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Jonathan Haidt spent the first part of his career studying why people on opposite sides of a moral argument can look at the same facts and reach completely different conclusions — research that became moral foundations theory and, eventually, The Righteous Mind, the book that made him a go-to voice for understanding political polarization. He’s spent the years since applying that same close attention to a newer question: what happened to a generation of teenagers who grew up with a smartphone in their pocket instead of a childhood spent playing outside. The Coddling of the American Mind and The Anxious Generation both grew out of that shift in focus, and both have become genuinely influential, and genuinely argued-over, in equal measure. He taught for sixteen years at the University of Virginia before joining NYU Stern in 2011. He received the Templeton Prize in Positive Psychology in 2001 for his early research on moral elevation, and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019.
By Lisanne Swart · 5 books · Psychology & Social Science · Psychology · Mental Health · Philosophy · Self-Improvement · Updated October 2026
Quick answer
Jonathan Haidt has written five books. Start with The Righteous Mind, the framework under everything else. For the smartphone debate, read The Anxious Generation; for children aged 9 to 12, The Amazing Generation.
Psychology & Philosophy
The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom
Haidt’s first book for a general audience examines ten pieces of ancient wisdom — from Buddha, the Stoics, and the Bible, among others — and tests each against modern psychological research, asking what actually holds up and what science has revealed underneath it.
A useful entry point if you want Haidt at his most personally reflective, before his later books turned toward political polarization and youth mental health specifically. The metaphor of the “rider and the elephant” — conscious reason atop unconscious intuition — introduced here recurs throughout his later work.
Moral PsychologyCore book
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion
Haidt argues that moral judgments arise from fast, intuitive gut reactions rather than careful reasoning, with reasoning mostly serving afterward to justify conclusions people have already reached. He extends this into moral foundations theory, proposing that liberals, conservatives, and libertarians genuinely prioritize different underlying values, which is why the same facts can lead each group to opposite moral conclusions.
His most influential and most cited book, and the one that established him as a major voice on political psychology beyond academia. The framework here underlies nearly everything he’s written since, including his later work on campus culture and social media.
Education & Culture
The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure
Expanding on a 2015 Atlantic essay, Haidt and free-speech advocate Greg Lukianoff argue that well-intentioned shifts in parenting and campus culture — overprotection, the decline of unsupervised play, and a growing intolerance for uncomfortable ideas — have contributed to rising anxiety and fragility among young people, rather than preparing them for a difficult world.
Read this as the bridge between The Righteous Mind’s focus on adult political division and The Anxious Generation’s focus on childhood and adolescence specifically — it’s where Haidt’s attention first turns toward how young people are actually being raised.
Mental Health & TechnologyCore book
The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness
Haidt argues that the shift from a “play-based childhood” to a “phone-based childhood” in the early 2010s, driven by smartphones and social media, is a primary cause of the sharp rise in anxiety, depression, and self-harm among teenagers, particularly girls, and calls for later smartphone ownership, no social media before high school, and more unsupervised outdoor play.
His most talked-about and most contested recent book — genuinely influential in shaping school phone-ban policy debates, while also drawing pushback from researchers who question how strong the causal evidence actually is. Worth reading alongside the criticism, not instead of it.
For Kids · Ages 9–12
The Amazing Generation: Your Guide to Fun and Freedom in a Screen-Filled World
The Anxious Generation rewritten for the children it is about. Co-written with Catherine Price, author of How to Break Up with Your Phone, it is a guide for 9-to-12-year-olds that mixes the research with a graphic novel and hands-on challenges for building a life away from the screen.
The practical follow-through of The Anxious Generation, aimed at the readers themselves rather than their parents. If you read the adult book as a parent, this is the one to hand to your child.
Where to start with Jonathan Haidt
If you have never read him
→ Start with The Righteous Mind. It’s his most influential and most cited book, and the framework underneath nearly everything else he’s written.
If you want his most current, most talked-about book
→ The Anxious Generation. Read it alongside the academic debate around its evidence, not as a settled final word. My recommendation explains why it is on my shelf.
If you want the bridge between his political and youth-focused work
→ The Coddling of the American Mind shows the shift in his attention from adult polarization to childhood specifically.
If you want his most personally reflective book
→ The Happiness Hypothesis, written before his more political turn.
If you are the parent of a 9-to-12-year-old
→ The Amazing Generation, written with Catherine Price for children themselves.
If you want other writers who think the way he does
→ My authors like Jonathan Haidt page has ten of them, with what each one shares with him.
If moral psychology and human flourishing are what interest you generally
→ My best psychology books list and my best philosophy books list both have more in this register.
