The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt

The Anxious Generation is an important read for parents. Smartphones are damaging society, and we’re seeing the data play out for Gen Z. Haidt makes a strong case to limit smart phones until kids reach high school, and he also advocates for parents letting young children experience more independence and real world activity. 

Young kids need to experience danger as children to help inform better decision making as they grow. Haidt references the culture of “safetyism” that eliminates any type of risk for kids. I feel like the pendulum is swinging back for kids getting out in the world with measured independence. 

I know I want my 6 year old boys to feel confident navigating the world, and after reading this–I’m feeling even more compelled to loosen the reins. I’m taking them to bike parks with features that make me nervous. We’ve also encouraged them to go to the park near our house (a couple blocks away) by themselves with a walkie talkie. Haidt recommends a laddered approach to independence starting around age 6, and I found this section to be thoughtful and reasonable. 

Quotes

“Overprotection in the real world and underprotection in the virtual world—are the major reasons why children born after 1995 became the anxious generation.”

“Experience, not information, is the key to emotional development. It is in unsupervised, child-led play where children best learn to tolerate bruises, handle their emotions, read other children’s emotions, take turns, resolve conflicts, and play fair.”

“No social media before 16. Let kids get through the most vulnerable period of brain development before connecting them to a firehose of social comparison and algorithmically chosen influencers.”

“Kids must have a great deal of free play to develop, and they benefit from risky physical play, which has anti-phobic effects. Kids seek out the level of risk and thrill that they are ready for, in order to master their fears and develop competencies. Risk-taking online may not have comparable anti-phobic effects.”

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe

Empire of Pain shows how the opioid epidemic got started and the ways the immense wealth can keep bad actors profiting. The Sackler family started its empire by creating the pharmaceutical ad industry. With capital from their marketing companies, they directly invested in a fiber cookie (a stale and shitty–yet profitable business). They wanted to move into sexier and more profitable pharmaceuticals–a pill form of morphine. 

The Sackler family built the playbook for marketing directly to doctors and built a cottage industry of sham medical publications and company-funded “research studies.” I was sickened by the family’s ability to pay large fines while continuing to pump out opioids across America.

The trail of destruction outlined in this book is awful, and the insight into the legal system of the United States is alarming (money talks..especially at the highest levels). I also enjoyed the intersection between the family’s philanthropy and their company reputation. The use of philanthropy to white wash their reputation and buy a place in high society was fascinating. The family drama and multiple (obviously younger) wives was also spicy. 

“According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in the quarter century following the introduction of OxyContin, some 450,000 Americans had died of opioid-related overdoses. Such overdoses were now the leading cause of accidental death in America, accounting for more deaths than car accidents—more deaths, even, than that most quintessentially American of metrics, gunshot wounds. In fact, more Americans had lost their lives from opioid overdoses than had died in all of the wars the country had fought since World War II.”

“The Sackler empire is a completely integrated operation,” Blair wrote. They could develop a drug, have it clinically tested, secure favorable reports from the doctors and hospitals with which they had connections, devise an advertising campaign in their agency, publish the clinical articles and the advertisements in their own medical journals, and use their public relations muscle to place articles in newspapers and magazines.”

“For Arthur, however, there was a paradox. In polishing his own public image, he relied heavily on an appearance of propriety and the idea that he was a righteous and judicious man of medicine. Yet his fortune could be traced directly to the rampant sales of two highly addictive tranquilizers. To be sure, Arthur had many business interests: he started companies left and right and invested widely in a range of industries. But the original House of Sackler was built on Valium, and it seems significant, and revealing, that for the rest of his life Arthur would downplay his association with the drug, emphasizing his achievements in other areas and deliberately obscuring (or leaving out altogether) the fact that his first fortune was made in medical advertising.”

“In June 2010, Purdue presented the Sacklers with a ten-year plan that was projected to generate $ 700 million each year for the family, for the next ten years. One downside of this strategy was that it didn’t leave much of a war chest for Purdue to reinvest in the business. In a publicly traded company, this might have been identified as a potentially existential risk. But the Sacklers owned Purdue and could do what they wanted with it.”

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

Lonesome Dove is likely my one fiction novel for the year, and it lives up to the hype (originally published in 1985–tv series followed). It is hilarious, sad, infuriating, and exciting. The themes are timeless and it portrays the West as it was–rough edges and people, awful conditions, and lots of death. It has consumed the last six weeks of my reading (858 pages) and kept me up late when I can’t put it down. Great summer read.  

Quotes:

“They were people of the horse, not of the town; in that they were more like the Comanches that Call would have ever admitted.”

“I was never drawn to fat women, and yet I married two of them. People do odd things, all except you. I don’t think you ever wanted to be happy anyway. It don’t suit you, so you managed to avoid it.”

“Most of the patrons of the Dry Bean were so lacking in fastidiousness that they wouldn’t have noticed a dead skunk on the tables, much less a few crumbs and spilled drinks.”