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After Babel

afterbabel.com

A free weekly newsletter where Jon Haidt and his team make sense of how technology is reshaping society — and offer practical guidance on how we can respond. Click to read After Babel, a Substack publication with hundreds of thousands of subscribers.

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199 from 1 Feb 2023 to 13 Oct 2026
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weekly (42 in the last year)
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2026 31

  1. Ancient Wisdom Is Needed Today More Than Ever. Here Is My Book About It.
  2. Thank You, Frances Haugen
  3. Introducing the Tech & Society Lab at NYU Stern
  4. The Many Lines of Evidence That Social Media is Not Safe For Teens
  5. Are Phone-Free Schools Working?
  6. Does Early Access to Social Media Harm Later Learning? New Evidence From Italy
  7. Australia’s Social Media Policy Is Succeeding
  8. Why Did We Let Big Tech Take Over Education?
  9. What Does a 13-Year-Old See on Snapchat in a Normal Week?
  10. Teen Girls’ Suicide Rates Are Rising in Many Countries Around the World
  11. Limbic Capitalism Has Been Driving Addiction for Hundreds of Years
  12. Why You Should Be a Techno-Skeptic
  13. Treasure Your Attention
  14. The State of Childhood in the U.S.
  15. We Took Away the Phones — Now What?
  16. Don’t Let Big Tech Hide Behind a Rainbow Flag
  17. The Case Against Social Media: Seven Lines of Evidence
  18. How Indonesia is Protecting 80 Million Children from Online Harm
  19. Phones at School: Less Learning, More Loneliness
  20. A Note on a Correction from Jon and Zach
  21. Your Marriage Has a Third
  22. AI Can't Fix Student Engagement
  23. EdTech is Borrowing Zuckerberg's Playbook
  24. The Parenting Trap
  25. Why the World Is Drawing a Line on Social Media for Kids
  26. How to Evaluate Phone Policies in Schools
  27. You Have To Be Human
  28. Scrolling Alone
  29. Meta's Legal Team Abandoned Its Ethical Duties
  30. Mountains of Evidence
  31. Why Every Country Should Set 16 (or Higher) as the Minimum Age for Social Media Accounts

2025 68

  1. A Year of Real Progress for Kids
  2. The Amazing Generation is the Book Parents Have Been Asking For
  3. Live with Katie Couric
  4. How Tech Companies Rig Parental Guilt
  5. Strong Public Support To Restrict Social Media for Children in Germany
  6. Australia’s New Social Media Regulations Put Childhood First
  7. Meta’s Child Sex-Trafficking Problem
  8. The Devil’s Plan to Ruin the Next Generation
  9. Don’t Give Your Child Any AI Companions
  10. Growing up Online Nearly Killed Me
  11. Sweden Went All in on Screens in Childhood. Now It’s Pulling the Plug.
  12. The UK Is Doing the Hard Work of Protecting Children Online
  13. Does Social Media Use at One Time Predict Teen Depression at a Later Time?
  14. TIME TO REFUSE
  15. We Are The Slop
  16. Free Play and Mental Health: What We Know, What We Don’t
  17. Australia’s Social Media Age Limit Policy Delays Account Creation, Not Access to Content
  18. Basic Phones: A Guide for Parents
  19. Reclaiming Conversation in the Age of AI
  20. Meta’s AI Companion Policy Is Outrageous
  21. We Are Rushing Into the Same Mistakes We Made With Social Media
  22. Artificial Intimacy: The Next Giant Social Experiment on Young Minds
  23. How Is Your New School Phone Policy Working?
  24. What Kids Told Us About How to Get Them Off Their Phones
  25. First We Gave AI Our Tasks. Now We’re Giving It Our Hearts.
  26. The Algorithm Next Door
  27. The Achievement Gap We're Not Talking About
  28. Smartphone Gambling is a Disaster
  29. It’s Not Just a Game Anymore
  30. How to Protect Kids from Porn
  31. Let Kids Be Loud
  32. It's Never Too Late to Turn Things Around
  33. The All-New Big Tech American School
  34. How to Legislate in a Half-Known World
  35. It Was the Damn Phones
  36. If I Let My Kid Play Outside, They’ll Be Bullied!
  37. The Mass Trauma of Porn
  38. This Summer, Take a Family Digital Detox
  39. My School Banned Phones for the Year. Here's What Happened
  40. Eight Policy Principles to Guide our Relationship with Digital Technology
  41. New Study Finds Most Experts Share Concerns About the Effects of Smartphones and Social Media on Adolescent Mental Health
  42. A Norwegian Approach to Supporting Children’s Risky Play
  43. A Not-So-Smartphone
  44. On The Death of Daydreaming
  45. A New American Awakening
  46. All the Conversations That Kids Are Missing
  47. Schools Don’t Know How Well Cell Phone Policies Are Working. You Can Help.
  48. Snapchat Is Harming Children at an Industrial Scale
  49. A Flawed Absolution for Smartphones
  50. What Careless People Teaches Us About the Tech Lobby’s Playbook
  51. Taking Back Childhood From Phones—Finally
  52. An EdTech Tragedy
  53. How Social Media Pushes Vulnerable Teens Toward Eating Disorders
  54. Raising Screen-Free Boys
  55. When a Smartwatch Disrupts Second Grade
  56. The Most Compelling Argument Against Tech in Schools
  57. The Price of Mass Amusement
  58. How Psychological Distress Globally Accelerated Among Youth During the COVID-19 Pandemic
  59. Flaws in a Recent Lancet Study on Phone Use in Schools
  60. Behind the Screens: How Mental Health Professionals Can Help Teens Struggling with Social Media Use
  61. From Anxiety to Animosity: How Social Media Damages Relationships
  62. How to (and How NOT to) Mandate Phone-Free Schools
  63. Are You Struggling With Your Own Screen Time?
  64. Gen Z, Social Media is Optional
  65. The Real User Interface: Recovering Our Neighborhoods
  66. TikTok is Harming Children at an Industrial Scale
  67. Parents, It’s OK To Do Less
  68. Where the Magic Doesn’t Happen

