Yascha Mounk and Jonathan Haidt at Persuasion:
Yascha Mounk: It’s always a pleasure to have you on the podcast and particularly when you have an important new book which you have just published called The Anxious Generation, which really speaks to so many core concerns of what is happening in the United States, in Britain and around the world today.
Why should we take this trend seriously? Why should we think that there really is something unusual about the rise of mental illness and other ills among teenagers and particularly young girls? And why should we think that this really is down to the rise of the internet and of social media in particular? And now I’m asking this because of course there have been many moral panics over the course of decades, right? Why is this not a moral panic, but a real trend that’s going on?
Jonathan Haidt: There certainly is a moral panic going on and it looks similar to previous ones. You know, the press gets involved, you get scare stories. But the question is, is it a justified panic or not?
More here.