There is nothing to disagree with here (even though I sometimes chafe at 'when we were kids.' arguments) I also agree that children need lots of free play and that social media is bad for kids and they are over-protected. I totally agree with his three untruths-your feelings are not necessarily true, the world is not good and evil, and adversity does not make you weak.

As far as that group is concerned, this is really good advice. It says it is about the American Mind, but the data and the theory only support 'the coddling' of a very narrow subset of the American mind: upper middle class college kids born after 1995 that got to college in 2013. This is a very narrow and small-minded book parading as a big thoughtful one. This is a book for anyone who is confused by what’s happening on college campuses today, or has children, or is concerned about the growing inability of Americans to live and work and cooperate across party lines. Lukianoff and Haidt offer a comprehensive set of reforms that will strengthen young people and institutions, allowing us all to reap the benefits of diversity, including viewpoint diversity. The culture of “safety” and its intolerance of opposing viewpoints has left many young people anxious and unprepared for adult life, with devastating consequences for them, for their parents, for the companies that will soon hire them, and for a democracy that is already pushed to the brink of violence over its growing political divisions.

This is a book about how to fix the mess. First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt take us on a tour of the social trends stretching back to the 1980s that have produced the confusion and conflict on campus today, including the loss of unsupervised play time and the birth of social media, all during a time of rising political polarization. The result is rising rates of depression and anxiety, along with endless stories of college campuses torn apart by moralistic divisions and mutual recriminations. But despite the good intentions of the adults who impart them, the Great Untruths are harming kids by teaching them the opposite of ancient wisdom and the opposite of modern psychological findings on grit, growth, and antifragility. These three Great Untruths are part of a larger philosophy that sees young people as fragile creatures who must be protected and supervised by adults. The generation now coming of age has been taught three Great Untruths: their feelings are always right they should avoid pain and discomfort and they should look for faults in others and not themselves. A timely investigation into the campus assault on free speech and what it means for students, education, and our democracy.

The coddling of american mind