{"id":3680,"date":"2026-01-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-01T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cephas.net\/blog\/?p=3680"},"modified":"2026-01-17T15:09:41","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T23:09:41","slug":"what-ive-been-reading-december-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cephas.net\/blog\/2026\/01\/01\/what-ive-been-reading-december-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"What I&#8217;ve been reading: December, 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><a href='https:\/\/bookboard.io\/book\/9781802063271'>The Anxious Generation How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness<\/a>\n<p>Great book for anyone with teens.  We&#8217;re going to look back at endless scrolling &amp; social apps as cancerous.   So many quotes:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&quot;My central claim in this book is that these two trends-overprotection \u00a0the real world and underprotection in the virtual world-are the major \u00a0reasons why children born after 1995 became the anxious generation. \u00a0A FEW NOTES ABOUT TERMINOLOGY. WHEN I TALK ABOUT THE &quot;REAL \u00a0world,&quot; I am referring to relationships and social interactions characterized by four features that have been typical for millions of years: 1. They are embodied, meaning that we use our bodies to communicate, we are conscious of the bodies of others, and we respond to the bodies of others both consciously and unconsciously. \u00a0They are synchronous, which means they are happening at the same \u00a0time, with subtle cues about timing and turn taking. \u00a03. They involve primarily one-to-one or one-to-several communication, \u00a0with only one interaction happening at a given moment. \u00a04. They take place within communities that have a high bar for entry \u00a0and exit, so people are strongly motivated to invest in relationships \u00a0and repair rifts when they happen. \u00a0In contrast, when I talk about the &quot;virtual world,&quot; I am referring to \u00a0relationships and interactions characterized by four features that have \u00a0been typical for just a few decades: \u00a01. They are disembodied, meaning that no body is needed, just(AIs). \u00a0They are heavily asynchronous, happening via text-based posts and \u00a0comments. (A video call is different; it is synchronous.) \u00a03. They involve a substantial number of one-to-many communications, \u00a0broadcasting to a potentially vast audience. Multiple interactions be happening in parallel. \u00a04. They take place within communities that have a low bar for entry \u00a0and exit, so people can block others or just quit when they are not \u00a0pleased. Communities tend to be short-lived, and relationships are often disposable.&quot;\n<p>&quot;&#8230; one out of every four teens said \u00a0that they were online \u201calmost constantly.&quot; By 2022, that number had nearly doubled, to 46%. \u00a0These \u201calmost constantly&quot; numbers are startling and may be the key to explaining the sudden collapse of adolescent mental health. These extraordinarily high rates suggest that even when members of Gen Z are not on their devices and appear to be doing something in the real world, \u00a0such as sitting in class, eating a meal, or talking with you, a substantial \u00a0portion of their attention is monitoring or worrying (being anxious) \u00a0about events in the social metaverse. As the MIT professor Sherry Turkle \u00a0wrote in 2015 about life with smartphones, &quot;We are forever elsewhere.&quot;33 \u00a0This is a profound transformation of human consciousness and relation and it occurred, for American teens&#8230;&quot;<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>&quot;Discover mode fosters learning and growth. If we want to help youngdiscover mode may be the most effective change we can make. Let me lay the differences between the modes as we might see them in a college Figure 3.1 shows what a student arriving at a university would like if her childhood (and her genes) gave her a brain whose default \u00a0setting was discover mode versus defend mode. It&#8217;s obvious that students in discover mode will profit and grow rapidly from the bountiful intellectual and social opportunities of a university. Students who spend most of their time in defend mode will learn less and grow less. \u00a0contrast explains the sudden change that happened on many college campuses around 2014. Figure 3.2 shows how the distribution of mental challenges changed as the first members of Gen Z arrived and the last members of the millennial generation began to graduate. The only disorders that rose rapidly were psychological disorders. Those disorders were overwhelmingly anxiety and depression. \u00a0Books, words, speakers, and ideas that caused little or no controversy in 2010 were, by 2015, said to be harmful, dangeror traumatizing. America&#8217;s residential universities are not perfect, they are among the safest, most welcoming and inclusive environments ever created for young adults. Yet campus culture changed around 2015, not just in the United States but also at British and Canadian to universities. How could such a big change happen SO quickly and internationally?