Reclaiming childhood: how we can help 'the anxious generation'

By now you might have come across social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s bestselling book , his The Atlantic article ‘’ or his interviews and research papers. If you haven’t, search them out, as his argument that childhood has been rewired is clear and vital, and I completely agree with his provocative call to action. His premise is the question that we’ve all had on our minds and in our hearts: why are we experiencing an epidemic of teen mental illness?

As a parent of three GenZers who have been part of this huge social experiment, I’ve focused on the areas of Haidt’s work that have most helped me understand where we are now – and why it has felt so hard to grapple with the ‘new childhood’ in a world of smartphones and, as you’ll see, less play.

Haidt’s argument, based on his extensive , is that the devastating deterioration in our children’s mental health that began in the early 2010s can be explained by the twin dynamics of the adolescent adoption of smartphones and a shift away from the ‘play-based childhood’ that used to be the bedrock of healthy child development. The move away from lots of independent free play, where kids had adventures and learnt about resilience, responsibility and a whole host of social skills, to a phone-based childhood has pushed them off the time-trodden path to becoming competent, adaptive, thriving adults. As Haidt says, we’ve overprotected our kids in the real world and underprotected them online, with devastating consequences for their mental health. It’s time to turn the tide.

The shows that just as in the US, UK rates of adolescent depression, anxiety and self-harm have risen sharply since 2010, with larger increases in self-harm and mood disorders for girls and anxiety for boys. Haidt argues that a ‘Great Rewiring’ took place between 2010 and 2015 as smartphone usage among teens took off and phones changed from a tool to communicate with and play a few games on to a device that gave our children 24/7 access to the world – while the world could see and have access to them via high-speed connectivity, social media apps and front-facing cameras.

As the parent of three children born after 1995, a parenting educator and a smartphone user, I’ve battled with the ‘screen problem’ for the past 15 years. Mixed in with the excitement about all the great things new technology brings, there was a fear that all was not quite right.

My children got smartphones in their early adolescence, in the mid 2010s, just like their peers (73 per cent of teens in 2015 had a smartphone). Relatively quickly, my girls were heads down on social media and my son was gaming in the kitchen with headphones on. Absorbed by Candy Crush, Minecraft, various first-person shooter games, Snapchat and Instagram, kids could spend every minute of the day online.

To rein back screen use and promote balance, conversation, family time, offline interests, fresh air, sleep, play and a whole range of ‘normal’ childhood activities, we came up with rules: gaming only in the kitchen, no phones at the table, no double dipping of screens, homework and chores before screens, no phones in the bedroom, etc. Despite having whiteboards filled with dos and don’ts for the children to refer to, we argued about screens and there were plenty of clandestine operations to break the rules.

We weren’t alone – parenting conversations were dominated by the problem of ‘screen time’. It was exhausting, frustrating, eroded family time and connection, caused undue stress and left us doubting our ability to parent while our children’s mental health suffered. All children had smartphones, we were absorbed by the perceived benefits of being online (but social media is not the internet and having a smartphone in your pocket is not the same as a desktop) and to take their devices away meant social isolation. It seems that we fell into a set of collective action traps.

Haidt says that smartphones are experience-blockers that get in the way of vital developmental processes. But there is more going on than just giving children the ‘internet in their pocket’. Since the turn of the century, we became more risk averse and more protective of our children as a gradual societal shift away from ‘community’ played out and we reined in our children’s independence. Our kids were more likely to be off their bikes, off the streets, out of the woods, inside or in supervised structured activities and, since 2012, hiding out online. All this has hindered learning and deprived them of developmentally important experiences that teach problem-solving, risk tolerance, social skills, connection, turn-taking, creativity and resilience. Instead, ‘in the brief period between 2010 and 2015, childhood in most developed countries was rewired into a form that was more sedentary, solitary, virtual and incompatible with human development.’

Having a smartphone in your pocket during adolescence is a particularly bad idea. The stage between nine and 15 years old is a critical and sensitive period in brain development and makes teens more vulnerable to the many challenges of a life lived online. Teens are naturally attuned to social feedback and comparison as part of figuring out who they are and where they belong, and social media – with its pressure for likes, comments, validation and its often-manipulated reality – can play havoc with their self-confidence and self-esteem. It’s hard for us to ignore the pull of likes and notifications, the ‘next episode’ button on Netflix or having a quick check of Instagram when the task we’re working on seems hard. But for a teen whose brain is still developing, especially in areas related to impulse control and self-regulation, it’s almost impossible. Teens are also missing out on the face-to-face interactions they need to experience during puberty in order to develop social skills and meaningful relationships.

There is a huge opportunity cost to a screen-based childhood. For every hour spent on screens (and the average teen spends five hours a day just on social media, including TikTok and YouTube), that’s an hour that our teens are not doing something else. They’re not concentrating on and absorbing what’s going on around them, focusing on a thought, a book, nurturing an offline interest or passion, and perhaps most importantly they’re not talking face to face, with all the relational experience it provides. They’re not getting enough sleep, playing outside, taking risks and making mistakes in the real world, all of which are important for their development. Another opportunity cost of giving their attention away, checking notifications, getting interrupted and being absorbed online is that academic achievement is suffering. Geometry is hardly ever more interesting than TikTok.

