The Anxious Generation

Highlights

By designing a firehose of addictive content that entered through kids’ eyes and ears, and by displacing physical play and in-person socializing, these companies have rewired childhood and changed human development on an almost unimaginable scale. The most intense period of this rewiring was 2010 to 2015, although the story I will tell begins with the rise of fearful and overprotective parenting in the 1980s and continues through the COVID pandemic to the present day. (p. 3)

The oldest members of Gen Z began puberty around 2009, when several tech trends converged: the rapid spread of high-speed broadband in the 2000s, the arrival of the iPhone in 2007, and the new age of hyper-viralized social media. The last of these was kicked off in 2009 by the arrival of the “like” and “retweet” (or “share”) buttons, which transformed the social dynamics of the online world. Before 2009, social media was most useful as a way to keep up with your friends, and with fewer instant and reverberating feedback functions it generated much less of the toxicity we see today. A fourth trend began just a few years later, and it hit girls much harder than boys: the increased prevalence of posting images of oneself, after smartphones added front-facing cameras (2010) and Facebook acquired Instagram (2012), boosting its popularity. This greatly expanded the number of adolescents posting carefully curated photos and videos of their lives for their peers and strangers, not just to see, but to judge. (p. 6)

The Great Rewiring is not just about changes in the technologies that shape children’s days and minds. There’s a second plotline here: the well-intentioned and disastrous shift toward overprotecting children and restricting their autonomy in the real world. Children need a great deal of free play to thrive. It’s an imperative that’s evident across all mammal species. The small-scale challenges and setbacks that happen during play are like an inoculation that prepares children to face much larger challenges later. But for a variety of historical and sociological reasons, free play began to decline in the 1980s, and the decline accelerated in the 1990s. Adults in the United States, the U.K., and Canada increasingly began to assume that if they ever let a child walk outside unsupervised, the child would attract kidnappers and sex offenders. Unsupervised outdoor play declined at the same time that the personal computer became more common and more inviting as a place for spending free time. (p. 7)

My central claim in this book is that these two trends—overprotection in the real world and underprotection in the virtual world—are the major reasons why children born after 1995 became the anxious generation. (p. 9)

Gray defines “free play” as “activity that is freely chosen and directed by the participants and undertaken for its own sake, not consciously pursued to achieve ends that are distinct from the activity itself.” Physical play, outdoors and with other children of mixed ages, is the healthiest, most natural, most beneficial sort of play. Play with some degree of physical risk is essential because it teaches children how to look after themselves and each other. Children can only learn how to not get hurt in situations where it is possible to get hurt, such as wrestling with a friend, having a pretend sword fight, or negotiating with another child to enjoy a seesaw when a failed negotiation can lead to pain in one’s posterior, as well as embarrassment. When parents, teachers, and coaches get involved, it becomes less free, less playful, and less beneficial. Adults usually can’t stop themselves from directing and protecting. (p. 52)

A key feature of free play is that mistakes are generally not very costly. Everyone is clumsy at first, and everyone makes mistakes every day. Gradually, from trial and error, and with direct feedback from playmates, elementary school students become ready to take on the greater social complexity of middle school. It’s not homework that gets them ready, nor is it classes on handling their emotions. Such adult-led lessons may provide useful information, but information doesn’t do much to shape a developing brain. Play does. This relates to a key CBT insight: Experience, not information, is the key to emotional development. It is in unsupervised, child-led play where children best learn to tolerate bruises, handle their emotions, read other children’s emotions, take turns, resolve conflicts, and play fair. Children are intrinsically motivated to acquire these skills because they want to be included in the playgroup and keep the fun going. (p. 53)

Figure 3.8. Time spent parenting by U.S. mothers. Parenting time suddenly increased in the mid-1990s—the beginning of Gen Z. (Source: Ramey & Ramey, 2000.) (p. 83)

On the internet, everyone is the same age, which is no particular age. This is a major reason why a phone-based adolescence is badly mismatched with the needs of adolescents. (p. 105)

As an initial proposal, to start a conversation, I suggest that we focus on even-year birthdays from ages 6 to 18. We might make a big deal out of those birthdays by linking them to new freedoms, new responsibilities, and significant increases in allowance. We want children to feel that they are climbing a ladder with clearly labeled rungs, rather than just having an annual party with games, cake, and presents. It might look something like this: (p. 106)

• Age 6: The age of family responsibility. Children are formally recognized as important contributors to the household, not just as dependents. As an example, they can be given a small list of chores and a small weekly allowance that is contingent upon their performance of those chores.[19] (p. 107)

• Age 8: The age of local freedom. Children gain the freedom to play and hang out in groups without adult supervision. They should show that they can take care of each other, and they begin running local errands, if there are stores within a short walk or bike ride. They should not be given adult cell phones, but they could be given a phone or watch designed for children that would allow them to call or text a small number of people (such as their parents and siblings). (p. 107)

