Tag Archives: book-review

Society

The Anxious Generation

Jonathan Haidt, one of the foremost public intellectuals of our time, recently published Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. He’s a trained social psychologist, and Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business. He possesses a rare blend of serious academic credentials, ethical sensitivity, and the ability to communicate clearly to a wide audience. In his Coddling of the American Mind (with Greg Lukianoff), Haidt addresses antisocial tendencies he witnessed on college campuses in the years following 2013. They link this to a growing fear and safety-ism in parenting. Anxious Generation continues this line of thought, showing how American parents mixed extreme fear over ordinary play with near zero boundaries in smart phones and social media usage. In Haidt’s words, “overprotection in the real world and underprotection in the virtual world” (Haidt, 9, emph. original) have caused a mental health epidemic for people born after 1995. He urges readers to release children from unnecessary rules in ordinary play and introduce guard rails for screen time.

I. Summary
I.A. A Tidal Wave
I.B. The Backstory
I.C. The Great Rewiring
I.D. Collective Action for a Healthier Childhood
II. Evaluation
II.A. General Evaluation
II.A.1. Strength
II.A.2. Criticism
II.B. Who Has Known the Mind of Christ?
II.B.1. Conflict
II.B.2. Concord

SUMMARY

The Anxious Generation breaks into four parts with a handful of chapters each. There are also introductory and concluding chapters mostly for stage-setting and summarization.

A Tidal Wave

This section establishes a retrospective portrait of recent decades. In retrospective studies, researchers look at effects and attempt to determine the causes. Haidt lays out, in one measure after another, that mental health among young people took a turn for the worse around 2010 as smartphones and social media became more common place. Here are some disturbing “lowlights” since 2010 for minors in the US.

  • Major depression increased 145% (161%) for girls (boys).
  • Emergency Room visits for self-harm increased 188% (48%) among girls (boys).
  • Suicide rates for young adolescents increased 167% (91%) among girls (boys).

Helpfully, Haidt enumerates a few possible alternative candidate causes. Is this phenomenon uniquely American? No, similar outcomes are found all over the developed world. Was it the global financial crisis? No, because the change occurred (and grew!) as the financial tide turned. Anxiety about climate change? No, fear of catastrophic destruction is not new—such extremes in mental health did not occur during the Great Depression or as the world faced thermonuclear annihilation. At the end of the day, the reigning “champion” cause of these negative mental health outcomes from 2010 onward is the widespread adoption of smartphones and social media. 

The Backstory: The Decline of the Play-Based Childhood

In this three-chapter section, Haidt argues that kids need play and they’re not getting it. Haidt makes the case that children need free play to develop bodily awareness and sensitivity to social cues. Humans are also “anti-fragile,” a concept that Haidt and Lukianoff addressed in Coddling. Much of “safety culture” would have us believe that humans and especially children are fragile. Anti-fragility is not just that humans are tough—minimally able to withstand danger and threats—but rather, we must face risk and danger or we will weaken. Human flourishing requires facing danger.

Haidt doesn’t focus on every childhood need, e.g. the need for love in the home, the need for food, etc. He’s focused on these two needs (for free and challenging/risky play) because these are the exact needs threatened by the policies and parenting styles of the recent past. With kids on a smartphone instead of challenging playgrounds, they miss out on critical psychosocial development. Meanwhile, they also establish their relational habits in the severely diminished relational environment of social media. While there remain other concerning trends facing young people in our society (e.g., the detrimental effect of divorce on children), introducing boundaries on smartphone and social media usage is not especially difficult in principle. It’s no different than adding safety features to cars or requiring motorists to be at least sixteen.

The Great Rewiring: The Rise of the Phone-Based Childhood

In this part of the book, Haidt shifts from the claims that smart phones and social media are harmful to claims of how they are harmful. He lists four “foundational harms”: social deprivation, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation, and addiction. Anyone who has used a smartphone has experienced all of these as adults. We love to use our phones, but we often feel used by our phones. But as adults, we have a tighter grip on our ability to resist technological manipulation. This is because our prefrontal cortex—the decision making, planning center of the brain—has fully developed. Children do not have this psychophysiological advantage. Haidt’s concern is that we’ve handed a tool that has negative effects on adults to children who have little to no ability to withstand its negative effects. Worse still, their brains become shaped and trained by these dysfunctional and antisocial structures. This doesn’t mean these children are fated to a certain life, but it does mean that to reverse these effects in individual cases will take work.

