Bestselling Books Built on Fear

The Art and Science of Mom

Two new books out over the last month promise to be bestsellers -- and stress out parents.

First, Abigail Shier’s Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up is about how parents shouldn’t be teaching children about their emotions and child therapists are the worst. (Thanks

Melinda Wenner Moyer

for the critique of how the premise is deeply flawed). Then I saw a post by bestselling author and social psychologist, Jonathan Haidt, that represents the problems with how we talk about childhood anxiety and cell phones as he prepares for the release of his new book, The Anxious Generation. Both authors and books seem to be everywhere and both appear to be using the old playbook of freaking out parents.

I have seen a fair amount of backlash against Bad Therapy, so I won’t belabor it here, but as someone whose professional calling is based on the importance of shaping healthy emotional lives in children, it’s infuriating. Based on what I’ve seen about the book, the author fundamentally misuses and misrepresents the science of emotions and coping. I know because I’ve studied and applied this science for over twenty years.

The danger is that the author’s flawed argument will either convince or confuse parents about teaching healthy emotional coping (or not teaching it at all). Not to mention the potential ramifications of calling for the elimination of social emotional learning in schools (that’s a newsletter for another day). The point is that bestselling books like this one may be wrong, but not innocuous. They can cause lasting damage to the culture of parenting guidance, which is already a dumpster fire of overblown fears and misguided anxiety paralyzing rather than empowering us.

Jonathan Haidt’s new book comes out this week with coverage from every major media outlet. Unlike Bad Therapy, when I googled “critique” for The Anxious Generation, mostly bandwagon-jumping came up. I’ll let his own words introduce the book’s main idea, from one of his LinkedIn posts:

I’m curious about your initial response to this - mine was “of course” for the fourth norm but “there’s no way” for the first three. I admit more nuance and complexity with Haidt’s stance compared to Bad Therapy, but I worry about the overall impact of his messaging on parents. As I read his Atlantic article, I felt my own blood pressure rising with all of his dire warnings even while I know the flaws underlying his premise.

Starting with the claim that the “phone-based childhood is making young people sick,” Haidt uses correlational data to justify this premise of his book. Any of us who took a statistics course or pays attention to science in the media knows that “correlation is not causation.” In fact, I’ve read many criticisms over the years of this same argument blaming smartphones and social media for all the awful statistics about young people these days.

In his article, Haidt raises legitimate concerns about the direction of young people that are not new fodder (e.g., teens are lonelier, less independent, and diagnosed with higher rates of mental health disorders). His solutions may make sense in a vacuum, but they are the kind of fear-based responses that make parents more stressed about how they are managing screen time and social media in their own homes because his proposed solution will likely will not work. (To be fair, he’s calling for these steps as a cultural norms correction but yikes that sounds even more impossible.)

This over-generalized conclusion that smartphones and social media are destroying our youth also leaves out the upsides of increased connectivity that smartphones and social media facilitate. What about the LGBTQ+ child whose life would be at risk in their own community if they were open about who they are, but can find a supportive community online? That could literally save a child’s life. Or the autistic child who decompresses with their favorite online characters after an exhausting day of in-person social demands. There’s also the potential for youth to build creativity and innovation skills that serve them well in adulthood. What if we looked at the opportunities and not only the threats?

Instead of a draconian approach to remove smartphones and social media from our children’s lives (good luck), I suggest the following measures:

1. Start conversations early about the risks and downsides of smartphones and social media.

   In our family, we regularly talk about the addictive features designed by companies for profit, including how adults struggle with these features too. We discuss the research on how even having a phone nearby turned off can predict a letter grade lower on that task. I’ve expressed my concerns that the pull of the smartphone has made reading less interesting, and the implications of less reading for their futures. We talk about all of this so my Gen Z children can learn how to critically think about the responsibilities inherent to managing having a phone and social media.

2. Watch your children. Don’t get caught up in the statistics from large studies that often tell us very little about our real lives. Pay attention to your child’s daily life, especially how much physical activity, in-person social time, and sleep they get. Haidt is correct that these three features of daily living predict better mental health and that smartphones and social media can compromise all three — but they don’t have to.

