'The Anxious Generation' And the First Amendment

True to his brilliant mind, Jon deftly weaves research in social psychology with history, religion, and sociology to produce a compelling and powerful read. It’s a compassionate, beautifully written, and deeply researched work that makes powerful arguments about the mental state of our youth today and how we can improve it by avoiding phone-based childhoods. ...

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However, as a free speech advocate and First Amendment lawyer, I believe some of Jon’s proposals that reach beyond norms and into government legislation go too far and would restrict free speech rights. 

While his proposals appear on the surface to be aimed only at minors, in reality, they would implicate the rights of adults, too. What’s more, minors do have free speech rights, even if the breadth of those rights aren’t exactly the same as those of adults. I also think broad government interventions often create more problems than they solve and have a tendency to start in a sphere that seems limited but then expands. Lastly, I believe a good rule of thumb is to try the options that pose the least potential for abuse first.

Ed Morrissey

Be sure to read all of this. If nothing else, it provides a model for respectful disagreement among thinking people. But the substantive disagreements here are important in and of themselves, and not just between the ideas of Haidt and Lukianoff but also the tension between social-media policies regarding minors and the free speech of Americans. I tend to lean more in Lukianoff's direction, but there's no doubt that Haidt is addressing real problems. 

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