Haidt proceeds to show the different ways this looks for boys and girls. Girls are typically drawn to social media. Boys are typically drawn to video games and pornography. In broad generalities, these technological proxies subvert ordinary gendered psychosocial motivations. All of us are motivated in part by agency (“desire to stand out and have an effect on the world”) and communion (“the desire to connect and develop a sense of belonging”). Men and boys tend to be motivated by agency, but they still desire communion. Women and girls tend to be motivated by communion, but they still desire agency. Video games and pornography provide cheap proxies for what men seek in agency; social media is a cheap proxy for what women seek in communion. These aren’t just cheaper substitutes, but otherwise adequate. As the first section showed, they cause real damage. If an automobile requires high-grade octane, you can’t put the cheaper Ethanol blend in the tank. Even if it might run for a time, operating the vehicle with improper fuel will cause long term damage.

In the final chapter of this section, Haidt addresses the broader question of a screen-heavy life and its spiritually degrading effect on all humans—not just children. He examines six features of human spirituality eroded by smart phones and social media. What follows is a brief summary.

  1. Shared Sacredness Humans have the need for community rituals, even as simple as a local High School football game; whereas screens and social media tend to isolate people.
  2. Embodiment Human spirituality often manifests itself in embodied experiences, especially in those collective rituals, as in (1); whereas screens separate us from the bodies of others.
  3. Stillness, Silence, and Focus Many spiritual practices are private, quiet, and meditative; whereas the hyper-stimulation of screen-life fragments our attention.
  4. Transcending the Self Healthy spirituality involves awareness of the outside world, including other persons; whereas screens, especially social media, bind us psychologically to vain self-promotion.
  5. Be Slow to Anger, Quick to Forgive Haidt notes that most major religious texts encourage forgiveness and empathy; social media rewards cruelty, fiery hot takes, and sharp us-them dichotomies.
  6. Find Awe in Nature Human spirituality is activated by natural beauty—think of temple gardens, or river and mountain shrines; whereas screens pull us indoors and away from the natural world.

Collective Action for Healthier Childhood

Haidt concludes the book with a list of practical suggestions. He soberly acknowledges that we’re facing a complex social issue. Few parents feel great about their young kids using these products, but many of them don’t want their kid to be left out. Overcoming this as a society will require coordinated action. The next several chapters divide into reasonable suggestions for tech companies, governments, schools, and parents. All of these involve reducing exposure to phones, and increasing free and challenging/risky play.

Tech Companies

Beginning with the creators of these products and services, there needs to be a value shift. All of us can appreciate a corporation’s desire to increase profits for shareholders, but that cannot come at the price of abandoning all other values. Meta’s (Facebook/Instagram) cynical corporate values more nearly resemble those of a pimp or drug dealer than concern for supplying genuinely beneficial products and services. “We know we’re destroying individual users and whole communities, but we’re making a lot of money while we’re doing it.” They look more like Philip Morris than General Electric. There are ways for Meta and similar companies to offer valuable products without knowingly exploiting human weakness.

Haidt also notes that creating age verification systems should not be difficult to create or enforce. One idea would be to verify age by mutual accountability systems like those used for AirBnB or Uber. Another would be to use biometrics housed by independent identity verification firms. That independently verified identity could be used across numerous platforms. The exact form the age-verification takes is less important. The fact that these corporations can pay nine figures to be competitive in certain markets implies that they can figure out how to keep young people safe on the internet. Utility companies have figured out how to deliver gas and electric without burning houses down. The automobile industry introduced seatbelts and airbags. It’s not too much to ask for safety from the purveyors of these information-technology services.

Governments

The federal laws that impact minors’ use of the internet are few, limited in scope, and essentially unenforced. We can be grateful that the federal government has more closely scrutinized these companies and their anti-competitive behavior. But they would do well to insist that these companies find ways to verify age. These services have measurable detrimental effects on young people as articulated above. Imagine how the government would respond if a drug did the same thing! Fortunately, some state governments are taking the lead even while Washington continues in its near bottomless dysfunction.

