{"id":160762,"date":"2023-01-17T17:46:02","date_gmt":"2023-01-17T17:46:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/?p=160762"},"modified":"2026-04-08T22:01:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T05:01:14","slug":"why-does-anyone-pay-attention-to-jonathan-haidt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/?p=160762","title":{"rendered":"Why does anyone pay attention to Jonathan Haidt?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why does anyone pay attention to Jonathan Haidt?<\/strong><\/h1>\n

By Mike Males | January 2023<\/p>\n

The tiresome trashing of younger generations has gone on at least since Greek poet Hesiod<\/a>
\nberated 700 BC\u2019s \u201creckless\u201d and \u201cfrivolous\u2026 youth of today\u201d for endangering \u201cthe future of our
\npeople.\u201d No one has said anything new in the 2,700 years since.
\nExample: Jonathan Haidt, who should be a national laughingstock. Instead, the New York
\nUniversity business professor is splashed across major media for quips trashing Generation-Z
\nyouth as social-media \u201cweakened\u201d employees, intolerant, shallow students, and an \u201centire
\ngeneration that\u2019s doing terribly\u201d that endangers the future of America\u2019s economy.
\nHaidt ushered in the New Year by charging Gen-Z students and workers with lacking creativity
\nand future orientation. Those criticisms better describe Haidt\u2019s The Coddling of the American
\nMind, a repackaging of philosopher Allan Bloom\u2019s The Closing of the American Mind<\/a> 30 years
\nago.<\/p>\n

Any young people who actually believe Haidt and his fellow youth-bashers should look back at
\nwhat their elders said about them. Inevitably, it is identical to what anti-youth demagogues say
\ntoday. Dime novels, jazz music, horror comics, TV, rock lyrics, video games, rap, social media,
\ncellphones\u2026 decades of hand-wringings<\/a> differ only in what superficial contemporality they
\nblame for destroying \u201ctoday\u2019s youth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elders of the 1930s<\/a> bitterly trashed their youth (which we now call \u201cthe Greatest Generation\u201d)
\nas mentally disturbed, aimless, and jeopardizing America\u2019s future. Then, 1930s youth, aged into
\n1980s elders, trashed Gen-X youth as mentally disturbed, pop-culture-warped, and jeopardizing<\/p>\n

America\u2019s future. Now, 1980s youth, aged into 2020s elders, berate Gen-Z youth as mentally
\ndisturbed, social-media-warped, and jeopardizing Americas future.
\nBy objective standards, today\u2019s Gen-Z youth are a vast improvement over Haidt\u2019s own
\nGeneration-X youth and young adults of the late 1970s and early 1980s, about whom youth-
\nbashers hurled exactly the same epithets Haidt now vents against Gen-Z.<\/p>\n

The Department of Education\u2019s alarm-clanging \u201cA Nation at Risk\u201d<\/a> report in 1983 denounced
\nGen-X\u2019s \u201cmediocre educational performance\u201d a dire threat to America\u2019s global survival akin to
\n\u201can act of war.\u201d Bloom famously condemned Haidt\u2019s 1980s college generation as lazy,
\nintolerant, unemployable, and suffering \u201cimpoverished souls.\u201d Psychological reports<\/a> brimmed
\nwith panics over the \u201c305% increase \u2026 in teen suicide\u201d Haidt\u2019s generation brought. Senate
\nwives led by Tipper Gore blamed rock music and cultural depravities for driving young-age
\nmental health crises and violence. Haidt\u2019s Gen-X youth had criminal arrest rates a shocking
\n350% higher, including vastly more violent and property crimes, than today\u2019s Gen-Z.
\nHaidt\u2019s generation got even worse with aging. Today, Haidt\u2019s fifty-agers suffer far higher levels
\nof drug abuse, binge drinking, suicide, and self-destructive deaths<\/a> than Gen-Z teens and young
\nadults. In California, harbinger of national trends, criminal arrests<\/a> of adults ages 50-59 now
\ngreatly exceed those of teenagers \u2013 a stunning reversal of past patterns.
\nYounger Millennials and Gen-Z youth (no thanks to their elders) have spent decades bringing
\ndown high rates of dropout, crime, violence, homicide, early pregnancy, and related anti-social
\nbehaviors that Haidt\u2019s generation inflicted then and is still inflicting now.<\/p>\n

Yet, the youth-bashings<\/a> continue.<\/p>\n

Why are Haidt and his media adorers taken seriously? Are the same-old ego-driven shallowness
\nand slanderings of the young really seen as profound insights by the likes of Atlantic Magazine,
\nThe New Yorker, TED-talk recruiters, and scores of media hosts?
\nPutting aside the baseless quips, anecdotes, and mass stereotypes Haidt and other youth-
\nbashers deploy, the main indictment of Gen-Z centers on surveys<\/a> showing more depression and\u00a0anxiety among teenagers. However, wise observers would consider serious contexts before
\nrushing to declare Gen-Z in \u201cmental health crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s teens are being raised by the most troubled grownup generation \u2013 as measured by
\ncriminal arrests,<\/a> suicide, drug and alcohol overdose, gun killings,<\/a> depression,<\/a> and political<\/a>
\ncraziness \u2013 in documentable history. Sharply increased numbers of youth reported on the same
\nsurvey<\/a> experiencing psychological and physical abuses by parents, including being sworn at,
\nkicked, hit, and physically hurt. Yet, commentaries ignored whether teens\u2019 depression and
\nanxiety are natural, normal responses to skyrocketing abuses and harsher conditions inflicted
\nby grownups.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the misuse of surveys enables Haidt and other youth-bashers to dodge serious
\nissues and to manufacture images that teen problems are caused merely by gadgets, social
\nmedia, and their own weaknesses. It\u2019s time \u2013 about 3,000 years past time \u2013 to stop lionizing
\nself-stroking by quip-happy youth-bashers. At least, until one says something that\u2019s actually
\nnew and true.<\/p>\n

For a longer version of this column with more players, see, Mike Males, \u201cEnough Youth
\nBashing,\u201d LA Progressive, https:\/\/www.laprogressive.com\/law-and-the-justice-system\/enough-youth-bashing<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why does anyone pay attention to Jonathan Haidt? By Mike Males | January 2023 The tiresome trashing of younger generations has gone on at least since Greek poet Hesiod berated 700 BC\u2019s \u201creckless\u201d and \u201cfrivolous\u2026 youth of today\u201d for endangering \u201cthe future of our people.\u201d No one has said anything new in the 2,700 years […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[27,25],"class_list":["post-160762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-jonathan-haidt","tag-media-lies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=160762"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":160763,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160762\/revisions\/160763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=160762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=160762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=160762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}