Jonathan Haidt and President Berman Discuss Mental Well-being and Technology
The Heights Lounge was buzzing Wednesday Sep. 3 for the inaugural event in President Ari Berman’s new Great Conversations series, featuring renowned social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. President Berman welcomed Haidt as not only a brilliant academic and influential author, but as a chaver tov — a good friend.
Haidt, whose ties to New York stretch back to his childhood, began by expressing genuine pleasure at finally visiting YU — a first for him. “I grew up in New York, but had never been here,” he admitted, smiling. He noted two promising things he’d discovered about YU: first, “everyone who runs this place is either a rabbi or psychologist, which is good in this day and age,” and second, that “the men’s campus and the women’s campus are a hundred blocks apart, but you still find ways to get together, which is also really good in this day and age.”
The conversation quickly turned to Haidt’s influential new work, “The Anxious Generation” (2024). Summing up its thesis in one sentence, Haidt asserted: “We have overprotected our children in the real world and underprotected them online.” The result, he warned, is the widespread psychological dysregulation of Gen Z — children raised with less freedom to play and more dependency on social media for social experience and validation.
He described the digital revolution between 2010 and 2015 as a “turning point” that disrupted not only childhood but family life itself. Since 2010, studies have found a sharp decline in all manner of prosocial behavior from state-trait confidence to marital intimacy, with people finding fewer ways to be present with each other.
Throughout the evening, Haidt took multiple opportunities to interact with the audience, bringing them into the conversation with a warm charisma. In one such case, he asked how many students, by show of hands, had accessed social media by the time they were in middle school. A decent number, but not a majority raised their hands. When he asked if this was for religious reasons, the crowd’s affirmation prompted him to observe wryly, “Okay, so there we see the beginning of wisdom.” He contrasted this with secular campuses — including his own NYU classroom — where the overwhelming majority would have raised their hands.
Haidt underscored how most young people intuitively realize the damage that social media brings to their lives. The problem, he explained, is not with individual understanding but with collective action. His book outlines four practical pillars for change: no smartphones before high school, no social media before age 16, phone-free schools and normalization of unsupervised play and childhood independence. To uphold these pillars, Haidt advocates for legislation to bar children from accessing social media, and following the publication of his book, 39 states have gone phone-free in schools.
What seemed to have brought Haidt and President Berman together was the shared belief that when we lose our rootedness within our communities, we “shred any possibility of shared meaning” as Haidt soberly framed it. He added that since 2011, the percentage of young Americans who feel their lives are meaningless has doubled (from 9 percent to 18 percent), and he lauded the rootedness that faith-based communities like YU provide.
President Berman reflected how this sense of rootedness permits reverent disagreement rather than hostile division. If we see ourselves as a part of an intergenerational story, he said, we have the space to argue fiercely with those at our side without antagonizing them. Haidt received a tepid response when he asked the audience if their college experience has helped them better understand how they fit into the context of western civilization. But when President Berman stepped in and asked how many in the audience see themselves as a product of Sinai, as the children of the Avot and Imahot, nearly everyone in attendance raised their hands. This sense of rootedness and meaning is such a given for so many in the YU community that it didn’t need to be instilled during college.
Toward the end of the evening, Haidt answered a question about religious life and technology dependency by sharing that one of his “greatest regrets in life is not having honored Shabbat.” In his research — and in the lived experience of Jewish students — he has seen that even one unplugged day per week significantly improves mental health and fosters communal connection. He urged students to delete addictive “slot machine” apps and embrace collective efforts to reclaim the fullness and vibrance that an undistracted life can offer.
While the audience was engaged throughout the whole conversation, perhaps the most resounding of all the applause breaks came after President Berman quipped that Haidt should come teach a course at YU. The importance of this sort of event for the culture of YU’s campus was not lost on the room. Students were fortunate to share in a conversation with someone who has genuinely succeeded at making a positive impact on the world, with ideas.
Addressing the perennial eagerness of young people to “do big things,” Haidt advised patience and self-cultivation. “Your job is to discover your strengths … become excellent and effective,” he said, “so in the years to come, when the opportunity arises, you’ll be equipped to answer the call.”
Haidt closed with a simple message: adjusting one’s relationship with transportative media as an individual is a struggle, but it is worthwhile. More than this, he urged, “if you do it together it’s easy and fun, because you’re not alone.”
Speaking personally, two years ago I read some of Haidt’s work for a research seminar and it helped crystallize my own efforts to find greater balance and focus in life. Without getting lost in the desire to save the world from evil tech conglomerates, we at YU can seek to become the most effective and rooted versions of ourselves, and we are best off doing it together.
Photo Caption: President Berman and Jonathan Haidt
Photo Credit: Donni Honig
