| It feels almost disingenuous to tell a modern teenager ‘I’ve been where you are.’ Many of today’s adolescents are proficient in technology and social media years before they gain access to the rites of passage that earlier generations saw as signs of maturity, like being able to stay home alone or earning a driver’s license. The modern young person’s access to information is unprecedented, and the consequences of that tend to be negative.
The adults in the room are often left wondering what it looks like to care for, as social psychologist Jonathan Haidt calls today’s young people in his new book, The Anxious Generation.
On a recent episode of The Russell Moore Show, Haidt talks about the radical shifts in childhood, parenting, and whole communities over the past several decades. He sheds light on the factors that lead to childhood mental health crises and the ways that the COVID-19 pandemic compounded but did not create these challenges. Based on years of research, Haidt provides four concrete pieces of advice for how communities can cultivate greater mental health in young people today: Facilitate more unsupervised play. No smartphones until high school. No social media until the age of 16. Advocate for phone-free schools. While solutions like these cannot change the fact that our children live in a media-saturated world, they can help them hold on to childhood a bit longer. Whether we implement these exact changes or find other ways to invite young people into greater peace, may we consider how we can actively participate in treasuring childhood. |
