According to Scheffler, he is Berkeley’s faculty since 1981, “It is what I am calling a ‘new epidemic,’ and that the data supports using that term, on college campuses. We need a heightened national awareness of this very serious epidemic. Anxiety has really very dire consequences for these students.
he first began thinking about student anxiety 10 years ago, when he looked out at the 100 students in his lecture hall and saw faces stricken with worry.

More than half the students were not looking at me, they were looking at their phones or their computers. I told everyone to turn their phones off and put their computers away. I had four or five students who were so addicted, they could not do it. I actually had to go and take their phones away from them.

I said to myself, ‘You know, something’s going on here. That was the beginning. And then I watched for several years. I want the faculty and the university leadership here at Berkeley and across the country to know that this epidemic is out there, and they need to understand it”.

According to social psychologist, Jonathan Haidt to discuss his book ‘The Coddling of the American Mind’,” How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure. much of American society is in the grip of a culture of safety that prevents young people from learning how to contend with challenges, difficulties, and contradictions”.

Home