• Age 10: The age of roaming. Preteens gain the freedom to roam more widely, perhaps equivalent to what their parents were allowed to do at the age of 8 or 9. They should show good judgment and do more to help their families. Consistent with their increased mobility and responsibility, a flip phone or other basic phone with few apps and no internet access might be given as a birthday present. They should not have most afternoons filled with adult-led “enrichment” activities; they need time to hang out with friends in person. (p. 107)

• Age 12: The age of apprenticeship. At 12, which is around the age that many societies begin rites of initiation, adolescents should begin finding more adult mentors and role models beyond their parents. Adolescents should be encouraged to start earning their own money by doing chores for neighbors or relatives, such as raking leaves or working as a mother’s helper for a neighbor with an infant or toddler. They might be encouraged to spend more time with trusted relatives, without their parents present. (p. 107)

• Age 14: The beginning of high school. The 14th birthday comes around the time that high school begins, and this is a major transition during which independence increases along with academic pressure, time pressure, and social pressure. Activities such as working for pay and joining an athletic team are good ways to discover that hard work leads to tangible and pleasurable rewards. The beginning of high school would be a reasonable target for a national norm (not a law) about the minimum age at which teens get their first smartphone.[20] (p. 108)

• Age 16: The beginning of internet adulthood. This should be a big year of independence, conditional on showing a history of responsibility and growth since the previous step. The U.S. Congress should undo the mistake it made in 1998 when it made 13 the age at which children can sign contracts with corporations to open accounts and give away their data without their parents’ knowledge or consent. I believe the age should be raised to 16 and enforced. The 16th birthday would become a major milestone at which we say to teens, “You can now get a driver’s license, and you can now sign certain kinds of contracts without any legal requirement for parental consent. You can now open social media accounts as well.” (There are good arguments for waiting until 18, but I think 16 would be the right minimum age to be established by law.) (p. 108)

• Age 18: The beginning of legal adulthood. This birthday would retain all of its legal significance including the beginning of voting, eligibility for military service, and the ability to sign contracts and make life decisions. Because this birthday falls near high school graduation in the United States, it should be treated in van Gennep’s terms as both a separation from childhood and the beginning of a transition period into the next phase of life. (p. 108)

• Age 21: Full legal adulthood. This birthday is the last one with any legal significance in the United States and many countries. At this age one can buy alcohol and cigarettes. One can enter casinos and sign up for internet sports gambling, The person is now a full adult in the eyes of the law. (p. 108)

From a spiritual perspective, social media is a disease of the mind. Spiritual practices and virtues, such as forgiveness, grace, and love, are a cure. (p. 211)

Our kids can do so much more than we let them. Our culture of fear has kept this truth from us. They are like racehorses stuck in the stable. It’s time to let them out. (p. 256)

In The Gardener and the Carpenter, the developmental psychologist Alison Gopnik notes that the word “parenting” was essentially never used until the 1950s, and only became popular in the 1970s. For nearly all of human history, people grew up in environments where they observed many people caring for many children. There was plenty of local wisdom and no need for parenting experts. (p. 267)

Gopnik says that parents began to think like carpenters who have a clear idea in mind of what they are trying to achieve. They look carefully at the materials they have to work with, and it is their job to assemble those materials into a finished product that can be judged by everyone against clear standards: Are the right angles perfect? Does the door work? Gopnik notes that “messiness and variability are a carpenter’s enemies; precision and control are her allies. Measure twice, cut once.” (p. 267)

Gopnik says that a better way to think about child rearing is as a gardener. Your job is to “create a protected and nurturing space for plants to flourish.” It takes some work, but you don’t have to be a perfectionist. Weed the garden, water it, and then step back and the plants will do their thing, unpredictably and often with delightful surprises. Gopnik urges us to embrace the messiness and unpredictability of raising children: Our job as parents is not to make a particular kind of child. Instead, our job is to provide a protected space of love, safety, and stability in which children of many unpredictable kinds can flourish. Our job is not to shape our children’s minds; it’s to let those minds explore all the possibilities that the world allows. Our job is not to tell children how to play; it’s to give them the toys. . . . We can’t make children learn, but we can let them learn. (p. 268)

For Parents of Children Ages 6–13 (Elementary and Middle School)

• Practice letting your kids out of your sight without them having a way to reach you. 

• Encourage sleepovers, and don’t micromanage them, although if the friend brings a phone, hold on to it until the friend leaves, otherwise they’ll have a phone-based sleepover. (p. 272)

• Encourage walking to school in a group. This can begin as early as first grade if the walk is easy and there is an older child to be responsible. (p. 273)

• After school is for free play. Try not to fill up most afternoons with adult-supervised “enrichment” activities.  (p. 273)

• Go camping. (p. 273)

• Find a sleepaway camp with no devices and no safetyism. (p. 273)

• Form child-friendly neighborhoods and playborhoods. (p. 274)