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The Smartphone
The phrase “The Great Rewiring of Childhood” functions as both a metaphor and a warning, framing the rise of smartphones and social media as a large-scale neurological and social experiment. The word “rewiring” evokes the process of altering electrical circuits, suggesting that childhood itself has been fundamentally reprogrammed. Just as rewiring a system changes its functionality, the shift from a play-based to a phone-based upbringing has reshaped how children develop, replacing real-world experiences with algorithm-driven digital engagement. Haidt warns that this rewiring is not just metaphorical but literal—adolescents’ brains, highly plastic during puberty, have been sculpted by social media, reinforcing patterns of anxiety, dependence, and social comparison. The phrase also carries a sense of artificiality, implying that this transformation was not a natural evolution but an imposed, external modification. Undoing this rewiring, Haidt suggests, requires more than minor adjustments; it demands a deliberate effort to restore childhood’s original circuitry.
The Great Rewiring of Childhood Quotes in The Anxious Generation
The The Anxious Generation quotes below all refer to the symbol of The Great Rewiring of Childhood. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Introduction Quotes
The members of Gen Z are, therefore, the test subjects for a radical new way of growing up, far from the real-world interactions of small communities in which humans evolved. Call it the Great Rewiring of Childhood. It’s as if they became the first generation to grow up on Mars.
The Great Rewiring is not just about changes in the technologies that shape children’s days and minds. There’s a second plotline here: the well-intentioned and disastrous shift toward overprotecting children and restricting their autonomy in the real world.
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The Great Rewiring of Childhood Symbol Timeline in The Anxious Generation
The timeline below shows where the symbol The Great Rewiring of Childhood appears in The Anxious Generation. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1
Haidt describes the early 2010s as the period of “ The Great Rewiring of Childhood .” The shift from a play-based to a phone-based childhood fundamentally altered social development. The...
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Chapter 7
Ultimately, Haidt says, the Great Rewiring has stripped boys of real-world community ties and stable social norms, replacing them with fragmented...
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Conclusion
...health crisis was a larger, more pressing issue. His research led him to conclude that the Great Rewiring of Childhood between 2010 and 2015, driven by smartphones and social media, was the leading cause of...
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