After Babel | Jon Haidt | Substack

How Tech Companies Rig Parental Guilt

Platforms profit from children’s attention while parents absorb the blame

READ THE LATEST

Most Popular

Why the Mental Health of Liberal Girls Sank First and Fastest

Mar 9, 2023 • Jon Haidt

The Mass Trauma of Porn

Jun 4 • Freya India

Social Media is a Major Cause of the Mental Illness Epidemic in Teen Girls. Here’s the Evidence.

Feb 22, 2023 • Jon Haidt

A Time We Never Knew

Apr 22, 2024 • Freya India

Recent posts

The Amazing Generation is the Book Parents Have Been Asking For

Our new guide for kids ages 9–12 comes out December 30th.

17 hrs ago • Jon Haidt and Catherine Price

1:04:13

Live with Katie Couric

A recording from Jon Haidt and Katie Couric's live video

Dec 19 • Jon Haidt and Katie Couric

Strong Public Support To Restrict Social Media for Children in Germany

A huge majority of adults favors a minimum age for social media – and even adolescents themselves see harm from social media.

Dec 16 • Ludger Woessmann, Katharina Wedel, Franziska Pfaehler, and Vera Freundl

Australia’s New Social Media Regulations Put Childhood First

Why raising the minimum age to 16 is a breakthrough for families and child safety

Dec 10 • Jon Haidt

Meta’s Child Sex-Trafficking Problem

A newly unsealed court filing shows the tech giant connected children to predators on a scale much larger than previously understood.

Dec 3 • Nathan Witkin

The Devil’s Plan to Ruin the Next Generation

I asked ChatGPT how it would destroy America’s youth. Its answers were unsettling — and all too familiar.

Dec 1 • Jon Haidt

The latest from

Jon Haidt

The Amazing Generation is the Book Parents Have Been Asking For

Zach Rausch

Don’t Give Your Child Any AI Companions

Alec McClean

Does Social Media Use at One Time Predict Teen Depression at a Later Time?

Freya India

TIME TO REFUSE

Ravi Iyer

Australia’s Social Media Age Limit Policy Delays Account Creation, Not Access to Content

Lenore Skenazy

What Kids Told Us About How to Get Them Off Their Phones

After Babel

After Babel

A free weekly newsletter where Jon Haidt and his team make sense of how technology is reshaping society — and offer practical guidance on how we can respond.

The Case Against The Phone-Based Childhood

How Tech Companies Rig Parental Guilt

Platforms profit from children’s attention while parents absorb the blame

Dec 18 • Daniel Frost, Sarah Coyne, and Jane Shawcroft

Meta’s Child Sex-Trafficking Problem

A newly unsealed court filing shows the tech giant connected children to predators on a scale much larger than previously understood.

Dec 3 • Nathan Witkin

The Devil’s Plan to Ruin the Next Generation

I asked ChatGPT how it would destroy America’s youth. Its answers were unsettling — and all too familiar.

Dec 1 • Jon Haidt

Don’t Give Your Child Any AI Companions

Some dangers are already clear; others won’t be known for many years

Nov 24 • Jon Haidt and Zach Rausch

Does Social Media Use at One Time Predict Teen Depression at a Later Time?

Reviewing longitudinal evidence

Oct 6 • Alec McClean and Jakey Lebwohl

The Case for Independence, Free Play, and Responsibility in the Real World

Free Play and Mental Health: What We Know, What We Don’t

Introducing the Play Collaborative Review Doc

Sep 22 • YeJin Park Roberts and Jon Haidt

What Kids Told Us About How to Get Them Off Their Phones

Children who were raised on screens need more freedom out in the real world.

Aug 11 • Lenore Skenazy, Zach Rausch, and Jon Haidt

Let Kids Be Loud

In Defense of Outdoor Play

Jul 9 • Katherine Martinko

If I Let My Kid Play Outside, They’ll Be Bullied!

What to say to other parents (or yourself!) to put bullying fears in perspective

Jun 10 • Lenore Skenazy

A Norwegian Approach to Supporting Children’s Risky Play

Ellen Sandseter on the value of bumps, bruises, and building real-world confidence

May 16 • Ellen Beate Hansen Sandseter

The Case for Community in the Real World

The Algorithm Next Door

How local digital platforms like Nextdoor and Facebook are fraying the fabric of neighborhood trust — and what we can build instead.

Jul 31 • Deepti Doshi

A New American Awakening

How the chaos of the phone-based life is giving rise to a quiet revolution in civic life—and what it will take to make it last.

May 1 • Sam Pressler and Pete Davis

The Real User Interface: Recovering Our Neighborhoods

Although the technological forces driving us apart are powerful, the forces needed to hold us together are right in front of us.

