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AI Superprompts and "The Anxious Generation"

AI Superprompts and The Anxious GenerationBACK BY POPULAR DEMAND!

Wes Fryer has agreed to share his insights on fact-checking with superprompts by digging into the facts around Jonathan Haidt's book, The Anxious Generation. Join us!

This session builds on Mike Caulfield’s SIFT / Deep Background work with AI “superprompts,” but focuses it on one influential book: The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt. We’ll explore how AI co-reasoning tools can help us fact-check high-profile claims about youth, smartphones, and mental health - and how to bring those skills into conversations with students, parents, and communities. Using Caulfield’s pre-built SIFT superprompt, we’ll walk through how to test Haidt’s strongest claims in "The Anxious Generation," surface both supporting and critical evidence, and reflect on what “responsible interpretation” looks like when a book is driving headlines and policy proposals. Then we’ll move into an interactive breakout activity where participants work in small groups to adapt or extend the superprompt for their own questions and contexts. This webinar is a remix of our "normally scheduled" MediaEd club webinar from November 3rd, "Fact Checking with AI Superprompts."

You’ll leave this session with:

  1. A clear sense of Haidt’s core claims about phones, play, and youth mental health—and how they differ in “moderate” vs. “strong” forms.
  2. Hands-on experience using an AI superprompt to fact-check and contextualize key graphs, statistics, and narratives from The Anxious Generation.
  3. A curated set of critical and supportive sources (including scientific reviews and journalistic critiques) you can share with students, families, or colleagues.
  4. Practical strategies for classroom or community use, including how to scaffold SIFT-style prompting, group inquiry, and reflective discussion about phones, anxiety, and policy proposals like “no smartphones before 14.”
     

Date: Monday, November 17, 2025

Time: 12 pm EST | 6 pm CET | 10:30 pm IST 

LOCATION: Register here for the webinar series.

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Recommended Media (please preview before attending)

  1. The Anxious Generation (English WikiPedia entry)

  2. The Panic Over Smartphones Doesn't Help Teens (The Atlantic, Candice L Odgers, May 2024)

  3. Deep Background: A "Superprompt" to change the way you use LLMs (A research project by Mike Caulfield)
  4. SIFT Toolbox on GitHub

Optional Media (enrich your learning)

  1. U.S. CDC Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) reports on adolescent mental health (2011–2021)
    – Core data behind many of the “hockey-stick” graphs of rising sadness, self-harm, and suicidality among U.S. teens, especially girls. 

  2. APA Health Advisory on Social Media Use in Adolescence (May 2023)
    – A consensus document summarizing what major professional bodies say (and don’t say) about social media, risk, and mental health. 

  3. Social media use and its impact on adolescent mental health: An umbrella review of the evidence (ScienceDirect, Patti M. Valkenburg, Adrian Meier, Ine Beyens, April 2022)

  4. podcast: “Deep Background: Using AI as a Co-Reasoning Partner with Mike Caulfield” (Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, Episode 590, 2 Oct 2025)

  5. video: Interview: “AI is less like programming and more like spreadsheets” — AACE Review interview with Caulfield on Deep Background and future skills (44 min, 13 Aug 2025) - transcript

  6. book: Verified: How to Think Straight, Get Duped Less, and Make Better Decisions about What to Believe Online (Caulfield & Wineburg)

  7. Mike Caufield’s SubStack: mikecaulfield.substack.com 

Host: Dr. Wesley Fryer 

Wes Fryer of Charlotte, North CarolinaWesley Fryer, PhD, is a middle school STEM and media literacy middle school teacher at Providence Day School in Charlotte, North Carolina. As an educational technology “early adopter / innovator” since the late 1990s, Wes continues to share regularly on social media. Learn more on wesfryer.com.

Please get in touch with us if you want to suggest future Media Club meeting topics to discuss an article, book, podcast, video or any media related to our interests.

Dr. Wes Fryer, Webinar Series Manager | wes.fryer@providenceday.org  

* AI Image (for this webinar) generated by Wes Fryer using ChatGPT 5.