Upcoming Events

Why is Gen Z So Different? How The Great Rewiring of Childhood (2010-2015) Will Impact Everything

Wednesday, March 12
Room 1920 Sangren Hall

4:15 p.m.
Gen Z leads the warmup
Free Jet's Pizza!
Resource tables

5 p.m.
Virtual presentation begins
Open Q & A follows

Has the use of smart phones and especially social media "rewired" global youth development? Should smart phone use by youths be limited in schools and at home? Social psychologist and bestselling author Jonathan Haidt believes it should. His most recent work, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, examines what he's coined as the “great rewiring of childhood,” in which play-based childhood has been replaced by a phone-based childhood. Haidt will talk about his research, the current mental health situation, and provide some collective action ideas to better prepare Gen Z and beyond to wisely navigate the virtual world. Open to campus and the community! Please register via the links below.  Haidt's books will be available for sale before and after the presentation by This is a Bookstore, a We Talk sponsor.

Campus member registration

Community member registration

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist at New York University’s Stern School of Business. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992, and taught for 16 years in the department of psychology at the University of Virginia.

Overall, Haidt’s research uncovers the intuitive foundations of morality, and how morality varies across cultures––including the cultures of progressive, conservatives, and libertarians. His mission is to help people understand each other, live and work near each other, and even learn from each other despite their moral differences. Haidt has co-founded a variety of organizations and collaborations that apply moral and social psychology toward that end, including HeterodoxAcademy.org, The Constructive Dialogue Institute, and EthicalSystems.org.

Haidt is also the author of The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom, and of The New York Times bestsellers The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, and The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting Up a Generation for Failure (co-authored with Greg Lukianoff). He has written more than 100 academic articles, which have been cited nearly 100,000 times. In 2019 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was chosen by Prospect magazine as one of the world’s “Top 50 Thinkers.”  He has given four TED talks and strives to shine a light into what makes morality with his continued work.