What if the cause of the youth mental health crisis wasn't actually social media at all? When was the last time you actually saw a group of kids--without adults--playing on a playground? Fourty years ago, an American ten-year-old could expect to walk to school, bike to a friend's, or play pick-up games with other kids in the neighborhood. Today, our children are supervised and controlled at every opportunity. As author, researcher, and psychology professor Peter Gray shows in Restoring Childhood, kids aren't depressed and anxious because of social media. They're retreating to social media because they lack agency and autonomy in the real world. Social media use is just a symptom of the larger problem: the disappearance of childhood as a stage of life solely for experimentation, play, and learning you can do things on your own. And if we continue to tighten the leash on our kids, no amount of screen-time restriction will reverse the alarming mental health crisis we see our kids enduring
