pandemic?” I don’t have quick answers, but it is clear that while the church is not THE answer to the mental health crisis, it should be asking itself how it is AN answer.
So, I signed up as a volunteer at a local after-school youth program, and I will be encouraging members of my congregation to join me. Our church doesn’t have many children in it (maybe 8 or 9 in total). But I firmly believe that the 50, 60, and 70-somethings, who make up the bulk of North American church populations, can have a lasting impact on teens and 20-somethings moving forward.
In short, the book is powerful and sobering. It is the wake-up call that western society needs if they want to address the alarming increase in cases of teen suicide and self-harm. Highly recommended.