27 | SOCIAL ASPECTS OF THE SCIENCES XV

Over the past decade, a growing body of psychological, medical, and sociological research has highlighted significant shifts in the mental and emotional well-being of adolescents, particularly within Generation Z. Rising rates of anxiety, depression, self-harm, eating disorders, and social withdrawal have sparked widespread concern across many countries, with some commentators going so far as to describe the current moment as a psychological epidemic. One influential account, put forward by psychologist Jonathan Haidt, attributes these trends to the “great rewiring of childhood”: the profound transformation of adolescent experience in the era of smartphones, social media, and digital immersion.

This course aims to critically examine diagnoses. Are we witnessing a genuine crisis in adolescent development, or is the situation more complex? While the negative trends deserve attention, we also ask: are there positive developments being overlooked? To what extent are the challenges facing adolescents shaped by broader cultural and generational shifts – including those affecting the family and adulthood?

The course invites interdisciplinary dialogue to explore key questions: What role do digital technologies play in adolescent life, given their diverse uses? How have cultural narratives like Haidt’s gained traction, and are they being accepted too uncritically? How have collective images of childhood, adolescence, and adulthood evolved, and how do they shape contemporary expectations? Might some of the alarm reflect adult insecurities or a reluctance to rethink outdated models of development, agency, and social life? To what extent, as psychologist and psychotherapist Matteo Lancini suggests, is adolescent suffering rooted in adult fragility – in the inability to tolerate or empathize with young people’s difficult emotions?

This discussion, however, is only part of the picture. Major cultural shifts – such as the aging of societies, the environmental crisis, increasing individualism, political polarization, economic stagnation, the growing multiethnic composition of societies, and evolving gender and identity dynamics – also shape adolescent identities, expectations, and behaviors in new ways. How do these factors contribute to disengagement or radicalization, and how do they shape adolescents’ sense (or loss) of the future?

By welcoming scholars from psychology, education, philosophy, history, sociology, anthropology, neuroscience, and beyond, this course creates a space to explore these and other questions, encouraging a rethinking of adolescence in a rapidly changing world. Our goal is not only to understand the challenges young people face today, with a critical, yet curious and open eye, but also to explore constructive and nuanced ways of supporting their development and agency in the face of uncertainty.