In Nicholas Carr's 2010 book The Shallows, he includes a section devoted to "Further Reading" (pp. 253-256). In his subsection on "The History of the book" (p. 254), he lists works by, among others, David Diringer, Elizabeth Eisenstein, and Paul Saenger. In Carr's subsection on "The Mind of the Reader" (pp. 254-255) he lists books by, among others, Sven Birkerts, Stanislas Dehaene, Jack Goody, Eric Havelock, Ann Moss, David Olson, and Walter J. Ong. In Carr's subsection "Technology in Intellectual History" (pp. 255-256), he lists books by, among others, Harold Innis, Marshall McLuhan (two books), and Neil Postman. I suspect that Haidt has not read many of these books that Carr has listed.
In Haidt's new 2024 book The Anxious Generation, he concludes his text with "Conclusion: Bring Children Back to Earth" - from Mars (pp. 289-295).
In Haidt's "Acknowledgments" in his new 2024 book The Anxious Generation (pp. 297-300), he says, "I sent the manuscript out to dozens of friends and colleagues in the summer of 2023 with a request to find errors and rough spots" (p. 298). He then thanks a long list of people who helped him (in alphabetical order) (pp. 298-299). In addition, he says, "A few people on that long list rose to the level of super-editor, with detailed comments on every page" (he then lists them alphabetically) (p. 299).
Haidt's new 2024 book also features "Notes" (pp. 301-338), "References" (pp. 339-367), and an "Index" with many entries as well as sub-entries (pp. 369-385).
In the "Index," we learn that Haidt discusses Richard Reeves' 2022 book Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It (Brookings Institution Press) (Haidt, 2024, pp. 177-178). (Jonathan Haidt is the co-editor with Richard Reeves and Dave Cicirelli of the 2018 book All Minus One: John Stuart Mill's Ideas on Free Speech Illustrated [Heterodox Academy]. In Haidt's "References" in his new 2024 book, he lists five further publications by Reeves or by Reeves and co-author[s] [p. 360].)
I reviewed Richard Reeves' 2022 book Of Boys and Men in my OEN article "Richard Reeves on Boys and Men Today" (dated March 11, 2023):
In the "Index" in Haidt's new 2024 book The Anxious Generation, we also learn that he discusses Arnold van Gennep and rites of passage - puberty rites (pp. 99-103, 106, and 108).
Ong also discusses Arnold van Gennep and puberty rites in his essay "Latin Language Study as a Renaissance Puberty Rite" in Studies in Philology, volume 56, number 2 (April 1959): pp. 103-124. Ong reprinted it in his 1971 book Rhetoric, Romance, and Technology: Studies in the Interaction of Expression and Culture (Cornell University Press, pp. 113-141).
Now, the major contrast that Haidt works with throughout his new 2024 book The Anxious Generation is the contrast that he refers to as play-based childhood versus phone-based childhood.
Ong celebrates the spirit of play in his "Preface" in the 1967 book Man at Play by the German Jesuit Hugo Rahner, translated by Brian Battershaw and Edward Quinn (Herder and Herder, pp. 9-14). Ong's 1967 "Preface" is reprinted as "Preface to Man at Play" in An Ong Reader: Challenges for Further Inquiry, edited by Thomas J. Farrell and Paul A. Soukup (Hampton Press, 2002, pp. 345-348).
In my estimate, the spirit of intellectual play pervades much of Ong's work. In effect, Thomas D. Zlatic describes what I am here referring to as the spirit of play in Ong's work in his essay "The Articulate Self in a Particulate World: The Ins and Outs of Ong" in the 2011 anthology Language, Culture, and Identity: The Legacy of Walter J. Ong, S.J., edited by Sara van den Berg and Thomas M. Walsh (pp. 7-29), mentioned above.
Now, the contrast that Haidt works with of play-based childhood versus phone-based childhood is part of the larger detrimental pattern that he refers to as the Great Rewiring of Childhood (for specific pages references, see the entry Great Rewiring of Childhood in the "Index" [p. 375]).
In conclusion, Haidt's new 2024 book The Anxious Generation is alarming, but not alarmist. Rather, it is designed to alert us to the harms of smartphones and social media - and to exhort us to take action collectively to check those harms.
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