&quot;<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>&quot;They reduce interest in all non-screen-based forms of experience. Smartphones are like the cuckoo bird, which lays its eggs in other birds&#8217; nests. The cuckoo egg hatches before the others, and the cuckooall of the food brought by the unsuspecting mother. Similarly, when a smartphone, tablet, or video game console lands in a child&#8217;s life, it will push out most other activities, at least partially. The child will spend hours each day sitting enthralled and motionless (except for one nger) while ignoring everything beyond the screen. (Of course, the same might be true of the parents as well, as the family sits \u201calone together.&quot;) &quot;<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>&quot;Lembke says that \u201cthe universal symptoms of withdrawal from any \u00a0addictive substance are anxiety, irritability, insomnia, and dysphoria.&quot;57 \u00a0Dysphoria is the opposite of euphoria; it refers to a generalized feeling of \u00a0discomfort or unease. This is basically what many teens say they feeland what parents and clinicians observe-when kids who are heavy users of social media or video games are separated from their phones \u00a0game consoles involuntarily. Symptoms of sadness, anxiety, andinternet gaming disorder.&quot;<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>&quot;He spent literally almost all his waking hours at home alternating blankly between screens-his phone, an infinite scroll of Whatsand Facebook messages, and his iPad, on which he watched blur of YouTube and porn. At moments, I could still see in him \u00a0races of the joyful little boy who sang &quot;Viva Las Vegas,&quot; but it was \u00a0that person had broken into smaller, disconnected fragments. \u00a0struggled to stay with a topic of conversation for more than a \u00a0few minutes without jerking back to a screen or abruptly switchto another topic. He seemed to be whirring at the speed of napchat, somewhere where nothing still or serious could reach nim.\u00b9 &quot;<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>&quot;Americans have long used the term &quot;failure to launch\u201d to describe anyone who gets off track, doesn&#8217;t find employment, and ends up living back \u00a0with their parents for an indefinite period of time. Young men in their \u00a0late 20s are more likely to live with their parents (27% of them, in 2018), \u00a0compared with young women (17%).17 A more formal term is NEET, cre \u00a0ated by economists in the U.K. to refer to those between the ages of 16 \u00a0and 24 who are Not in Education, Employment, or Training. Such young \u00a0people are said to be &quot;economically inactive.&quot; NEETs in the U.K.18 and the \u00a0United States\u00b9 are mostly men, once you exclude all those who are disabled or who are parents caring for their own children. \u00a0These young people are called hikikomori, a Japanese term that \u00a0means &quot;pulling inward,&quot;21 They live like hermits, emerging from their \u00a0mostly at odd hours when they are less likely to see anyone, includng family members. In some families, parents leave food for them by their doors. They calm their anxieties by staying inside, but the longer they \u00a0stay in, the less competent they become in the outside world, fueling their \u00a0anxiety about the outside world. They are are trapped. \u00a0For many years, the psychiatric community treated hikikomori as a \u00a0uniquely Japanese condition 22 But in recent years, some young \u00a0America and elsewhere are behaving like hikikomori.