‘Play is the work of childhood,’ said US television personality Fred Rogers. He understood that for all children one of the most important ways they learn and develop is through play. In a safe and simple setting, they practise many of the skills they’ll need to be successful adults. Throughout their childhood (all the way to adulthood), kids need plenty of opportunities for unstructured, unsupervised risky play. They need to practise, mess up, make up and do it all over again and we need to let them have a go (age appropriately). ‘Children learn through play to connect, synchronise and take turns,’ Haidt says. ‘They enjoy attunement (our ability to be aware of and understand our children’s needs) and need enormous quantities of it.’ Social media, by contrast, ‘is mostly asynchronous and performative. It inhibits attunement and leaves heavy users starving for social connection.’ Interestingly, it’s risky, ‘thrilling’ play that seems to be the most effective kind for overcoming childhood anxieties and building social, emotional and physical competence. As we’ve hovered over our children or pulled them inside to keep them safe, participate in organised activities or to do more homework, unsupervised exploration, hanging out and memory-making have declined. It’s time to set them free.

Perhaps the most tragic aspect of this rewiring is the sudden and rapid increase in teens who agree with the statement that ‘life often feels meaningless’ and where everything feels in flux. Girls may be more negatively impacted by social media with its comparisons and increased quantity but lower quality of social interactions, while for boys there is more harm from exposure to porn or hiding out in a world of video games (although some successfully use video games to ‘strengthen their real-world packs’). But they’re all pulled out of real-world communities and into online ‘networks’ that can feel shallow and rapidly shifting. They feel a diminished sense of belonging, meaning or connection.

Haidt believes that smartphones are experience-blockers, and these experiences are important for our children’s development, health and wellbeing. We’re not shutting down the internet, but we are guiding and teaching our kids to be responsible digital citizens and, as we’ve found and felt, we can’t do it alone. He is optimistic that if families, schools and communities work together, we can roll back the phone-based childhood, and quite quickly too.

Here are his four norms that he believes would break the back of this collective-action problem:

No smartphones before senior school. You can have a flip phone to have contact, but do not give a child the entire internet in their pocket.
No social media until 16. Do not let them go through puberty on social media. There is no way to make social media safe for children. It’s performative, requires them to be their own brand managers and they’re exposed to things that they can’t unsee.
Phone-free schools. Schools are for learning, and the greatest distraction device of all time shouldn’t enter the classroom. Phones should be out of reach for the entire day – teachers can’t compete with TikTok.
Far more independent free play and responsibility in the real world, just as everyone did in the 1990s. If we’re going to replace the phone-based childhood, we need to work hard to provide our kids with a fun and adventurous one.

Just as we’ve worried together that our kids are always on their phones or grumpy when they’re off, are more anxious, have shortened attention spans, are obsessed about their appearance and are seeing inappropriate things online, we need to work together to reverse the damage, bring back their childhood and help them develop a healthy relationship with their digital devices while they thrive in the real world.

Many schools in the UK have adopted new phone-free policies. If yours hasn’t yet, get together with other parents and work with the school to change the policy. Sometimes it starts with a parent survey, discussion or parents working together as they’ve done with the Smartphone Free Childhood movement. Change can happen quickly, and the benefits do too.

I believe that Jonathan Haidt’s work is important and that his argument is compelling. I also know that this is hard stuff, especially if you have a 13-year-old who is absorbed by their smartphone. Here are a few things we can do to help this transition as we reclaim our family time and their childhood.

Connection. For our children to be open to our influence, they need to feel unconditionally loved, safe, secure and connected. Focus on consistent positive interactions with your children through a kind word and a hug, validating their feelings, quickly repairing mistakes, actively listening with empathy, setting limits with respect, showing interest and spending (screen-free!) time with them. Connection-building is a long game that we play out in .

Communicate consistently and openly. Talk often and honestly about the risks and rewards of online life. Have the difficult chats about porn, sextortion, graphic images, dopamine, algorithms – nothing is off-limits. Do your research, start early and age-appropriately and keep going. Be curious and remember to listen without judgement but with interest and understanding.

Support play. Give your children plenty of opportunities for unsupervised free play and fun – all the way to adulthood. Get creative about replacements for online life and remember that habits take a while to change.

Embrace independence and responsibility. Competence builds confidence and a trust in one’s abilities to handle challenges and do hard things. What could your child age-appropriately be doing for themselves or for others? We can provide the teaching and the support they need in the early stages and then let them get on with it. Children learn from making mistakes and messing up. It’s often incredible how they rise to the challenge, while responsibility creates a sense of purpose and meaning and builds self-esteem.

Modelling. Our actions have a huge influence, especially on younger children. Set an example with your own phone use. Adolescents are more focused on their peer group’s behaviour, but we can still guide and most importantly be a moral compass by living our values.

Be a safe haven and cultivate a sense of belonging. We all need to feel part of a greater whole. Children of all ages need consistency, predictability, structure, boundaries and connection, and all these form part of feeling that we belong. Belonging is an important part of how we form our identity and our sense of self, and feeling bonded to our family and community is grounding, protective and increasingly important. Spend quality time eating together, playing games and finding things you enjoy doing as a family. Building rituals such as Friday movie night, bedtime routines or holiday traditions creates stability and belonging. It can feel tough to connect with a teen who has retreated into their bedroom, but if we start slowly, meet them near where they are, focus on the connection and keep the higher positive ground, we can shift things.

You are not alone. If there is one thing that shines out from all this, it’s that we should not have to create the change we’d like to see and that we feel is right for our children on our own. We each have a choice about what feels right for our own children and families, but we say ‘It takes a village’ for a reason and we’re meant to be in communities. We’ve journeyed into this world of smartphones together – and now we need to work together for the sake of our kids.

Resources I have drawn upon include:

by Jonathan Haidt

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Reclaiming childhood: how we can help 'the anxious generation'

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