This is a summary and review. The authors, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, could have kept their analysis to an article. In fact, the book grew out of an essay the authors wrote and then converted into a book. The book presents astute observations, studies, and antidotes on college students. Unfortunately, the authors commit the same errors it accuses the students of doing – blaming others for problems, engaging in identity politics, and misusing labels to present certain people as bad. Essentially, this review identifies the useful content so you can get the most out of the book without having to suffer through the author’s political commentary. We read the book, so you don’t have to waste your time and money.
You Must Be Kidding
The book’s title says it all –Young people are too fragile these days because our culture has coddled them from the womb. Safe spaces, triggers, microaggressions, and fear that their thoughts might be challenged, has led to a generation of weak-minded kids – and they are becoming adults (voting adults). For most adults, these terms seem like a joke, but they are not. This is no Monty Pythons skit.
According to the authors, “Something is going badly wrong for American teenagers, as we can see in the statistics on depression, anxiety, and suicide. Something is going very wrong on many college campuses, as we can see in growth of the call-out culture, in the rise in efforts to disinvite or shout down visiting speakers, and in changing norms about speech, including a recent tendency to evaluate speech in terms of safety and danger. This new culture of safetyism and vindictive protectiveness is bad for students and bad for universities.” And now it has started to spill into the world, but how do we stop it?
Three Main Conclusions
Young people, Lukianoff and Haidt conclude, are being taught three of the worst untruths imaginable: They are being taught, 1) “what doesn’t kill you makes you weaker,” 2) “always trust your feelings,” 3) and “life is a battle between good people and evil.” Let’s take each one by one.
1) What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker
The books first major contention is that college students are encouraged to believe that difficult experiences make you weaker – a victim, not someone who can overcome. Nietzsche, they point out, had it correct when he said, “what does not kill you makes you stronger.”
They believe what we should be teaching is resiliency, pride in overcoming difficulties not to become a victim. Mental and physical challenges can actually help people. Safety and protecting feelings have gone so far as to take away natural immunity to heal and make people healthier. This trend must be reversed.
Too many college students demand “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings” so they no longer have to deal with anything they disagree with. Instead of confronting fears, many just want to avoid difficulty altogether.
If we want college students and young adults to thrive, we must find a way for them to confront and overcome challenges. They must develop resiliency and toughness.
2) Always trust your feelings
The assumption many young people have is that we should trust our feelings, and that is completely wrong, according to the book. In fact, we should question our feelings because feelings are not always reliable. This focus on feelings leads to people looking for “microaggression” so they can claim their feelings are hurt – again seeking to be a victim.
The best example of this is the pervasive tendency of colleges to ban speakers and censor content featuring conservative ideas. If a conservative speaker is invited to campus, he or she stands a good chance of being disinvited because a group of students claim the talk might be full of “microaggressions” and could “trigger” uncomfortable feelings.
3) Life is a battle between good people and evil
One of the ways our colleges and other areas of our culture have limited free speech is by encouraging young people to think everyone who does not share their views is evil. Because of this, it’s impossible to engage in meaningful debate, exchange ideas, or educate one another with new information or new perspectives.
Lukianoff and Haidt contend, and rightfully so, that identity politics promotes the good v. evil dichotomy most – that group is evil, I’m good and a victim. Inclusiveness should be the aim, not identifying groups as evil. Accordingly, the rise of “intersectional” victimhood gives valuable currency to those people offended the most, which incentivizes students and others to seek out “evil” actors – real, imagined, or exaggerated.
The result is hoards of students seeking to become victims so they can label those who think differently as evil. This, in turn, presents an opportunity to “cancel” the evil people for the greater good. Consequently, everyone is scared to say anything and spends their time on college campus walking on eggshells. This is the antitheses of what college should be because it is impossible to learn, explore, or grow intellectually in that kind of atmosphere.
Additional Highlights
The Coddling of the American Mind observes numerous other good points as well. Among them are the following.
- Colleges are becoming Orwellian with what is known as concept creep. The word violent, for instance, was a word reserved for physical harm or physical threats. It now includes words (and not even hateful words). Concept creep occurs when ideas change over time. Another example is the word trauma, which was historically just physical, but now includes hurt feelings.
- Witch Hunts are on the rise. It happens more often these days. The authors have identified four criteria: they arise quickly, the crimes are against the collective, the charges are trivial, and there is fear of defending the accused. Professors at Yale, Claremont McKenna, and Evergreen College were all run out by students over perfectly polite emails, but the mob wanted a witch hunt and to “cancel” an “evil” professor.
- Nearly all college professors are liberal – only around 10% identify as conservative. This represents a huge uptick in the last 25 years. If there is only one perspective taught on college campuses, then how can students learn? If you cannot challenge another person on facts or logic, then what is the point in paying for college?
- Most people believe fervently in justice, which they equate to fairness, not equal outcomes. Too many today are using words like “equity” to promote equal outcomes instead of promoting equal opportunities.
How Did We Get Here?
The authors have 6 ideas on how our culture, especially campus culture, has become what it is.
- Rising political polarization and cross-party animosity.
- Rising levels of teen anxiety and depression – smart phones, electric devices, and social media play a big role.
- Changes in parenting practices. Paranoid parenting has led to helicopter parenting and not letting kids take risk. Kids are over protected.
- The decline of free play. Not only do kids have to have someone tell them what to do, but they are not developing the skill of conflict resolution. People fight and disagree; we should be good at dealing with it. These skills are developed when kids play without adult management.
- The growth of campus bureaucracy. The customer is always right mentality has taken hold – whatever the students want, they get (not what’s best).
- Passion for justice – social justice issues on the rise, but research demonstrates people prefer fairness not equal outcomes. Often the social justice warriors are pushing for equal outcomes, which is inherently unfair, and people know it.
What Can We Do?
Lukianoff and Haidt insist on the following solutions:
- Prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child.
- Remember, your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own thoughts.
- Teach children self-awareness. As they state, “The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”
- Help schools to oppose the great untruths mentioned above. Some additional ideas include limiting homework in lower grades, encouraging more unsupervised recess, reducing screen time on devices, and finding ways to toughen up the kids.
- Limit and refine device time.
- Engage in service or work before college.
The Big Takeaway
Our society needs to toughen up young people. The uncoddling of America will take time – and unfortunately it worsened during Covid. Despite the setbacks, if we are all committed to teaching simple lessons from the past, such as learning to disagree with another person’s views, but defending their right to say it, then we can make progress. Perhaps the simplest lesson was once a staple, “sticks and stones can break your bones, but words can never harm you” – words might offend, but they can’t harm. Even the children a generation ago could teach us how to recover our once thriving culture.
