Yes, the smartphones and social media that Haidt writes about in his new 2024 book The Anxious Generation are byproducts of our still evolving secondary oral culture. Yes, Haidt tends to emphasize the visual dimension of smartphones and social media. His emphasis on the visual dimension should remind us that Ong first explored the aural-to-visual shift in cognitive processing in our Western cultural history in his massively researched 1958 book Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason (for specific page references to the aural-to-visual shift, see the "Index" [p. 396]), mentioned above.
However, even though Ong adverted to visualist tendencies in numerous books and articles that he published from the early 1950s onward, he does not discuss the kinds of specific harms that Haidt discusses in connection with smartphones and social media in his new 2024 book The Anxious Generation.
Even so, in Ong's seminal 1967 book The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History (Yale University Press), the expanded version of his 1964 Terry Lectures at Yale University, Ong does write of "a lack of systemized fancy or delusions acting as ego defenses" (p. 133). Yes, ego-consciousness needs defenses. Without adequate defenses of ego-consciousness, ego-consciousness can be overthrown in a psychotic break. Then Ong says, "A great variety of studies shows that illiterates seldom if ever indulge in the schizophrenic delusional systemization which is a regular syndrome of individual under great stress in literate cultures. That is to say, under psychological pressure, illiterates do not commonly withdraw into themselves to create a little dream-world where everything can be ideally ordered" (pp. 133-134). "The individual is psychologically faced outward" (p. 134).
Let me be clear here. Haidt in his new 2024 book The Anxious Generation is not writing about illiterate people (illiterate = primary oral people). He is writing about people who are fundamentally literate. Even so, the people he is writing about grew up in our contemporary secondary oral culture. But Haidt presents a very complicated picture of Gen Z, to say the least.
So let me use Ong's characterization of the illiterate person (from a primary oral culture) as "psychologically faced outward" as a point of departure for discussing how complicated Haidt's account of Gen Z is.
Regarding boys in Gen Z, Haidt discusses externalizing disorders in them (pp. 25, 181, 182, and 184) as well as internalizing disorders in them (pp. 181, 182, 184) and the hikkomori lifestyle in them (179-180 and 189).
Regarding girls in Gen Z, Haidt discusses externalizing disorders in them (pp. 181 and 182) as well as internalizing disorders in them (pp. 25, 174, 181, 182, and 184).
In light of the main title of Haidt's new 2024 book, it is not surprising that he also writes about anxiety in boys in Gen Z (pp. 174, 178, and 186) and anxiety in girls in Gen Z (pp. 27, 38, 145, 148, 152, 162, 167, 174, 175, 181, 190, and 306n.48).
In addition, Haidt devotes Chapter 6: "Why Social Media Harms Girls More Than Boys" (pp. 143-172) and Chapter 7: "What Is Happening to Boys" (pp. 173-197) to discussing girls in Gen Z and boys in Gen Z, respectively.
Now, the New York Times' business reporter Emma Goldberg previewed Haidt's new 2024 book in her article "First He Came for Cancel Culture. Now He Wants to Cancel Smartphones: The N.Y.U. professor Jonathan Haidt became a favorite in Silicon Valley for his work on what he called the 'coddling' of young people. Now, he has an idea for fixing Gen Z" (dated March 23, 2024):
Now, since I retired from teaching at the University of Minnesota Duluth at the end of May 2009, I have published more than 600 articles online at www.opednews.com - including my OEN article "His Majesty, Baby Donald" (dated October 1, 2018):
It is a streamlined review of the American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Justin A. Frank's 2018 book Trump on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President (Avery/ Penguin Random House).
In any event, Haidt's disturbing and cogently argued but remarkably accessible new 2024 book The Anxious Generation comes with advance praise by Susan Cain, Adam grant, Johann Hari, Russell Moore, and Emily Oster quoted on the back of the book's dust jacket. Perhaps the most extraordinary advance praise comes from Russell Moore, the editor of Christianity Today: "'This book poses a challenge that will determine the shape of the rest of the century. Jonathan Haidt shows us how we've arrived at this point of crisis with technology and the next generation. This book does not merely stand athwart the iPhone yelling "Stop!" Haidt provides research-tested yet practice counsel for parents, communities, houses of worship, and governments about how things could be different. I plan to give this book to as many people as I can, while praying that we all have the wisdom to ponder and then act.'"
In Haidt's "Introduction: Growing Up on Mars" is his disturbing and cogently argued but remarkably accessible new 2024 book The Anxious Generation (pp. 1-17), he carefully operationally defines and explains the key terms in his book. For example, he operationally defines Gen Z as "the generation born after 1995" (p. 5). In addition, he says, "I am a social psychologist, not a clinical psychologist or a media studies scholar" (p. 12). Fair enough. He does at least acknowledge that "media studies scholar[s]" exist and that they discuss the communications technologies that he discusses. In addition, Haidt does discuss the American journalist Nicholas Carr's well-informed 2010 book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Bains (W. W. Norton) (Haidt, 2024, p. 127).
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