"As I’ve argued before, I think Haidt’s book has done exactly what Gray was afraid it might do – namely, it has played into and exacerbated a moral panic over smartphones and social media and their alleged impact on the emotional and psychological wellbeing of teenagers. The architect of the Australian social-media age-gating law, South Australian premier Peter Malinouskas, described in an interview how his wife had recommended Haidt’s Anxious Generation to him, and how after reading it he had resolved to take action. His wife “put the book down on her lap and turned to me and said you’ve really got to do something about this,” he said. “And then I stopped and thought about it and thought maybe we actually can.” So he introduced state-level legislation hoping it could win federal support. It did, and since then the UK has passed a new law it says was modeled on the Australian one (modeled so closely that it too offered virtually no evidence that such a law was necessary), and Canada is also considering one. As a journalist who once worked for the Columbia Journalism Review, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that one of the biggest proponents of Jonathan Haidt’s views about cellphones and social media and their impact on the wellbeing of teenagers has been the media." https://mathewingram.com/work/2026/07/16/kids-need-to-explore-the-world-and-that-includes-social-media/ #SocialMedia #PlayTime #MentalHealth #MoralPanic #Censorship #Fascism