Jonathan Haidt Insights

Let Grow wouldn’t exist without Jonathan Haidt (pronounced “height”). He and Greg Lukianoff wrote The Coddling of the American Mind, the bestseller that castigates our culture’s current practice of teaching young people the three great untruths:

*Always trust your feelings

*The world is divided into good and bad people

*And what doesn’t kill you makes you…weaker

It is that last idea — that kids are being protected from all the risk and discomfort that engender bravery and resilience — that he and Let Grow co-founder Lenore Skenazy unpack in their Reason Magazine article, The Fragile Generation.

Jonathan is concerned about “safetyism.” That’s the practice of treating everything kids do/see/try on their own as physically, emotionally, or educationally dangerous. (They could get hurt! They could fall behind!). But instead of helping kids, the increase in overprotection and intervention is making kids anxious and depressed. His antidote is to give kids more unstructured, unsupervised free time and free play — and no social media till the teen years.

Jonathan’s body of work seems to grow exponentially, even as he testifies to Congress, appears on TV, lectures around the world, and sits down at his computer to write two books simultaneously. (Who does that? While being a full time NYU professor — and dad of two?)

For more of his work outside Let Grow, visit his Substack, his website, and/or his Twitter feed, which has about 350,000 followers. But don’t spend too much time there! It’s social media!