On top of curbing access to mature material for minors, Haidt wisely urges governments to play a pro-play role, and not just an anti-screen role. This includes creating and maintaining parks that require risk, encourage free play, etc. It also means not penalizing parents for allowing their kids to have freedom with ambiguous laws about “neglect.” 

Schools

Many schools are spinning their tires trying to figure out how to handle the changes they’ve witnessed. Haidt argues that schools should increase play time and ban phones completely from school—not just classrooms. These two changes cost no money and would not create any serious unintended negative consequences. After all, most schools for most of history have been phone-free. This isn’t exactly uncharted territory. Meanwhile, most schools are dumping extraordinary resources into a mental health crisis that has an unmysterious cause.

Parents

The household undoubtedly plays the largest role in ensuring the safety of its members. So far it may have been tempting to simply ask, “Where are the parents here?” But the answer should be obvious—on their phones! More seriously, we must acknowledge that the statistics rolled out in the Tidal Wave section are so severe as to constitute a public health crisis. It’s too much to expect parents to deal with an issue so large on their own. 

This section has so many sound suggestions that if a parent is reading this review and wants more, I will simply urge you to read the book. That said, there was one suggestion that seemed largely in the hands of the parent: structure your family’s days and weeks. This does not mean micromanage everything your kid does. What it means is as follows:

  1. Ritual helps to form a sense of closeness and identity. While having a schedule isn’t strictly liturgical, it has a similar effect. It forms a kind of inner family community. We do these things at these times. Examples of this include family movie nights, and Taco Tuesdays. (My family has a beloved ice-cream night.)
  2. Screen time will naturally fill in all unstructured time. Most of us adults experience this, with our phones being the first things we grab when our schedule offers an opening. Some of us can’t even sit alone for a few moments without grabbing our phones. (Try and see if you can avoid grabbing your phone the next time you’re in line somewhere. It’s harder than you think.) The more you plan and structure, the less likely you and your children will slouch into lazy screen time.
  3. Parents can schedule free play, where children are encouraged to have fun without parental supervision. For example, after homework and before dinner can be time to run around in the yard, play basketball, or create a new game. Although structuring your family’s day sounds like it contradicts the spirit of free play, nothing stops you from making free play part of your family’s rituals.

EVALUATION

General Evaluation

I will begin by evaluating Anxious Generation from a general point of view.

Strength: Recovering Play, Reducing Screens

Jonathan Haidt has produced an important title for navigating this new, quickly shifting technological terrain. Haidt’s dual thesis is capably argued and has the ring of truth: (a) we need to recover play for our children and (b) we need to introduce boundaries for screens both in frequency of usage and in breadth of access. Having worked with students both professionally (at the University) and in student ministries during this transition, I’ve had a front row seat to much of what Haidt describes.

Now a father of young kids, I admit that one must exert a concerted effort to resist safteyism. A lot of these anxious ideas are baked into our culture. The pressure to protect-protect-protect can be hard to notice, as it is with any pervasive cultural trend. My wife and I both were surprised at how opinionated everyone is about how you must parent your kids—or else! That isn’t to say that we don’t welcome advice, but that the way this information is shared is not in alignment with the scientific data concerning the resilience and antifragility of humans. On a variety of parameters, a portrait is painted that by a certain age, the die will be cast. This anxious parenting style is essentially ideological rather than “evidence-based.”

It would be irresponsible not to take some measures to keep our children safe, but as a society, we’ve moved in the direction of trying to keep our children as safe as possible. The amount of wealth and technology available to us makes that elusive goal appear more alluring and more achievable. Quoting researcher Mariana Brussoni, Haidt contends that we need to keep children as safe as necessary, not as safe as possible (Haidt, 81). 

Criticism: On Artificial Intelligence

I didn’t agree with everything in this book; nevertheless, it’s hard to find serious issues with such a sensible, well-researched title. The only “complaint,” if it could be that, is that Haidt offers limited commentary on the in-coming flood of AI tools. Here is a short list of headlines from the summer of 2025:

The headlines are horrific. The details are no better. I think everyone should approach these AI tools cautiously, and parents with extreme caution. I hope that the last 18-20 years of relating to titanic tech companies—many of whom are at the forefront of the AI boom—has demonstrated that they have a paper thin concern with either the improvement of society or individual human flourishing. Not to say that everything is the fault of the corporations. Like with most new technologies, Americans have been naively optimistic, willingly participating in our own demise. These companies aren’t exactly coercive. We’ve offered them an open hand again and again. But, given the immense amount of power these corporations wield, their ethics could use some fine tuning. (Meta might need to start with some “coarse tuning.”) Until that happens, the public and the individual user should offer their trust with extreme reluctance.  

