(PresidentialHill.com)- A famous professor says Generation Z’s physical and mental fragility threatens America’s future.
According to a report, Jonathan Haidt, a Stern School of Business social psychologist, calls the uselessness of teens and young adults a national crisis. Haidt wrote several books, including “The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure. Haidt believes we have a whole generation that is doing terribly.
American teens and 20-somethings born between 1997 and 2012 are called Gen Z. The first generation to grow up with the internet and social media. Some surveys show they struggle with mental health more than other generations, even the notoriously anxious millennials.
According to Haidt, never has a generation been this depressed, anxious, and fragile. Americans born after 1995 have extraordinarily high rates of anxiety, depression, self-harm, suicide, and fragility.
He explained that the youth hadn’t practiced the skills of adulthood in a low-stakes environment with other kids because they spend so much time online. They drive and socialize less.
Girls are especially vulnerable to activities like posting and scrolling on Instagram, while boys prefer group activities like playing video games.
Haidt found that Gen Z teen girls’ depression rates increased in 2012 when Instagram became popular among younger users. Another survey found that 42% of Gen Z have a mental health condition.
Haidt says Gen Z’s mental fragility puts them in defense mode on college campuses.
According to the Pentagon, Gen Z may be physically weaker than their elders.
Pentagon and Army Major Jon-Marc Thibodeau, chief of the medical readiness service line at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri, reports that the ‘Nintendo Generation’ soldier skeleton is not toughened by activity before arrival, so some of them break more easily.
Haidt says social media hurts Gen Z the most. The damage so vastly exceeds even the damage from a severe illness.
We’ve gone from the cream of the crop to cream puffs. That’s just sad.
