The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt review: The awful power of smartphones on children

Forget horror; this is one of the most terrifying books I have read. We all know our phones aren’t great for us, but Jonathan Haidt sets out their true cost in such excruciating detail you will want to look away instead of a mind-numbing scroll through Instagram.

Smartphones, he argues, are addictive, disrupt sleep, fragment attention and deprive people of real-world interaction.

But their effect on is so much worse, he says, arguing that the brains of youngsters who use them during the vulnerable developmental stage of puberty are changed as a result, and it.