In Haidt’s defense, this book was published in March of 2024, which means he probably finished it in late 2023. ChatGPT was released to the public in November of 2022. The AI tsunami was just gathering speed while Haidt was writing. Furthermore, Haidt is a serious scientist. Even near the close of 2025, there just isn’t a lot of hard data about the impact of large-language models on the public—the above articles only show what has happened in specific cases. But insofar as Anxious Generation concerns the impact of technology on society, the absence of a discussion of AI feels lacunal.

Who Has Known the Mind of Christ?

In this final section, I’ll address what Christian believers should make of The Anxious Generation.

Conflict: Evolution, Ethics, and the God-Shaped Hole

I want to begin on a critical note, because I think it’s mostly a matter of style than of substance—fundamentally, Haidt and I agree about how families and communities should respond to these technologies. I also want to end this review on a high note.

In my review of Haidt’s The Righteous Mind, I complained that he constantly uses evolutionary vocabulary despite the fact that much of his talk of evolution smacks of speculation. But I also acknowledged that that this should be no surprise because Haidt is an atheist. Evolution is the only game in town for an atheist when explaining human origins. In the case of Anxious Generation, this feels more out of place for two reasons: (1) Haidt makes the case for the importance of spirituality even more strongly than he did in The Righteous Mind. (2) The urgency of Haidt’s pleas seem out of alignment with the types of value compatible with an atheistic interpretation of evolutionary biology. Let’s address each in turn.

  1. Spirituality Haidt exhibits a high tolerance for religious practice. He extols ancient wisdom and quotes from Buddha and Jesus. He even uses Pascal’s phrase that humans have a God-shaped hole. There’s no doubt: he’s NOT in the hostile atheist camp.
    In some strict logical sense, one may be an atheist and maintain the view that religion is useful. But there comes a time when one must ask, “Why does spirituality benefit humans so much? Why do we have this God-shaped hole?” On an atheistic picture, it’s at best a biological spandrel: not strictly required for survival, but a byproduct of some other mechanism beneficial for fitness and reproduction. A more direct and simple explanation is that we were created by God who wants a relationship with us. Relationships reflect God’s own personality and so he designed us to be in relationship with him and with others. This clean and edifying explanation is not available to Haidt.
  2. Evolutionary Contingency In Anxious Generation, the pitch of Haidt’s prophetic voice has become more shrill. He’s disturbed and angry about what’s happening to our society and especially to our children. I agree! The problem is that his righteous anger is bursting the seams of his worldview. According to evolution, the human organism is the result of certain contingent factors that have no intrinsic purpose. The various mutations do not serve a purpose in any strict sense. Specifically, our mental faculties came about due to random mutations that allowed for survival within specific environments.
    Now, let’s hold this standard evolutionary picture in our minds and consider an idea Haidt never addressed but he must consider as an atheist: what if we are about to undergo a major evolutionary bottleneck driven by technological change? Those who can withstand the harsh extremes of this new technological environment will survive into the new era. Those whose psychological constitution is too fragile to handle the rapidly changing world will join the illustrious fraternity of extinction.
    Despite this being an unsavory interpretation of Haidt’s data, nothing about Haidt’s worldview can rule it out. Christians however can buck this idea because we believe that our various psychological features are designed. This implies that when we go against those designs (as with the abuse of these technologies), we can expect our constitution to break down. Haidt’s atheism only allows that this is where the blind guide of evolution has brought us and that we must ward off dangerous corporate predators until our blind guide ambles somewhere else. This is unsatisfactory.

Concord: Anti-fragility and Community

Here we’ll review the major points of contact between what Haidt says and the Christian faith. Obviously, Christians can agree with much of Haidt’s science and many of his practical suggestions. But here we’ll dive deeper into a couple of notes of theoretical harmony.