Jan 14 • Seth Kaplan

The Joy of Missing Out: Lessons from a Church-Wide Digital Detox

How Churches can help roll back the phone-based life

Oct 23, 2024 • Darren Whitehead

Four Lessons for Raising Resilient Children in the Digital Age

What secular families can learn from faith-based communities

Oct 14, 2024 • Seth Kaplan and Caroline Bryk

The International Mental Health Crisis

How Psychological Distress Globally Accelerated Among Youth During the COVID-19 Pandemic

A Three-Decade Perspective on Escalating International Psychological Distress in Adolescence

Feb 19 • Karen Schrijvers and Thomas Potrebny

The Global Loss of the U-Shaped Curve of Happiness

Happiness used to be U-shaped by age, with middle age the least happy. Not anymore. Young people are now the least happy.

May 27, 2024 • David Blanchflower and Alex Bryson

The Girls Are Not Alright: Responses to Three Claims that the Youth Mental Health Crisis Is Exaggerated

Why changes in stigma and self-reporting procedures cannot explain the international decline of adolescent girls’ mental health.

Apr 11, 2024 • Zach Rausch

The Youth Mental Health Crisis is International Part 4: Europe

Why girls from wealthy, secular, and individualistic nations were hit hardest.

Jan 30, 2024 • Zach Rausch, Thomas Potrebny, and Jon Haidt

Voices of Gen Z

Growing up Online Nearly Killed Me

A dual narrative of mother and daughter about a new school, new phone, and online grooming

Nov 20 • Roxy Longworth and Gay Longworth

NYC, Join the Mass Deletion: October 10, 2025

Oct 5 • Freya India

We Are The Slop

Your life is my background noise

Sep 29 • Freya India

It Was the Damn Phones

A Gen Z poet conveys the effects of the phone-based childhood

Jun 12 • Korijanes

What Parents Can Do Now

The Amazing Generation is the Book Parents Have Been Asking For

Our new guide for kids ages 9–12 comes out December 30th.

17 hrs ago • Jon Haidt and Catherine Price

How Tech Companies Rig Parental Guilt

Platforms profit from children’s attention while parents absorb the blame

Dec 18 • Daniel Frost, Sarah Coyne, and Jane Shawcroft

Don’t Give Your Child Any AI Companions

Some dangers are already clear; others won’t be known for many years

Nov 24 • Jon Haidt and Zach Rausch

Basic Phones: A Guide for Parents

An excerpt from Jean Twenge’s new book: 10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World

Sep 2 • Jean M. Twenge

What Schools and Educators Can Do Now

How Is Your New School Phone Policy Working?

Introducing the TAPS: Toolkit for Assessing Phones in Schools

Aug 12 • Jason Lu, Sarah Wu, Sunny Xun Liu, and Zach Rausch

The All-New Big Tech American School

A mother and former teacher sums up in 3 minutes what happened when schools became "Silicon Valley profit centers”

Jun 25 • Emily Brownlee, M. Ed.

My School Banned Phones for the Year. Here's What Happened

I didn't have to say, "get off your phone," once...

May 30 • Fit To Teach

Schools Don’t Know How Well Cell Phone Policies Are Working. You Can Help.

Angela Duckworth, Matthew Gentzkow, and Hunt Allcott are leading the first nationwide survey on school phone policies.

Apr 18 • Angela Duckworth

What Governments and Tech Companies Can Do

Strong Public Support To Restrict Social Media for Children in Germany

A huge majority of adults favors a minimum age for social media – and even adolescents themselves see harm from social media.

Dec 16 • Ludger Woessmann, Katharina Wedel, Franziska Pfaehler, and Vera Freundl

Australia’s New Social Media Regulations Put Childhood First

Why raising the minimum age to 16 is a breakthrough for families and child safety

Dec 10 • Jon Haidt

Sweden Went All in on Screens in Childhood. Now It’s Pulling the Plug.

How Sweden is rolling back the phone-based childhood

Nov 10 • Linda Åkeson McGurk

The UK Is Doing the Hard Work of Protecting Children Online

Commentary and advice from Beeban Kidron, who helped start it all

Oct 28 • Baroness Beeban Kidron

Responses to Skeptics

Does Social Media Use at One Time Predict Teen Depression at a Later Time?

Reviewing longitudinal evidence

Oct 6 • Alec McClean and Jakey Lebwohl

A Flawed Absolution for Smartphones

No, the Life in Media survey did not really show that 8-year-olds benefit from owning smartphones

Apr 11 • David Stein

Flaws in a Recent Lancet Study on Phone Use in Schools

Five problems that call into question the authors’ conclusion that phone free schools don’t improve mental health or academic performance

Feb 13 • Jon Haidt, Zach Rausch, and Alec McClean

The Fundamental Flaws of The Only Meta-Analysis of Social Media Reduction Experiments (And Why It Matters), Part 3

The recent meta-analysis of social media experiments achieved a statistically insignificant result only due to a string of errors.

Oct 4, 2024 • David Stein

#nojs-banner { position: fixed; bottom: 0; left: 0; padding: 16px 16px 16px 32px; width: 100%; box-sizing: border-box; background: red; color: white; font-family: -apple-system, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 13px; line-height: 13px; } #nojs-banner a { color: inherit; text-decoration: underline; } This site requires JavaScript to run correctly. Please turn on JavaScript or unblock scripts