BrainCandy No. 106 How we are losing our children to the virtual world and jeopardising their mental health

Forget horror movies, Jonathan Haidt's new book 'The Anxious Generation' is one of the scariest books I've ever read. We all know that our smartphones aren't really good for us, but Jonathan Haidt lays out the real damage in such detail that it makes you want to look away and scroll through Instagram instead.   He argues that smartphones are addictive, disrupt sleep, fragment attention and deprive people of interaction with the real world. As if that wasn't bad enough, he scares us by analyzing that the brains of teenagers who use smartphones with social media apps during the sensitive developmental phase of puberty are being altered as a result, and that this is leading to an epidemic of mental illness in young people. Who hasn't heard of recent studies reporting a significant increase in mental illness among young people? Haidt points out the real causes of these changes. There are solutions to the problem, but it won't be easy. More in this short BrainCandy Podcast. Shownotes with links: https://en.ka-brandresearch.com/braincandies/