Anti-fragility

There is a striking similarity between anti-fragility and the Christian concept of faith. Challenging and deepening our trust in God is a hallmark of God’s transforming work. David’s embarrassing failure with Bathsheba demonstrates the negative force of anti-fragility. It’s clear that he’d grown lazy and even bored before he stole Uriah’s wife. We read in 2 Samuel 11:1, “In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king’s men and the whole Israelite army… But David remained in Jerusalem.” (NIV, emph. mine). David’s son Solomon also grew weak and foolish in spite of having received a special dispensation of wisdom from God (1 Kings 3:5-15).

On a more positive note, numerous passages in the New Testament describe how our spiritual lives grow in the face of suffering. Although there are plenty of well-known passages on this topic (Romans 5:3-5, Hebrews 12:4-11, James 1:2-4, 1 Peter 1:6-7), Paul describes a personal experience in powerfully compact language. He writes, “We felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.” (2 Cor 1:9) God’s primary goal for us is not in eliminating discomfort or suffering, but drawing us to himself. I recently finished a long study on the book of Job. The idea that our relationship with God is only as good as his gifts is the essence of Satan’s cynical accusations (Job 1:11-19). One of the primary lessons of God’s monologue is that Job’s greatest need is not to avoid suffering—or even to know why it happens—but to comprehend God’s fatherly oversight of the visible and invisible worlds.

Community

Haidt also extols the importance of in-person relationships and community. Christians should rejoice at the continual flow of scientific literature extolling community. Western individualism has had a sixty year run in the United States. Although other Western countries have similar concerns, it’s especially acute in the US, with its perfect combination of wealth, mobility, and unreluctant embrace of new technologies. All of these erode the types of social structures that are needed to form abiding community (Cf. Robert Putman’s Upswing). In parallel with the specific issues of social media and smart phones, there is clear medical evidence of the value of spiritual community. For interested readers, Rebecca McLaughlin released a short book on this topic just last week.

Conclusion

Anxious Generation is a clarion call for twenty-first century life, especially parenting. Haidt argues clearly and persuasively that our children need more play and less screens. This is not outside of reach. Let’s work together to see a better world for our children and our children’s children!

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Society

The Canceling of the American Mind

Reviewed by Josh Morris

The Canceling of the American Mind is explicitly a sequel to Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt’s 2018 book, The Coddling of the American Mind. The principle author, Greg Lukianoff, is the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). He has a law degree from Stanford and has written about free speech for prominent publications such as the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. His co-author Rikki Schlott also works for FIRE and is a columnist at the New York Post. FIRE has defended free speech for decades, particularly in the realm of education. Many of the examples in the book involve FIRE representing the professors and students in question.

I. Summary
IA. What Is Cancel Culture?
IB. Cancel Culture at Work on the Left and Right
I.C. What To Do About Cancel Culture
II. Evaluation

Summary

In the first title, Coddling of the American Mind, Lukianoff and Haidt argued that American culture no longer prepared young people for life; instead, the culture coddles and protects the young, resulting in longterm immaturity. Coddling focuses on three main theses, labeled The Three Great Untruths. These are: (1) what doesn’t kill you makes you weaker, (2) always trust your feelings, and (3) life is a battle between good and bad people. Lukianoff and Haidt argue that our culture’s embracing of these themes is bad for everyone. Treating young people as fragile both exaggerates life’s dangers and denies them growth through challenging circumstances. Trusting our feelings uncritically leads to infantile relating and reactions. Placing people into binary categories of good and bad prevents us from dialogue and community. 

Canceling builds off of the theses and arguments of the first book, while focusing on Cancel Culture and its woes. The goals of the book are (A) to address the destructiveness of Cancel Culture, (B) to change the way people think about it, and (C) to provide some alternative ways of navigating society. The book touches on censorship, culture wars, raising kids, and the climate of academia. 

What Is Cancel Culture?

While Canceling has a longer definition of Cancel Culture (Lukianoff and Schlott, 31), I like their short definition. Cancel Culture is “the use of cheap rhetorical tactics to ‘win’ arguments without… actually winning arguments”(ibid., 9). This definition is witty and easy to understand. Canceling someone is deciding to no longer listen to them and exhorting others to do the same. It involves shunning or boycotting when someone has been deemed to have spoken inappropriately or represents views which the canceler does not support. This goes beyond disagreeing with someone.

