Gallup recently reported that, “The percentage of U.S. adults who report having been diagnosed with depression at some point in their lifetime has reached 29.0%, nearly 10 percentage points higher than in 2015. The percentage of Americans who currently have or are being treated for depression has also increased, to 17.8%, up about seven points over the same period. Both rates are the highest recorded by Gallup since it began measuring depression using the current form of data collection in 2015.”[i]
What can we attribute the decline in mental health to? In Haidt’s The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt argues that plummeting mental health is the cause of the rise of the smart phone. And no one is being hurt more than teenage girls. Haidt’s thesis is probably not surprising or new to anyone who has been listening to cultural critics raise the alarm.
Over the past year or so I’ve read several of the works of Neil Postman (including his prescient Amusing Ourselves to Death) as well as Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism. Postman (going back over forty years) and Newport (contemporarily) both sound the alarm of how dangerous screens are to our thinking and our souls. I appreciated both of these authors, although their prophetically Luddite leanings made their radical solutions hard for me to figure out how to reasonably incorporate into my life.
Haidt’s warnings are every bit as serious and thoroughly researched, but more realistic. It is startling how quickly we have given ourselves into the hands of the creators of the digital slot machines we call smart phones.
Haidt writes as an atheist social psychologist. How much more should those of us who believe that our souls are purposed to be formed into the likeness of Jesus Christ pause at the influence of these devices on our spiritual, emotional, and mental health?
This encouragement is amplified for any parent. Parents, I urge you to read Haidt’s The Anxious Generation and consider how you can choose to not be a passive recipient of what Apple, Samsung, Google, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok think is best for your child.
If, Paul’s words are true that we are transformed into what we behold, may we not be taken captive by these devices that demand our beholding and instead consider how we can spend more of our time beholding our Savior. As Paul says, “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18).
[i] Dan Witters, “US Depression Rates Reach New Highs,” May 17, 2023, https://news.gallup.com/poll/505745/depression-rates-reach-new-highs.aspx.
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