Zach Rausch is Associate Research Scientist at NYU-Stern School of Business, and chief researcher to Social Psychologist Jonathan Haidt. Zach worked for two years as Communications Manager at Heterodox Academy. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in sociology and religious studies and a Master of Science in psychological science from SUNY New Paltz. Zach previously studied Buddhism in Bodh Gaya, India, worked in Wilderness Therapy, and was a direct care worker in two psychiatric group homes.

Why I Care:
Because I know how debilitating and isolating mental illness can be, and how much more capable we are than we often believe. And how sometimes, all we need is someone to put a little faith in us.

Childhood Free Play Memory:
Shaking, gripping onto a rope at the top of a cliff, preparing to rappel for the first time.

Lenore Skenazy is president of Let Grow, the nonprofit promoting childhood independence she co-founded with Jonathan Haidt, Peter Gray, and Daniel Shuchman.

It was her 2008 newspaper column “Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride the Subway Alone” that landed Lenore on every possible talk show, leading her to write Free-Range Kids, the book that started a movement. She claims, “Our kids are safer, smarter, and stronger than our culture gives them credit for.” The book’s Second Edition came out last year with a forward by Haidt and his family, who claim it changed their lives (for the better!).

Lenore lives in New York City with her husband and beloved computer. Her children are grown and gainfully employed, which is good for proof-of-concept purposes, but she misses them. She contributed many of the ideas in The Anxious Generation for improving experience in the real world in chapters nine through eleven.

Why I Care:
Treating kids as fragile is making them so.

Childhood Free Play Memory:
It wasn't just playing that I loved, it was riding my bike to the drugstore for Bun Bars. NOTHING in adult life (with the exception, perhaps, of raising two kids) compares to the joy of getting a Bun Bar, on my own or with my friends, and a copy of Mad Magazine

Born and raised in Bulgaria, I owe my life in the States to the kindness of a Mormon couple. Most of my career has been in graphic design and art direction, though my education includes an English degree with an editing minor. I met Jon on Twitter, where I kept saying that The Righteous Mind was worth seven years of therapy. He took me up on my offer to create jonathanhaidt.com. I've been working for Scott Galloway, another NYU Stern professor, going on eight years as a ghost-writer, editor, and social media manager. I've been evangelizing for The Coddling, and I edited The Anxious Generation. I'm excited about how practical and helpful it is, especially as we roll it out into a movement.

Why I Care:
For my 12-year-old nephew's sake.

Childhood Free Play Memory:
Climbing my grandparents' apple tree as grandpa yelled from below: "You will fall!"

Dave Cicirelli is a conceptual artist and author with a focus on experiential; works where audience interactions create its meaning. Sometimes beautiful. Sometimes collaborative. Often funny. But always exploring and challenging ideas of perception and assumption.

Social Media and selfie culture has often been a focus of his work, most notably with Fakebook: A True Story Based On Actual Lies. The precient 2009 social media hoax and 2013 memoir that comedically explored issues of Fake News, Social Media Influencers, and Catfishing before any had a name. This interest in perception and motivated reasoning led him to Jonathan Haidt's work, and ultimately to a friendship and a series of collaborations.

He established Infinity Cube Studios, named after his signature work, as a way to explore new creative grounds.

Why I Care:
As an experiential artist, I've seen audience values shift from the experience to the artifact of the experience, and the harm of over-investing in a virtual world.

Childhood Free Play Memory:
I was part of a bike gang. A bicycle gang that is. Me and the neighborhood kids would ride with abandon until the street lamps came on getting into all sorts of productive mischief along the way. Our only fear of surveillance was my mom's self-named "network of spies," also known as the neighbors. As I got older, I learned it was all a bluff—and the only informant she needed was the look on my face when I came home by dinner.

Freya India is a 24 year-old writer based in London and a columnist for Quillette. While working as a waitress after university, she started pitching to various publications about social media and the problems she saw facing her generation, Gen Z. Soon she decided to start her own. She is now the author of the Substack GIRLS, where she writes about the challenges girls face in the modern world. GIRLS has evolved into a global, engaged community of concerned parents and young women wanting to change course. After reading his work for years, Freya connected with Jonathan in 2021 through the author Helen Pluckrose. They shared the same concerns, and he quotes her in his chapter on girls in The Anxious Generation.

Why I Care:
My carefree, phone-free childhood ended abruptly in my pre-teens, when social media changed everything. I was a sensitive and introverted child, and I know what it’s like to not feel cut out for a world suddenly obsessed with performance and online validation. I feel for the children who have never known anything else. I suppose I want to talk about the pain of losing your teenage years to a phone-based world, and feeling nostalgic for a time you never knew.

Childhood Free Play Memory:
Hours spent with my dad pushing me on a makeshift swing we found, made out of a fraying piece of rope and a plank of wood tied to a tree. I want my future children to experience that kind of giddy joy at something so simple.