On what we learn from Noreena Hertz and Jonathan Haidt.
Noreena Hertz and Jonathan Haidt.
In a time of unprecedented digital connectivity, a paradox has emerged: we are more networked than ever, yet increasingly alone and emotionally unwell. This paradox lies at the heart of two deeply resonant works—Noreena Hertz’s The Lonely Century and Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation. Though writing from different perspectives—Hertz as an economist and Haidt as a social psychologist—both diagnose a profound crisis of connection in contemporary society. Their work converges on a central truth: the digital and economic architecture of modern life is undermining our basic human need for community, stability, and meaning.
The Human Cost of Disconnection
Noreena Hertz argues that loneliness is not simply a personal feeling but a widespread social phenomenon, driven by systemic forces: neoliberal economics, technological isolation, urban design, and political alienation. In The Lonely Century, she shows how atomized labor markets, precarious work, and digital communication have eroded the public square. Even before the pandemic, rising numbers of people reported feeling isolated. Hertz documents the impact of loneliness on mental and physical health, linking it to increased rates of anxiety, depression, and even early death.
Jonathan Haidt echoes these concerns in The Anxious Generation, but zooms in on a specific demographic catastrophe: the mental health collapse among Generation Z, particularly teenage girls. He identifies the years between 2010 and 2015 as a critical turning point, when smartphones and social media became deeply embedded in adolescent life. The data is clear: since that time, rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide among youth have sharply increased. Haidt sees this as a result not only of screen time, but of the replacement of real-world interaction with virtual engagement, and the loss of free play, risk-taking, and physical autonomy.
Technology: From Tool to Cage
Both thinkers point to digital technology as a powerful agent of social transformation—one that has reshaped not only our habits but our psyches. Hertz focuses on how social media and algorithmic content foster comparison, polarization, and superficial connection. In online spaces, people are “seen” constantly but rarely known. The result is a type of simulated intimacy, which cannot substitute for face-to-face human contact.
Haidt takes this further, arguing that adolescence—a time of immense neurological sensitivity—has been colonized by smartphones. Girls, in particular, suffer from curated comparison and relational aggression online, while boys retreat into virtual worlds of video games and porn. He shows how these platforms are designed to hijack attention, reduce resilience, and fragment identity. Technology, once a tool for empowerment, has become a disruptive presence, rewiring childhood and adolescence in ways that society has barely begun to comprehend.
The Loss of the Commons: From Playgrounds to Platforms
Another key insight that unites Hertz and Haidt is the disappearance of shared physical and social spaces. Hertz laments the decline of community hubs—local shops, libraries, churches, and unions—that once grounded people in a collective life. In their place, individualized consumption and digital engagement have taken hold, weakening social bonds.
Haidt similarly emphasizes the loss of outdoor, unsupervised play, which has been replaced by screen-based entertainment and increased parental control. Without the ability to test boundaries, resolve conflict, or build self-efficacy through real-world interaction, children grow up underdeveloped in social and emotional capacities. This shift from the commons to the screen, from the real to the virtual, has left a generation adrift.
Responsibility, Resistance, and Renewal
Despite the gravity of their diagnoses, neither Hertz nor Haidt is fatalistic. Both offer concrete paths forward—and both recognize the need for collective, not just individual, solutions.
Hertz calls for a Compassionate Revolution: policies that rehumanize the workplace, urban design that encourages interaction, education that fosters empathy, and regulation of tech platforms. She emphasizes the importance of civic renewal and economic justice, arguing that loneliness flourishes in societies marked by inequality, alienation, and commodification.
Haidt, meanwhile, focuses on cultural norms and education policy. He advocates for phone-free schools, delayed social media use, and the revival of free play and risk-taking. Most powerfully, he calls for a collective action response to what he sees as a “tragedy in two acts”—the overprotection of children in the real world and their underprotection online. Young people themselves, Haidt notes, often resent the role of smartphones in their lives but feel powerless to opt out without support.
What We Learn: A New Ethics of Connection
Together, Hertz and Haidt help us see the current crisis not as a series of isolated issues—mental health, loneliness, digital harm—but as symptoms of a deeper breakdown in how we structure human life. Their work urges us to reconsider what it means to be human in a time of distraction, commodification, and social fragmentation. They remind us that connection is not optional—it is a core human need, as vital as food or shelter.
If their diagnoses differ in emphasis—Hertz’s more macroeconomic, Haidt’s more developmental—they arrive at a shared imperative: we must reclaim our social environments. This means building policies, technologies, and cultures that honor attention, presence, trust, and belonging.
Conclusion
In an anxious and lonely century, the work of Noreena Hertz and Jonathan Haidt serves as a warning and a guide. They expose the cost of ignoring human needs in the name of efficiency, innovation, or freedom. But they also light a path toward renewal—one grounded not in nostalgia, but in the enduring truth that we thrive when we are connected, seen, and needed. Whether we follow that path will determine not only the mental health of our youth, but the very future of our societies.