From the author of the provocative and influential Glow Kids, this is revolutionary research that reveals technology’s damaging effect on mental illness and suicide rates—and offers a way out.
DIGITAL MADNESS:
How Big Tech Is Driving Our Mental Health Pandemic—and the Ancient Prescription for Sanity
by Nicholas Kardaras
St. Martin’s Press, September 2022
Dr. Nicholas Kardaras is at the forefront of researchers sounding the alarm about the impact of excessive technology on younger brains. In Glow Kids, he described what screen time does to children, calling it “digital heroin”. Now, in DIGITAL MADNESS, Dr. Kardaras turns his attention to our teens and young adults.
For them, the digital world is a bubble of content you’re meant to “like” or “dislike.” Two choices might be considered easy, but just how detrimental is this binary thinking to mental health? From body image to politics to personal relationships to decisions, the world doesn’t exist in an “up or down,” “black or white,” “good or bad” dynamic, and social media shouldn’t either. DIGITAL MADNESS explores how technology promotes sedentary isolation, polarization, rewards extremes on both sides, and has spawned a mental health and suicide pandemic from which enormous corporations profit.
Dr. Kardaras offers a path out of our crisis, using examples from classical philosophy that encourage resilience, critical thinking, concentration, and other beneficial habits of mind. DIGITAL MADNESS is a crucial book for parents, educators, therapists, public health professionals, and policy makers who are searching for ways to restore our young people’s mental and physical health.
Dr. Nicholas Kardaras is one of the country’s foremost addiction experts. He was a professor at Stony Brook Medicine and has developed clinical treatment programs all over the country. He is the founder and Chief Clinical Officer of Maui Recovery in Hawaii, Omega Recovery in Austin and the Launch House in New York. He is also a frequent contributor to Psychology Today and FOX News, and has appeared on Good Morning America, ABC’s 20/20, CNN, the CBS Evening News, PBS, NPR and FOX & Friends.
Cancel culture. Chances are you’ve heard about this a lot lately, but what really is it? Blacklisting celebrities? Censorship? Up until this point, this has been the general consensus in the media. But it’s time to raise the bar on our definition—to think of cancel culture less as scandal or suppression and more as an essential means of democratic expression and accountability. THE CASE FOR CANCEL CULTURE offers a fresh progressive lens in favor of cancel culture as a tool for activism and change. It will help readers reflect on and learn the long history of canceling (the Boston Tea Party was cancel culture); how the left and right uniquely equip it as part of their political toolkits; how intersections of society wield it for justice; and ultimately how it levels the playing field for the everyday person’s voice to matter. Why should we care? Because in a world where protest and free speech are being challenged by the most powerful institutions, those without power deserve to understand the nuance and importance of this democratic tool available to them. Rather than seeing cancel culture as a nasty byproduct of the digital age, it should be seen as a powerful instrument for change. Ernest Owens shows readers exactly how with examples from politics, pop culture, and his own personal experience. Readers will walk away from this first-of-its-kind exploration not despising cancel culture but embracing it as a form of democratic expression that’s always been leading the charge in liberating us all.
According to the Pew Research Center, in the US alone, the share of Americans who say having conversations with those they disagree with politically is “stressful and frustrating” has increased dramatically in recent years. As individuals, we are finding it increasingly hard to engage in civil discourse to negotiate our struggles and conflicts. We are stuck in difficult, intractable challenges and conflicts – with the characteristic fear and anger, entrenched positions, and destructive fighting – in all aspects of our lives.
Bestselling children’s book author Susan Verde turns her attention from children to the adults who care for them. The stories in THE WORDS THAT MATTER are filled with honesty and vulnerability, as Verde shares both the words of her own inner critic and what she has learned about approaching that voice with curiosity and compassion. She shares ways to rethink how we speak to ourselves in order to cultivate our own self-love and show our children that self-love is not only achievable but necessary.
Stitch dictionaries are one of the most valuable references on a knitter’s bookshelf, holding all the information needed to begin a project, hone your skills, and expand your knitting mastery. In the truest sense, a stitch dictionary is a resource and wealth of information—filled with the basics to get you started, the classics you rely on, and even some new stitches that stoke your creativity. In THE ULTIMATE ALL-AROUND STITCH DICTIONARY, Wendy Bernard packs all the stitch patterns you could ever wish for into a single, handy new volume.