2024 68

  1. The Year The Phone-Based Childhood Began To Reverse
  2. Smash The Technopoly!
  3. Applying the Bradford Hill Criteria to Social Media Use and Adolescent Mental Health
  4. Congress Must Pass KOSA By Christmas. The Only Obstacle Seems to be Meta’s Influence
  5. The Tech Industry’s Playbook To Prevent Regulation
  6. Social Media is Disproportionately Hurting Girls
  7. Scott Galloway Explains Why Age Gating Social Media Is Both Necessary and Doable
  8. Why Australia is Setting a Minimum Age of 16 for Creating a Social Media Account
  9. How Parents Can Fight Back Against the Digital Deluge of Life
  10. 67 Screen-Free Activities for Kids
  11. The EdTech Revolution Has Failed
  12. A Mission for Businesses and Entrepreneurs: Help Bring Back Childhood
  13. The Joy of Missing Out: Lessons from a Church-Wide Digital Detox
  14. We Live In Imaginary Worlds
  15. The False Promise of Device-Based Education
  16. Do You Want To Help Us With Research?
  17. Four Lessons for Raising Resilient Children in the Digital Age
  18. The Fundamental Flaws of The Only Meta-Analysis of Social Media Reduction Experiments (And Why It Matters), Part 3
  19. Research-Backed Advice on Screen Policies for Young Kids
  20. No, I’m Not Always Available
  21. Big News: KOSA is Being Marked Up Today While Meta Tries to Show (Too Late) That It Can Self-Regulate
  22. The Worst Argument That Social-Media Companies Use to Defend Themselves
  23. The Fundamental Flaws of The Only Meta-Analysis of Social Media Reduction Experiments (And Why It Matters), Part 2
  24. The Fundamental Flaws of The Only Meta-Analysis of Social Media Reduction Experiments (And Why It Matters), Part 1
  25. A Cure for Child Anxiety Hiding (and Seeking) in Plain Sight
  26. Should Schools Ban Phones?
  27. Transform Your School: The Complete Guide to Going Phone-Free
  28. The Surgeon General Has New Social Media Guidelines. Minnesota Already Made Some of Them Into Law.
  29. Journalist Sends Kids off on a Smartphone-Free Camping Trip – Unsupervised. Adults Quake. Kids Flourish.
  30. What Happened to FOMO?
  31. One of the Best Documentaries on the Loss and Recovery Of Childhood Independence
  32. The Upstream Cause of the Youth Mental Health Crisis is the Loss of Community
  33. How Phones Are Making Parents the Anxious Generation
  34. Modern Luddites: On Being a Digital Minimalist Family in a Tech-Saturated World
  35. Treating Childhood Anxiety with a Mega-Dose of Independence
  36. Aren’t You Lonely?
  37. A Debate on the Strengths, Limitations, Uses and Misuses of the Gallup World Poll
  38. A Gen Z Perspective on Why We Must Pass the Kids Online Safety Act
  39. How Schools Can Help End The Phone-Based Childhood
  40. How has mental health changed across demographic groups since 2010?
  41. Big News: The Surgeon General Calls for a Warning Label on Social Media
  42. Is The Gallup World Poll Reliable?
  43. Neighborhoods that Nurture: Why The Play-Based Childhood Requires More Than Just Putting Down the Phone
  44. The Great Deterioration of Local Community Was A Major Driver of The Loss of The Play-Based Childhood
  45. CALLING ALL GEN Z: Phone Free Friday Summer Challenge!
  46. A Parents Guide to Understanding the Harms of the Phone-Based Childhood, Along With Ten Tips for Rolling It Back
  47. Your Boyfriend Isn't Your Camera Man
  48. The Global Loss of the U-Shaped Curve of Happiness
  49. How Apple, Google, and Microsoft Can Help Parents Protect Children
  50. The Youth Rebellion Is Growing
  51. On The Degrading Effects of Life Online
  52. ​​​​​Keeping Our Kids Safe Online​​
  53. How To Reduce the Sexual Solicitation of Teens on Instagram
  54. Changes in Parents’ Mental Health Did Not Drive the Adolescent Mental Health Crisis
  55. The Revolution Has Begun in the UK
  56. Suicide Rates Are Now Higher Among Young Adults Than the Middle-Aged
  57. A Time We Never Knew
  58. The Girls Are Not Alright: Responses to Three Claims that the Youth Mental Health Crisis Is Exaggerated
  59. Yes, Social Media Really Is a Cause of the Epidemic of Teenage Mental Illness
  60. How to Delay the Age at Which Kids Get Smartphones
  61. Is Economic Deprivation the Real Cause of The Adolescent Mental Health Crisis?
  62. It’s Time To Free The Anxious Generation
  63. Why Kids Need Summer Camp
  64. Why Children Need Risk, Fear, and Excitement in Play
  65. Marshall McLuhan on Why Content Moderation is a Red Herring
  66. The Youth Mental Health Crisis is International Part 4: Europe
  67. A Video Preview of The Anxious Generation for Educators and Legislators
  68. The Youth Mental Health Crisis is International, Unless You Rely on a Flawed International Dataset (The GBD)