The book offers six criteria. If the majority of these criteria are satisfied, “a true cancellation attempt has occurred” (ibid., 30):

  1. Truthiness Are the things being said about you inaccurate? Are people distorting your words and making false accusations?
  2. Punitiveness Are people denouncing you? Are you being blackmailed?
  3. Deplatforming Are campaigners attempting to prevent you from publishing your work, attending meetings, giving speeches? 
  4. Organization Does the criticism appear to be organized? Are you being swarmed?
  5. Secondary Boycotts Do people who defend you have to fear adverse consequences?
  6. Moral Grandstanding Is the tone ad hominem, repetitive, ritualistic, posturing, accusatory, outraged?

While this definition sounds extreme, that is the point the authors are making. Some are no longer satisfied with merely disagreeing with, or even correcting, other people, but call for others to be silenced and shunned. To illustrate: if they are in a corporate or academic setting, there are calls to have them fired; or, if they are in the entertainment industry, the calls are to have their source of productivity boycotted. For example the canceler(s) might demand that a comedian’s show be canceled, or a writer’s book not be published. Lukianoff and Schlott argue this is not only deeply unfair to the individual, but profoundly damaging to our society. “Cancel Culture has upended lives, ruined careers, undermined companies, hindered the production of knowledge, destroyed trust in institutions, and plunged us into an ever-worsening culture war” (ibid., 9). It is not something to be shrugged off or ignored, but rather to be understood and fought.

Winning arguments by shutting down the other side is not winning at all. American culture has lost its “shared sense of constructive argument” (ibid., 8). The authors claim both the Left and Right have retreated to their corners with little authentic dialogue between them. In the tradition of Coddling, the authors introduce a Fourth Great Untruth: “Bad people only have bad opinions.” That is, we should not listen to anyone who we do not like, no matter the veracity of what they are saying. Worse, proponents of this Untruth have found ways to quickly deem others to be “bad people.” This fits right along with the fragility, emotional reasoning, and black and white thinking highlighted in Coddling.

Cancel Culture at Work on the Left and Right

The authors argue that both sides of the political fence use Cancel Culture for their own ends, but the reasoning they use is slightly different.

The authors summarize the thinking on the Left as the Perfect Rhetorical Fortress. This strategy is a multi-layered approach to analyze whether someone’s opinion should be weighed, or even acknowledged. The proponents analyze the identity of the person they are hearing, asking themselves things such as, “Is this person conservative?” and filtering comments through an ideological grid oriented around race, sexuality, and gender. Only if the person in question is blameless along a many-layered line of hostile questioning, should their speech be granted airtime. Few people make it through this purity test. 

On the Right, the authors summarize the style of argumentation as the Efficient Rhetorical Fortress. They deem this “efficient” as it more quickly categorizes people than the Left’s criteria. They reduce the rules to: don’t listen to liberals, experts, or journalists. Again, if someone should fail any of these tests, they may safely be ignored.

Both sides are accused of childish behavior and faulty reasoning. Like the cognitive distortions of Coddling, I appreciated their list of “dirty tactics” (ibid., 94). The dirty tactics follow. I will offer a working definition and examples for most.

Whataboutism

Definition When raising a point, perhaps you’ve had someone counter with “what about…?” This tactic involves defending against criticism, or deflecting it by bringing up the other side’s wrongdoing or raising a different issue. This could be in the form of a counter-accusation or a completely different topic, as long as it subverts the need for a careful justification of whatever was currently under discussion.

Example

Person A “Did you make this mess in the kitchen?”
Person B “What about your constant messes in the living room!?”

The topic of the mess in the kitchen is being deflected and ignored in favor of discussing the other person’s troubles with keeping the living room clean.

Straw manning

Definition This is when one presents their opponent’s position by constructing a weak and inaccurate version, then refuting it. This is a famous logical fallacy.

Example

Person A “I think our country should have tighter gun laws.”
Person B “You just want to take everyone’s guns and make it impossible for law-abiding citizens to defend themselves?”

The topic of tighter gun laws is not seriously explored or considered. Instead, an inflammatory version of gun control is brought up, which neither person may even desire. This shortcircuits honest discussion and likely will increase tension at the cost of understanding.

Minimization

Definition Claiming a problem does not exist or is too small-scale or unimportant to worry about.

