Addiction, anxiety, and the attention economy

Conversations about youth mental health and addiction are often treated as separate issues—different experts, different headlines, different policy conversations. But for today’s young people, these challenges are deeply intertwined. The same forces driving rising levels of anxiety, stress, and social comparison are also shaping their risk for substance use.  In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt argues that the rapid shift to phone-based childhood fundamentally c...