If youth mental health specifically is what brought you here
→ My books about mental health list has more on that subject.
Looking for what else I recommend
→ Every book I’ve personally reviewed lives on my bookshelf.
The years · 1963–2024
Quick facts about Jonathan Haidt
- Known for
- Explaining why decent people split so bitterly over politics and religion in The Righteous Mind, and later arguing in The Anxious Generation that the smartphone rewired childhood
- 1963
- Born in New York City
- 1992
- PhD, University of Pennsylvania
- Teaches
- NYU Stern since 2011, after sixteen years at the University of Virginia
- Big idea
- Moral foundations theory: the rider (reason) on the elephant (intuition)
- Honours
- Templeton Prize in Positive Psychology (2001); American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2019)
- Pronounced
- “Hyte”, rhyming with “height”
The red mark is 2012: The Righteous Mind, the framework under nearly everything he has written since.
Watch
Jonathan Haidt on The Anxious Generation
A CBS News interview on the rise in teen anxiety and depression, and the case for delaying smartphones and social media.
Frequently asked questions about Jonathan Haidt’s books
Who is Jonathan Haidt?
Jonathan Haidt is an American social psychologist, born in 1963, best known for his research on moral psychology and for books including The Righteous Mind, The Coddling of the American Mind, and The Anxious Generation. He is the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business.
What is The Anxious Generation about?
The Anxious Generation (Penguin Press, 2024) argues that the shift from a play-based childhood to a phone-based childhood in the early 2010s is a major cause of the sharp rise in anxiety, depression and self-harm among adolescents, especially girls. Haidt proposes four norms to reverse it: no smartphones before high school, no social media before 16, phone-free schools, and far more independence and free play in the real world.
Who wrote The Anxious Generation?
Jonathan Haidt, the social psychologist at NYU Stern, wrote it on his own; Penguin Press published it on March 26, 2024. In December 2025 he followed it with The Amazing Generation, a version for 9-to-12-year-olds written with Catherine Price.
Is The Anxious Generation about millennials?
No. It is about Gen Z, the generation born after about 1995, who went through puberty with smartphones and social media from the early 2010s on. Most millennials got their first smartphone as adults, and that difference is at the heart of Haidt's argument.
How do you pronounce Jonathan Haidt’s name?
Jonathan Haidt’s surname is pronounced “HYTE,” rhyming with the word “height,” which is why it is often searched for as Heit.
How old is Jonathan Haidt?
Jonathan Haidt was born on October 19, 1963, in New York City.
Is Jonathan Haidt married?
Yes. Jonathan Haidt is married to Jayne Riew.
Is Jonathan Haidt Jewish?
Yes, by birth and culture. Haidt was born in New York City into a Jewish family and grew up in Scarsdale, New York. He describes himself as an atheist, but has said he was raised Reform Jewish and still belongs to a synagogue in New York City.
Is Jonathan Haidt a Christian?
No. He was born into a Jewish family in New York City and describes himself as an atheist, though one with, in his own words, "a very positive view of religion." Much of his work examines what religious practice does for people psychologically and socially.
Is Jonathan Haidt religious or an atheist?
He describes himself as an atheist, and has since his teens, but not a hostile one. In a 2024 interview with the think tank Theos he called himself “an atheist, who actually has a very positive view of religion.” His books, especially The Righteous Mind and The Anxious Generation, argue that ritual, awe and shared sacred practice do real psychological and social work, whether or not the beliefs behind them are true.
Is Jonathan Haidt conservative or liberal?
Haidt has described himself as a longtime liberal who has grown more centrist and critical of both the political left and right over his career, and has referred to himself as “politically homeless.” His research on moral foundations theory is often cited by commentators across the political spectrum, and he has explicitly aimed to make his work legible to conservatives, liberals, and libertarians alike.
Is Jonathan Haidt credible?
Jonathan Haidt is a widely cited academic social psychologist with a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, more than 100 published academic articles, and a faculty position at NYU Stern; he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019. His claims, particularly in The Anxious Generation about smartphones and teen mental health, have also drawn academic critique and debate over causal evidence, which is normal for an actively contested area of social science research.
Is Jonathan Haidt right about smartphones and teen mental health?
Haidt’s claim in The Anxious Generation, that the shift to smartphone-based childhood in the early 2010s substantially caused a rise in teen anxiety and depression, is influential but also actively debated among researchers. Some psychologists and statisticians have questioned whether the correlational data he cites supports as strong a causal claim as the book makes, while others find his broader argument compelling; it remains an open empirical question rather than a settled consensus.
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