 Social media, which Haidt says companies like Meta designed to addict you. Smartphone use among kids was supposed to be just one chapter in Haidt's book, but it rapidly expanded into a book of its own, Haidt's new book, The Anxious Generation, a book about what Haidt calls the rise of the phone-based childhood. On his website, Haidt displays a chart from the U.S. National Survey on Drug Use and Health. That chart reveals something alarming.