3. See the opportunity for healthy growth and development. Instead of only focusing on the risks, fears, and extreme scenarios, widen your lens to include the positive possibilities. In my family, I am parenting in alignment with the long game of what I want for my children: for them to develop an internal sense of “too much” digital time. We delayed Fortnite for over a year of my son’s begging due to concerns about him fixating on it. That hasn’t happened for the last year since we allowed Fortnite - until the current Myths and Mortals season that has captivated him. But in his early gamer life, we’ve been practicing behavioral strategies to help him tune into when his body feels like it needs to move and when his eyes and brain need a break from the Fortnite action. It’s not perfect but he’s becoming more and more skilled at interspersing a range of activities: playing soccer around the house or outside, reading Percy Jackson for another version of Greek gods, playing a few rounds of Solitaire or his favorite songs on the piano. He’s only nine. I see this as the investment in his adolescence of knowing when he needs to stop doing whatever sedentary screen-related addictive activity lies in his future so we don’t have to constantly fight about it.

This brief rebuttal to Haidt’s stance is just the tip of the iceberg of what I have to say. Fortunately, there are much smarter and more well-versed writers out there from whom to get your digital guidance:

Devorah Heitner, PhD

’s Mentoring Kids in a Connected World Substack;

Anya Kamenetz

’s The Art of Screen Time; and

Jacqueline Nesi, PhD

’s Techno Sapiens Substack. All three write about parenting in the digital age with balance, nuance, and a respect for what we can and cannot conclude from the research.

It’s frustrating because scaring parents sells and works - even when the fear lacks a solid basis. Bad Therapy is officially an NYT bestseller (every author dreams of hitting this mark of success). Haidt’s book probably reached this esteemed NYT bestseller status pre-publication after his huge success, The Coddling of the American Mind, put him on the map. These loud voices affect us and our parenting mindset even if we couldn’t pick Haidt out of a lineup or never heard of the Bad Therapy title.

The World We Have

I’m not arguing that there’s nothing negative about smartphones and social media. Personally, I spend as little time on social media as possible. I do think my kids spend too much time on their phones and managing digital life is a constant “work in progress” in our family. I’m arguing that it’s complicated and we need to each know our children and make decisions with them about the best conditions for use of phones and social media in their daily lives.

The fact is we now live in a digital world. The genie is out of the bottle and we can’t shove it back in. We should view our children and teens using their phones and other online platforms as learning opportunities (with parameters) for becoming responsible, ethical, productive digital citizens.

I do fantasize about how my children’s lives would be different if smartphones and social media didn’t exist. I agree with many of the theorized benefits of a childhood without them. In many ways, our children probably would lead healthier lives. Probably. But the fact is we can’t say for sure, and it’s not the world we live in. We need to raise our children for the world we have, not the world we wish we had.

Autonomy-Supportive Parenting in the Media

I had the pleasure of talking to psychologist Dr. Adam Dorsay on his SuperPsyched podcast about my book which he enthusiastically and kindly anointed, “the parenting book every psychologist wishes they had years ago.” The conversation is so much fun! I also spoke with peak performance coach Kirsten Jones on her #RaisingAthletes podcast about how we can shift gears away from intensive parenting in youth sports. Betsy Jewell and I had a similar conversation on her High School Hamster Wheel podcast about how to do the same in academics for our adolescents.

Psychology Today published my piece on gentle parenting, so if you’re a new subscriber and missed that newsletter, you can read it here: What’s Wrong with Gentle Parenting? USA Today also featured me as a critic of the “concierge moms” business taking over college students in America. (Haidt and I would probably agree on this one!)

My Zen of the month to help counteract my outrage: puzzling

Book Review in Nature (Excerpt: “First, this book is going to sell a lot of copies, because Jonathan Haidt is telling a scary story about children’s development that many parents are primed to believe. Second, the book’s repeated suggestion that digital technologies are rewiring our children’s brains and causing an epidemic of mental illness is not supported by science.”)

Podcast Accompaniment to Today’s Newsletter: If Books Could Kill (Check out this episode about Haidt’s The Coddling of the American Mind but fair warning the hosts lean liberal/progressive in case that’s not your thing and they love swearing so you may not want little ears around.)

**You can order my book Autonomy-Supportive Parenting: Reduce Parental Burnout and Raise Competent, Confident Children on Amazon and Bookshop.