&quot;<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>&quot;In every society, you&#8217;ll find that people istinguish between those they feel close to and those who are more distant; that&#8217;s the horizontal dimension, the x axis in figure 8.1. Then there are those who are higher in rank or social status and who are owed deference by those who are lower. That&#8217;s the vertical dimension of hierarchy, the y axis. Many languages force people to mark those two dimensions someone as vous or as tu. \u00a0But there&#8217;s another vertical dimension, shown as the z axis coming out of the page. I called it the divinity axis because so many cultures wroteselfish, or disgusting actions bring one downward, away from God and sometimes toward an anti-divinity such as the Devil. Whether or not God exists, people simply do perceive some people, places, actions, and objects to be sacred, pure, and elevating; other people, places, actions, and objects are disgusting, impure, and degrading (meaning, literally, &quot;brought a step&quot;). \u00a0Thomas Jefferson offered a secular description of the z axis in 1771. a letter advising a relative on what books to buy for his library, Jeffer? urged the inclusion of novels and plays. He justified his advice by reflecting on the feelings one gets from great literature: \u00a0When any&#8230; act of charity or of gratitude, for instance, is presented either to our sight or imagination, we are deeply impressed with its beauty and feel a strong desire in ourselves of doingof any atrocious deed, we are disgusted with its deformity, and conceive an abhorrence of vice.&quot;<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>&quot;Though researchers have not found evidence that prayer works to change outcomes in the world, such as curing a child of cancer, DeSteno found that there is abundant evidence that keeping up certain spiritual practices improves well-being. The mechanism often involves reducing self-focus and selfishness, which prepares a person to merge or be open to something beyond the self. When communities engage in these practices together, and especially when they move together synchrony, they increase cohesion and trust, which means that they also reduce anomie and loneliness.&quot;<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>&quot;First, \u00c9mile Durkheim showed that human beings move up and own between two levels: the profane and the sacred. The profane is \u00a0ordinary self-focused consciousness. The sacred is the realm of \u00a0the collective. Groups of individuals become a cohesive community \u00a0they engage in rituals that move them in and out of the realm \u00a0sacred together. The virtual world, in contrast, gives no structure to time or space and is entirely profane. This is one reason why virtual communities are not usually as satisfying or meaning-giving real-world communities. \u00a0 Second, religious rituals always involve bodily movement with symbolic significance, often carried out synchronously with others. Eating together has a special power to bond people together. The virtual is, by definition, disembodied, and most of its activities are conducted asynchronously. \u00a0Third, many religions and spiritual practices use stillness, silence, \u00a0and meditation to calm the &quot;jumping monkey&quot; of ordinary \u00a0sciousness and open the heart to others, God, or enlightenment. \u00a0Meditation has been shown to promote well-being, even brief regular meditation in fully secular contexts. The phone-based life, in contrast, is a never-ending series of notifications, alerts, and distractions, fragmenting consciousness and training us to fill every oment of consciousness with something from our phones. \u00a0Fourth, a defining feature of spirituality is self-transcendence. There \u00a0a network of brain structures (the default mode network) that \u00a0becomes less active during moments of self-transcendence, as if it \u00a0were the neural basis of profane consciousness. Social media keeps \u00a0focus on the self, self-presentation, branding, and social standIt is almost perfectly designed to prevent self-transcendence. Fifth, most religions urge us to be less judgmental, but social media \u00a0encourages us to offer evaluations of others at a rate never before \u00a0possible in human history. Religions advise us to be slower to anger \u00a0quicker to forgive, but social media encourages the opposite. \u00a0Sixth, the grandeur of nature is among the most universal and easily \u00a0accessible routes to experiencing awe, an emotion that is closely \u00a0linked to spiritual practices and progress. A simple walk in a natural \u00a0setting can cause self-transcendence, especially if one pays close \u00a0attention and is not attending to a phone. Awe in nature may be \u00a0especially valuable for Gen Z because it counteracts the anxiety and \u00a0self-consciousness caused by a phone-based childhood. \u00a0There is a \u201cGod-shaped hole&quot; in every human heart. Or, at least, many \u00a0people feel a yearning for meaning, connection, and spiritual elevaion. A phone-based life often fills that hole with trivial and degrading ontent. The ancients advised us to be more deliberate in choosing expose ourselves to.