Jonathan HaidtAcademic

Biography

Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist and the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University's Stern School of Business, where he joined in 2011. He received his PhD in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992 and previously taught for sixteen years at the University of Virginia. Since 2018 he has focused on how smartphones and social media are affecting the mental health of young people, research that led to his 2024 book The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, which reached number one on the Sunday Times bestseller list and was reviewed in the British Journal of General Practice. He argues that the replacement of play-based childhood by phone-based childhood is a primary driver of rising rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide among adolescents in the UK and other countries, and has appeared at Intelligence Squared events in London in conversation with BBC presenters to make this case. He has written more than 100 academic articles, cited over 100,000 times, and in 2019 was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

References

1. 1.Jonathan Haidt – NYU Stern faculty biography — Confirms current role as Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership, joined NYU Stern 2011, 100+ academic articles cited 100,000+ times, inducted American Academy of Arts and Sciences 2019, TIME100 Health leader, links to Twitter/X
2. 2.Biography – JonathanHaidt.com — Confirms role at NYU Stern, PhD from University of Pennsylvania, focus since 2018 on social media and teen mental health, The Anxious Generation as #1 NYT bestseller (2024)
3. 3.Book review: The Anxious Generation – British Journal of General Practice, June 2024 — Confirms the book was reviewed in a UK clinical journal (BJGP), establishing UK health-press presence
4. 4.The Anxious Generation: Jonathan Haidt on How Smartphones Rewired Childhood – Intelligence Squared — Confirms Haidt appeared at Intelligence Squared London in April 2024 in conversation with BBC presenter Sarah Montague, and that the book reached number one on the Sunday Times bestsellers
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Expertise

Cited on

• Mental health

Stated areas of expertise

• Youth mental health
• Smartphones and adolescent wellbeing
• Social media regulation
• Childhood development
• Moral and social psychology

Notable achievements

• The Anxious Generation (2024) reached number one on the Sunday Times bestseller list and was reviewed in the British Journal of General Practice Source ↗
• Inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019 Source ↗
• Named one of the world's Top 50 Thinkers by Prospect magazine Source ↗
• Named a TIME100 Health leader Source ↗

What they’ve said

• “his recent book The Anxious Generation sounded the alarm on social media”

  NYU colleague · Mental health · 27 Aug 2026 · Scott Galloway on the masculinity crisis: ‘I worry we are evolving a new breed of asexual, asocial males’ ↗

• “Online child safety campaigners including Jonathan Haidt, the bestselling writer on the mental health impacts of social media, have called on the Trump administration to investigate Roblox”

  bestselling writer on the mental health impacts of social media · Mental health · 27 Aug 2026 · Online child safety campaigners call for US inquiry into Roblox ↗

• “the phone has been damned as an "experience blocker" by Jonathan Haidt, a co-founder at my childhood-independence initiative, Let Grow”

  co-founder of Let Grow childhood-independence initiative · Mental health · 27 Aug 2026 · If you want your kids to thrive this summer, don’t just turn off their phones – open your front door, too | Lenore Skenazy ↗

• “You'd be crazy to let your daughter engage in something that doubles or triples her risk for depression.”

  Social psychologist and bestselling author · Mental health · 27 Aug 2026 · The social media ban sceptic: are we getting it wrong on kids, tech and mental health? ↗

Source references

1. Scott Galloway on the masculinity crisis: ‘I worry we are evolving a new breed of asexual, asocial males’theguardian.com · 27 Aug 2026
2. Online child safety campaigners call for US inquiry into Robloxtheguardian.com · 27 Aug 2026
3. If you want your kids to thrive this summer, don’t just turn off their phones – open your front door, too | Lenore Skenazytheguardian.com · 27 Aug 2026
4. The social media ban sceptic: are we getting it wrong on kids, tech and mental health?theguardian.com · 27 Aug 2026

Contact & links

• Websitehttps://www.jonathanhaidt.compublished here ↗
• Staff pagehttps://www.stern.nyu.edu/faculty/bio/jonathan-haidt
• Xhttps://x.com/JonHaidtpublished here ↗

Organisational contact points only, each taken from a page the organisation publishes itself. No personal or direct contact details are held or shown.