iGen

And Norman, you mentioned Jonathan Haidt.

We haven't had Jonathan on the programme, but we have had Jean Twenge, who was a close colleague of Jonathan's, who wrote the book iGen and talked there about the role of social media and particularly its effect in the US after 2011.

So a lot of horrible challenges and pressures, and we're not even talking about schools and the pressures they're under to achieve academic results.

Because Norman, you said that these are problems of advanced industrial societies that we're not alone in.

In a lot of ways.

It first came on my radar screen many years ago when I read Jean Twenge's book, iGen.

And we've referenced that a couple of times.

I'm not sure how old that book is, at least five years probably, right? Probably longer, time goes by so fast.

But she, in that study of the, we call them, I don't know if it's Gen Z anymore or what, but I mean, the really young kids.

She said there's a tight correlation between screen time and depression.

And especially for young people.

If that's the world you've grown up with, that's the world you primarily live in, and you're flooded with negativity.

My guest today is Dr. Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University and one of the country's leading researchers on generational differences and the impact of technology on our kids.

She has published more than 200 scientific articles and several best-selling books, including Generation Me, iGen, and Generations.

Her 2017 Atlanta cover story, Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation, helped ignite the national conversation about smartphones and teen mental health.

And her new book, 10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World, is out now.

Teen loneliness and depression turned sharply just to smartphone ownership across 50%.

And that became this 2017 Atlanta cover story I mentioned before.

And then your book, iGen.

Walk me through the sort of the spotting that break and deciding to kind of go public with it.

I think that is...

And Jean Twenge, who also had been on the Hidden Force podcast, wrote a book about this called iGen, where she described some of these dynamics in these younger cohort.

So I'm sure there are probably some interesting surveys that are being done here to ask people, and I actually think I've read about them, to ask younger generations how they feel about the world where they are, how alone they are, how on their own they are, how vulnerable they are relative to previous ones.

But I think that's a huge structural driver here.

I think there's truth in both.

My eyes were opened after reading Peter Gray's new book.

He was my guest on the Monday program, and he was extraordinary.

He's a psychologist from Boston College, and he says...

Scheduled sports.

Everything just very regimented and a total lack of free play.

Which is, of course, a different explanation than Dr. Jean Twenge in her book, iGen, which I found so persuasive.

And I'm looking forward to getting the two of them together for an upcoming episode of Can We Agree? That will be a great, great conversation.

And they're all laid out in book club podcasts, if you go to my book club podcast.

Dr. Twenge is the one who wrote iGen.

Dr. Twenge is the one who said, hey, I study generations.

I saw something in the data.