Child-Friendly Jonathan Haidt and Catherine Price’s new middle grade book, The Amazing Generation: Your Guide to Fun and Freedom in a Screen Filled World blends graphic novel storytelling with interactive challenges and clear explanations of the serious issues explored in Haidt’s bestselling book for adults, The Anxious Generation.
Haidt and Price want Generation Alpha — children born between 2013 and 2025 — to become “rebels” who battle “greedy tech wizards.”
These rebels follow two key principles:
• Use technology as a tool; don’t let technology use you.
• Fill your life with real friendship, freedom and fun.
Not a kid problem
Haidt and Price don’t shy away from assigning blame where it belongs — with tech companies that deliberately make their products addictive. They cast these developers as “greedy wizards,” and they’re right. This is not a kid problem; it’s an adult problem that profoundly affects children.
What the book does well
The Amazing Generation clearly names the harms of Big Tech and normalizes the fact that many children, even in middle school, do not have personal devices. The graphic novel story line illustrates common social situations that arise when kids have phones, such as the anxiety of being recorded or posted without consent. It’s a useful counterpoint to the notion that kids without phones are the ones missing out.
Haidt and Price explain how smartphones, social media and gaming apps manipulate users. They define terms such as algorithm and describe how these features exploit dopamine feedback loops in young brains.
Teens’ takeaways
Because the book targets tweens and teens, I asked my 14 year old daughter and her friend to read it. Her friend said it made her feel more empowered to be off her phone. (My 14 year old still uses a flip phone — a rare choice, but a successful one.) Both girls noted that, while they don’t enjoy limits on screen use, they now better understand that parents who delay smartphones or set rules are protecting their long term well-being.
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