Example The book offers this example:

Cancel Culture isn’t real… It’s turned into a catch-all for when people in power face consequences for their actions or receive any type of criticism, something that they’re not used to.(ibid., 95)

Instead of engaging the potential issue of Cancel Culture, it is declared a non-issue. It is also implied to be a tool of victims to finally oppose their powerful oppressors.

Motte and Bailey

Definition This involves conflating two similar arguments, retreating from the unreasonable one (the bailey) to the more reasonable one (the motte). Essentially, a speaker/author spouts an inflammatory or extreme view and then reinterprets it to something more reasonable when pressed on its implications.

Example The book suggests “defund the police” (the bailey) may be reduced to “reimagining community safety” (the motte) when challenged (ibid., 97). The phrase “defund the police” means removing resources from the police force. This could indicate reduction of police staffing, buildings, or operations. Reimagining community safety may involve merely including additional programs to traditional policing. Programs may include crisis centers, neighborhood watches, or investment in other social services. While shrinking or eliminating police capabilities is controversial, adding additional community programs is often broadly supported.

Underdogging

Definition Claiming your viewpoint is more valid because you speak for a victim or disadvantaged party.

Example

Person A “I’m not sure what he said about our boss is accurate.”
Person B “Does it matter? The boss always calls the shots. I’m just standing up for us average-Joes!”

The fact the boss holds a position of authority over the employees neither undermines the truth of his claims nor absolves the employees from making slanderous or untruthful declarations.

Accusing Bad Faith

Definition Asserting your opponent has sinister motives, is selfish, or disingenuous.

Example

Person A “I’d like to see us perform more safety checks on our projects.”
Person B “You say that because you want to suck up to the boss.”

While pleasing others or obtaining selfish profit may be someone’s motivation, or part of their motivation, it prevents dialogue when the first reaction is accusatory like this. We should attempt to give others the benefit of the doubt. What could be other motives for what they’ve are said? Also one’s motives are strictly speaking irrelevant to the truth of what they say. Will the safety checks improve the organization or not?

Some More Dirty Tactics

Here are a few more without explicit examples.

  1. Projecting Hypocrisy Asserting your opponent is hypocritical without checking their consistency. Be sure to carefully see instances of inconsistency before throwing out labels.
  2. Dodging with “That’s Offensive” Rather than engaging with an argument’s substance, merely object with, “That’s offensive.” This is a deflection that prevents the need to engage the topic.
  3. Offense Archeology Digging into someone’s past for offensive speech. The authors point out how this is increasingly easy now that social media documents so much of people’s past words and actions.
  4. Making Stuff Up Fabricating information or lying to bolster a weak argument.

The book is full of real-life examples across a range of disciplines: academia, publishing, education, clinical counseling, and politics. The effects of Cancel Culture are wide-ranging. Some people are embarrassed or mobbed temporarily, others face the longer term consequences of losing friends and careers. For many, the cost of being canceled is temporary discomfort. For others, the effects can be particularly devastating. Consider the story of Lukianoff’s personal friend Mike Adams. Professor Adams was embroiled in a free speech controversy at the University of North Carolina. He experienced personal attacks, threats, absurd accusations, and eventually loss of job and pension. Despite winning his court settlement against the university, he committed suicide. The authors stress that even if one disagreed with his comments, no one should be subjected to such a psychologically damaging ordeal.

While this is an extreme case, it illustrates a point. Cancel Culture aims to protect people by quarantining or punishing harmful speech. Let’s emphasize here that what’s canceled is not physical violence–just words. But then the cancelers cause their own harm, including threatening or sometimes perpetrating physical violence. By drawing on the very methods it decries, Cancel Culture is hypocritical, willing to destroy some in the supposed protection of others. Cancel Culture’s hypocrisy is especially serious because goals and outcomes are the point, as opposed to, say, truth-seeking. So, if in an attempt to deliver certain outcomes (safety), one undermines those same outcomes, that’s a failed project. The charge leveled here is not another form of whataboutism, because those concern truth claims. The charge here is that the goals of a certain practice (Cancel Culture) are undermined by the practice itself.

The authors also flag DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) hiring statements. They claim both universities and workplaces increasingly prioritize political outlooks over competence. This politicalization accelerates the distrust of expertise. After all, why trust scholars, journalists, medical staff chosen for ideological purity instead of subject matter mastery? One study showed 22% of academic hiring committee members were willing to discriminate against applicants supporting a particular presidential candidate. This phenomenon is summarized with a great quote, “where all think alike, no one thinks very much” (ibid., 79). Such conformity of opinion results in groupthink and less critical reasoning. 

