A new book by Jonathan Haidt

“I can summarize the book in two sentences: We have overprotected children in the real world and underprotected them in the virtual world. ” ~Jonathan Haidt

Anyone who knows me, or who has been in one of my groups or classes on addiction and addictive family systems, has had the experience of me talking about (translation: going on and on about) the painful downfall of teen mental health in our culture. And, a big part of my rant inevitably includes the growth and consumption of our teens’ time and attention to social media and screens.

It might also be true that I pontificate just a wee bit about how damaging the age of “No way, child! You can’t go outside and play! There are bad guys everywhere,” has been to young people’s development and early life experience. Especially when the facts belie that urban myth: most neighborhoods and parks are less dangerous than they were decades ago.

Many of us from previous generations bemoan the loss of what we experienced as kids: running out the door first thing in the morning to hang out with friends from the neighborhood. Here we engaged in unstructured play, relying on our imaginations and found experiences to form our sun-up to sun-down memory making. We’d run inside for lunch or snacks, sometimes all together at one house, or to our own, where we’d commit to meeting back outside as soon as we were finished eating. Going home occurred when the street lights came on or when a parent would yell, or whistle, signaling the close of that day’s adventures. We’d venture out on foot, on bikes, on scooters and even on old style skateboards, though most of us would never wander beyond whatever boundaries were set by the strictist parent (one block; the neighborhood park; the closest school playground. We all had that boundary.). Our experiences allowed us to not only engage in great fun, but to nurture our creativity and imaginations, learn about developing relationships, walk through challenges and relational issues and grow our sense of what it meant to be alive and part of a bigger world.

Rainy days could feel like life sentences. We were confined to the house as though a jail cell. “I’m bored. There’s nothing to do!” we’d wail to our parents, usually our mothers. “Color. Play with your stuffed animals. Build something.” we were told. But what we were really saying when we said we were bored wasn’t that we couldn’t find something, anything, to do. It was that we missed our friends. Missed hanging out and just being with them. Missed being outside. Missed the trees, bushes, caterpillars and infinite moments of “beingness” that were our lives as kids, lost in the most exquisite of ways in that unstructured and endless adventure land of our neighborhoods. Of course I know that many of us grew up in neighborhoods that were hardly idyllic, but even there we played catch and found bugs and rode bikes.

What, dear god, have we done to that world?

When was the last time you drove down a neighborhood street and saw kids outside playing? Sadly, somewhere along the line, our culture began to focus on the many evils that lurked in every car, neighborhood, heart and moment, which therefore meant that we must keep our children inside unless there was an adult with them, preferably holding on to them in every moment. Rather than being the rich realm for expansive imaginations to grow and practice new skills, ideas and creativity, the world outside the front door was perilous. In the new reality families exist within, parents who let their children go outside unsupervised are considered irresponsible and negligent. Unstructured play, experiencing the outdoors regularly and without organized activities and adults determining the experience, has practically disappeared from the culture in most locations. Regretfully, the growth of screens — both their size and their 24/7 use, made keeping youth inside and occupied all that much easier. It’s an unfathomable loss that has been completely normalized. And the results are disastrous, with the repercussions being clear seemingly wherever we look.

Imagine, then, how thrilled I was when I saw that a new book, by a renowned social scientist/psychologist, researcher and author, not to mention highly regarded professor, was being released addressing both these issues. Really really thrilled.

This wonderful book does more than just discuss the all too obvious issues of phone/screen addiction and the impact of social media on the brain development and emotional state of teens since the advent of the iphone. (He in fact calls their experience the “phone based childhood”) It also goes into the many ways that we have robbed youth in the last 25 plus years of the opportunity to gather with other children and youth in unstructured and free-style play. In fact, play is the WORK of childhood. It is the most significant element of the development of the brain, synapse connection, nervous system and cooperative bonding. Not the least of the problematic outcomes of having forsaken this important element of growing up is the unbearable level of anxiousness and resulting depression that plague our youth.

If you have kids currently, I urge you to read this. If you have friends with kids, I urge you to give it to them as a gift because you care about them, not to change them in any way. If you are thinking about having kids, I urge you to read it now. And if your kids are grown, I urge you to read it and stop blaming teens for being who we’ve created them to be. In other words, if you are alive, read this book. We can only change the issues contributing to the widespread pain consuming not only teens, but adults, if we become aware of them and truly commit to doing things differently one day at a time.