Anybody, particularly those who have kids, has read “The Anxious Generation”? By Jonathan Haidt? Strongly recommended.
I fully agree with its central thesis: “kids are over-supervised and under-exposed in the physical world, and kids are under-supervised and over-exposed in the digital world”.
Main takeaways:
The four foundational harms: social deprivation, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation, addiction.
All children are by nature antifragile. Just as the immune system must be exposed to germs, and trees must be exposed to wind, children require exposure to setbacks, failures, shocks, and stumbles in order to develop strength and self-reliance. Overprotection interferes with this development and renders young people more likely to be fearful and fragile as adults.
The human brain contains two subsystems that put it into two common modes: discover mode (for approaching opportunities) and defend mode (for defending against threats). Young people born after 1995 are more likely to be stuck in defend mode, compared to those born earlier. They are on permanent alert for threats, rather than being hungry for new experiences. They are anxious.
Safetyism is an experience blocker. When we make children's safety a quasi-sacred value and don't allow them to take any risks, we block them from overcoming anxiety, learning to manage risk, and learning to be self-governing, all of which are essential for becoming healthy and competent adults.
Humanity evolved on Earth. Childhood evolved for physical playfulness and exploration. Children thrive when they are rooted in real-world communities, not disembodied virtual networks. Growing up in the virtual world promotes anxiety, anomie, and loneliness. The Great Rewiring of Childhood, from play-based to phone-based, has been a catastrophic failure.
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