Last summer, before Food For Thought was even an idea, I read Jonathan Haidt's The Anxious Generation.

I expected an interesting book about kids, smartphones, and social media.

Instead, I found myself looking at my own family differently.

That's usually my sign that a book has gotten to me.

It wasn't that I suddenly decided phones were evil or that technology was ruining an entire generation. I'm naturally skeptical of sweeping conclusions like that.

But Haidt put words around something I'd already been noticing.

Childhood had changed.

​And I wasn't sure we fully appreciated what our kids were losing in the process.

From a Play-Based Childhood to a Phone-Based One

One of Haidt's central arguments is that we've experienced a transition from what he calls a "play-based childhood" to a "phone-based childhood."

His argument isn't simply that kids spend too much time staring at screens.

It's about what that time has replaced.

Playing outside.

Taking risks.

You Can't Block Someone on the Playground

Think about what happens when a bunch of kids play together.

Eventually, somebody gets annoyed.

Someone doesn't get their way.

Someone changes the rules.

Someone says something stupid.

I Started Looking at My Own Boys Differently

I have two teenage boys, and what I noticed wasn't identical in each of them.

My older son has a good group of friends and spends plenty of time with them.

My concerns with him were more about ideas.

Social media puts an incredible amount of information in front of teenagers every day. Opinions arrive fully formed, usually packaged into short videos and delivered by algorithms that get remarkably good at figuring out what keeps someone's attention.

I started worrying about whether he was really evaluating those ideas.

Was he asking whether something was true?

Was he considering another perspective?

Or was he simply absorbing whatever kept appearing in front of him?

My younger son concerned me in a different way.

He seemed more naturally inclined to think through ideas, but I watched him and his friends become increasingly content to socialize almost entirely through computers.

Getting a group together to actually go somewhere or do something could be surprisingly difficult.

Why go outside when everyone can sit at home and play together online?

And I found myself wondering what happens when that becomes the default version of friendship.

Not because playing video games with your friends is inherently bad.

I played video games too.

But because childhood only gives us so many opportunities to practice being human around other humans.

The Book Made Me Look at Myself, Too

It's easy to read a parenting book and start making a list of everything your kids are doing wrong.

That's certainly more comfortable.

Unfortunately, The Anxious Generation also made me look at my own behavior.

Our family eats dinner together four or five nights a week.

And dinner could be...a lot.

Our boys would bicker.

They'd make ridiculous noises.

They'd tell jokes that apparently become much funnier if you're a teenage boy.

They'd take forever to eat.

I'd get irritated.

By the end of dinner, I often felt surprisingly anxious from all the chaos.

And I noticed something about myself.

After dinner, I was increasingly retreating to my bedroom.

I'd relax.

Watch something.

Scroll through my own phone.

Mostly, I'd just enjoy being somewhere quieter.

Then I read a book about kids increasingly retreating from real-world interaction...

...while I was literally retreating from my kids.

That realization was mildly inconvenient.

So I Started Showing Up Differently

I didn't institute some giant family transformation.

There was no dramatic meeting where I gathered everyone together and announced that we were reclaiming childhood.

My teenagers would have loved that.

Instead, I made a smaller change.

After dinner, I started spending more time in the family room.

I tried to be around.

I engaged more.

And I started thinking seriously about the skills my kids might not be developing naturally through school, friendships, and everyday life.

How could I help them become better thinkers?

How could I get them to wrestle with ideas instead of simply reacting to them?

How could I encourage them to consider perspectives they didn't agree with?

How could I help them become comfortable asking questions instead of immediately needing answers?

Those questions eventually sent me down the rabbit hole of researching critical thinking.

And months later, that path would eventually contribute to the creation of Food For Thought.

There's an Important Caveat Here

Because this is an article about critical thinking, I think it's only fair that we apply some critical thinking to The Anxious Generation itself.

Haidt makes a strong argument connecting the rise of smartphones and social media with the deterioration of adolescent mental health.

But not every researcher agrees about how confidently we can say one caused the other.

A 2024 National Academies review concluded that the available research does not establish that social media causes population-level changes in adolescent health. The relationship is complicated: different kids use social media differently, effects can vary substantially, and cause and effect can run in both directions.

At the same time, that doesn't mean there's nothing to worry about.

The U.S. Surgeon General's advisory concluded that we cannot currently say social media is sufficiently safe for children and adolescents and that there are meaningful risks alongside potential benefits.

Other research has found that the relationship may vary considerably depending on age and developmental stage. A large Nature Communications study, for example, identified particular periods during adolescence when higher social-media use was associated with later decreases in life satisfaction—and also found evidence of the relationship running in the opposite direction.

In other words:

It's complicated.

That's not a particularly satisfying headline.

​But complicated things rarely make particularly satisfying headlines.

I Don't Need Every Question Settled to Pay Attention

This is where I land as a parent.

I don't know whether future research will validate every part of Haidt's argument.

I'm certainly not qualified to settle that debate.

But I also don't need a research paper proving that every hour spent online causes a specific amount of harm before asking myself a simpler question:

What might that hour be replacing?

A conversation?

Being outside?

Boredom?

Solving a problem?

Reading?

Doing something uncomfortable?

Working through a disagreement?

Figuring out how to entertain yourself?

That's where The Anxious Generation had the biggest impact on me.

It made me stop thinking only about what technology was doing to kids and start thinking about what technology might be displacing from childhood.

That's a much more useful question for me as a parent.

But There's Another Question

Haidt is tackling this problem at a scale far beyond anything I can meaningfully influence.

Schools.

Technology companies.

Government policy.

Cultural expectations.

Parent coordination.

I think those conversations are important. In fact, one reason Haidt advocates shared norms is that it's incredibly difficult for one family to swim against the cultural current alone.

But I'm also realistic.

I'm a dad with two teenage boys.

I'm probably not going to personally redesign childhood in America.

So I started asking a much smaller question:

What can I change inside my own home?

And maybe that's where parents have more power than we realize.

Taking Something Away Isn't the Same as Putting Something Back

We can establish phone rules.

We can limit social media.

We can create screen-free dinners.

Those things may help.

But then what?

If we create space in our kids' lives, we have to give them opportunities to develop the things we're worried they're losing.

Conversation.

Curiosity.

Independence.

Reasoning.

Disagreement.

Reflection.

Real-world connection.

That's ultimately what led our family toward the conversations that became Food For Thought.

We started asking questions at dinner.

Our boys had to explain their opinions.

Start With Your Own House

One of the things I appreciate about The Anxious Generation is the scale of what Haidt is trying to accomplish.

He's asking parents, schools, governments, and communities to rethink some pretty fundamental assumptions about modern childhood.

I hope he's successful.

But I've come away with a slightly different mission.

I can't control what every school does.

I can't control how social media companies design their algorithms.

I can't control what every other parent allows.

And I'm definitely not holding my breath waiting for teenagers collectively to decide smartphones have gotten boring.

But I can influence what happens in my house.

I can put my phone down.

I can spend more time in the family room.

I can create opportunities for my kids to think.

I can ask questions.

I can listen when I don't agree.

I can encourage them to wrestle with ideas rather than simply react to them.

And I can make real conversation a normal part of our family life.

Maybe enough families doing those small things eventually creates some of the larger cultural change Haidt is asking for.

But even if it doesn't, it can still change what happens around one dinner table.

That's a pretty good place to start.

One Question to Ask Your Family Tonight

Tonight, ask everyone:

"What do you think kids your age are missing because so much of life happens online?"

Then resist the temptation to answer for them.

Ask why.

Ask what they think they've gained from being online, too.

And if they disagree with you?

Even better.

Keep talking.
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