Jonathan Haidt on How to Free the Anxious Generation (Part Two)

Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Leila Ishmael. Our guest on the podcast today is renowned social psychologist and best-selling author Jonathan Haidt. He joined us live on stage at the Emanuel Centre in London on April 24, 2025, to discuss his book, The Anxious Generation, How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness. In conversation with broadcaster and journalist Johnny Diamond, Haidt explored how smartphones, social media and overprotection have transformed childhood and what we can do to reverse the damage.

Now let's join our host, Johnny Diamond, live on stage with Jonathan Haidt. You write. We need to take back control of our lives. Take back control is a phrase that many people in Britain will remember as the slogan of the leave campaign and the Brexit referendum. I think you mean it slightly differently from that.

Yeah, it's that leave smartphones, leave a phone-based childhood, let's have a vote on it. Can I just pick you up on a couple of points? One is that That presumes that people have agency, and a fair number of people would challenge that on various different grounds, whether it's capitalism or free will or whatever. And the second one is is how you reconcile that with what you also talk about as the God-shaped hole in people's lives, because again, God and taking back control or religion and taking back control sit somewhat unhappily with each other in some people's eyes.

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