&quot;<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>(tags: <a href='https:\/\/bookboard.io\/p:ajohnson1200\/t:attention'>attention<\/a> <a href='https:\/\/bookboard.io\/p:ajohnson1200\/t:technology'>technology<\/a> <a href='https:\/\/bookboard.io\/p:ajohnson1200\/t:family'>family<\/a> <a href='https:\/\/bookboard.io\/p:ajohnson1200\/t:internet'>internet<\/a> <a href='https:\/\/bookboard.io\/p:ajohnson1200\/t:children'>children<\/a> <a href='https:\/\/bookboard.io\/p:ajohnson1200\/t:addiction'>addiction<\/a> <a href='https:\/\/bookboard.io\/p:ajohnson1200\/t:'><\/a> <a href='https:\/\/bookboard.io\/p:ajohnson1200\/t:social'>social<\/a> <a href='https:\/\/bookboard.io\/p:ajohnson1200\/t:disease'>disease<\/a> <a href='https:\/\/bookboard.io\/p:ajohnson1200\/t:childhood'>childhood<\/a> <a href='https:\/\/bookboard.io\/p:ajohnson1200\/t:focus'>focus<\/a> )<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li><a href='https:\/\/bookboard.io\/book\/9798217168422'>Everything Is Tuberculosis The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection<\/a>\n<p>Great book, highly recommended. Quotes:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p>&quot;History is often imagined as a series of events, unfolding one after almost always results from a lengthy process &#8211; and the same could \u00a0be said for birth, or battle, or infection. Similarly, much of what \u00a0of individuals turns out to be the work of broad collaborations. We \u00a0love a narrative of the great individual whose life is shot through \u00a0with major events and who turns out to be either a villain or a hero, \u00a0but the world is inherently more complex than the narratives we \u00a0impose upon it, just as the reality of experience is inherently more \u00a0complex than the language we use to describe that reality.&quot;<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>&quot;I often think of these interdependent systems in the context of \u00a0own healthcare. Not long ago, I was walking in the backyard, \u00a0staring up at the night sky, when I happened to step on a nail that nail that \u00a0went right through my shoe and an inch into my foot. The next \u00a0morning, I drove on a good road to a clinic a few minutes from my \u00a0house, where I received a booster shot to eliminate the already small \u00a0chance that my mishap with the nail might result in tetanus. But in \u00a0order for this minor medical intervention to occur, so many systems \u00a0had to work in my favor: I needed healthcare access, of course-in \u00a0my case, a health insurance program that pays for basic preventative nurse who did my injection. I needed to live in a community with \u00a0 of robust systems to work perfectly in concert with each other &#8211; a phenomenon that ought not be a luxury in our world of abundance, and yet still somehow is. &quot;<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>(tags: <a href='https:\/\/bookboard.io\/p:ajohnson1200\/t:history'>history<\/a> <a href='https:\/\/bookboard.io\/p:ajohnson1200\/t:medicine'>medicine<\/a> <a href='https:\/\/bookboard.io\/p:ajohnson1200\/t:science'>science<\/a> <a href='https:\/\/bookboard.io\/p:ajohnson1200\/t:'><\/a> <a href='https:\/\/bookboard.io\/p:ajohnson1200\/t:systems'>systems<\/a> <a href='https:\/\/bookboard.io\/p:ajohnson1200\/t:disease'>disease<\/a> <a href='https:\/\/bookboard.io\/p:ajohnson1200\/t:healthcare'>healthcare<\/a> <a href='https:\/\/bookboard.io\/p:ajohnson1200\/t:tuberculosis'>tuberculosis<\/a> <a href='https:\/\/bookboard.io\/p:ajohnson1200\/t:public-health'>public-health<\/a> )<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Anxious Generation How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness Great book for anyone with teens. We&#8217;re going to look back at endless scrolling &amp; social apps as cancerous. So many quotes: &quot;My central claim in this book is that these two trends-overprotection \u00a0the real world and underprotection in &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/cephas.net\/blog\/2026\/01\/01\/what-ive-been-reading-december-2025\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">What I&#8217;ve been reading: December, 2025<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cephas.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3680"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cephas.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cephas.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cephas.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cephas.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3680"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cephas.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3682,"href":"https:\/\/cephas.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3680\/revisions\/3682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cephas.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cephas.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cephas.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}