What To Do About Cancel Culture

The authors offer advice to schools, parents, businesses, and individuals. Since canceling often involves deep mining of digital records for videos and quotes, they recommend staying off social media as much as possible. Encourage your kids to think of others, emphasize in-person friendships, and teach them to expect differences between people. This gives opponents less ammo while also supplying a stronger social foundation for your kids. Face-to-face friendships provide them with the fullest social benefits. Reducing screen time, where people are often more harsh and less empathetic, shields them from negativity they don’t need. Teaching them that people are different and that varying opinions are fine will help them develop beyond black and white thinking. We should foster emotional well-being and anti-fragility. Instead of protecting kids from potentially offensive speech, we should explain it to them, teaching forgiveness. Redemption should be favored over punishment.

The book calls on corporations to resist turning HR into a bias response team. Executives should ask themselves if the company has a diversity of political opinions and educational opportunities, not just diversity of race and gender. Businesses need to lead by focusing on the work of the company and its values, rather than commenting on every social or political issue.

The authors call for a return to curiosity and critical thinking. Ironically, higher education fails at its basic responsibility to instill critical thinking. This is in spite of being extremely expensive and irritatingly bureaucratic. Colleges are a ground zero for these rhetorical fortresses. Instead of using the dirty tactics, or the rhetorical tricks to avoid critical thinking, we should bring back tolerant sayings. Some tolerant sayings used to be more common. The authors suggest: “To each his own,” “Everyone is entitled to their opinion,” and “It’s a free country.” Only by resisting childish ways of thinking will America be able to get back on solid ground. This means we must talk to each other like adults and seriously consider being wrong.

Evaluation

Canceling directly raises issues and attempts to give clear solutions. The authors successfully draw out the destructiveness of Cancel Culture with a myriad of examples. Among the most compelling portions is its dismantling of the logic of this sort of thinking. The cognitive distortions driving Cancel Culture are pathological and immature. Arguments are not “won” by finding ways to ignore the other side or by shouting them down. I am reminded of Melkor, the Satan character in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion. During the song of creation, Melkor gathers his fallen angels to shout down God, trying to overwhelm the melody because he wants things to go his way. Like an immature, angry child, he resorts to shouting his demands. He doesn’t try to understand the larger picture or the God character’s reasoning. This same immature strategy is often pursued today. Cancel Culture teaches us that if we do not like what we hear, we should yell as loud as we can overpowering others. There’s something devious and childish about this. Young children scream when they do not get their way, why are adults doing the same? While staying off social media may reduce the number of things people may attack us on, understanding the illogic of Cancel Culture and helping others do the same will have positive lasting effects. We should learn these “dirty tactics” and be sure we do not use them against others. Modeling the right way and teaching it to others is within our power.

I would have liked more studies and less examples from the authors’ own lives. I found their anecdotes powerful, but there were too many. To some extent, this helped make their case, but it also resulted in a longer and more repetitive book. Canceling attempts to take on higher education, grade school, medical school, clinical counseling, journalism, publishing, and people’s personal lives. That’s a lot of ground to cover and hard to cover well. The book may have done better with more focus. The authors could have made the general case and then illustrated it in just one or two problem domains. Coddling covered three Untruths in the same length, compared to the single Untruth of this book. I found the first book to be more concise, with a higher amount of content per page.

For the Christian, Paul guides us in 2 Corinthians 10:5 to demolish arguments and pretensions, to take thoughts captive and analyze them. Paul engaged in dialogue with his enemies and opponents (for example in Acts 17 and before the governing authorities). He did not ignore them, shout them down, or dismiss them. Jesus modeled the same with the Pharisees. He actively engaged them even though he deeply disagreed with them on significant points. Jesus got heated, but he sought their welfare. Jesus actually commanded us to love our enemies rather than disown them (Matt 5:42-45). The Christian believer should follow these great examples by having calm, reasoned dialogues with others. The Christian should be willing to listen to and engage opponents rather than merely cancel them. 

Josh Morris is a software engineer with a BS from The Ohio State University. He’s also served as a deacon at Dwell Community Church for over 20 years. More of his writing may be found at his website.

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