2023 32

  1. What We Learned in 2023 About Gen Z’s Mental Health Crisis
  2. What is the oppressor/victim mindset and how did it conquer the academy?
  3. Why Antisemitism Sprouted So Quickly on Campus
  4. The Anxious Generation is Almost Here
  5. Why I'm Increasingly Worried About Boys, Too
  6. Harry Potter and the Magical Phone
  7. Solving the Social Dilemma: Many Paths to Social Media Reform
  8. Algorithms Hijacked My Generation. I Fear For Gen Alpha.
  9. Do you know where your kids go every day?
  10. Good News For Anxious Kids (And Parents)
  11. Suicide Rates Are up for Gen Z Across the Anglosphere, Especially for Girls
  12. Here are 13 Other Explanations for the Adolescent Mental Health Crisis. None of Them Work.
  13. The Canceling of the American Mind Explains the Silence of University Leaders Last Week
  14. The Insidious Lie That We Can’t Understand Each Other
  15. Play Deprivation Is a Major Cause of the Teen Mental Health Crisis
  16. Why Haidt and Schmidt’s Proposed Social Media Reforms Are Insufficient
  17. Yes, We Do Know Social Media Isn’t Safe for Kids
  18. The Case for Phone-Free Schools
  19. Kids Who Get Smartphones Earlier Become Adults With Worse Mental Health
  20. AI Will Soon Make Social Media Much More Harmful to Liberal Democracy, and to Children
  21. The Mental Health Crisis Has Hit Millennials
  22. The Teen Mental Illness Epidemic is International, Part 2: The Nordic Nations
  23. Why Some Researchers Think I’m Wrong About Social Media and Mental Illness
  24. Do the Kids Think They’re Alright?
  25. The Teen Mental Health Crisis is International, Part 1: The Anglosphere
  26. Responses to comments on: Social Media is a Major Cause of the Mental Illness Crisis
  27. Academic Pressure Cannot Explain the Mental Illness Epidemic
  28. Why the Mental Health of Liberal Girls Sank First and Fastest
  29. Social Media is a Major Cause of the Mental Illness Epidemic in Teen Girls. Here’s the Evidence.
  30. The new CDC report shows that Covid added little to teen mental health trends
  31. The Teen Mental Illness Epidemic Began Around 2012
  32. Welcome to the After Babel Substack