Beyond Likes and Follows: Restoring Meaningful Play for Our Children

If you haven't read The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt, you should. The book discusses the decline of child based play and the rise of social media and the damage it is doing to our childrens mental well-being.

While we are still trying to understand the impact of COVID and the lost years of socialization, we can't deny that children are more anxious and depressed. But we can't attribute all of this to COVID, play-based childhood had been on the decline since the 1980s and has since evolved to phone-based childhood in the 2010s.

As the tech industry continues to hook our kids with dopamine hits from likes and follows, very little has been done on the mental health toll these products have on our children. These tools of engagement that constantly give your child a reason to pickup their phone have slowly rewired this generation's psyches. More importantly, they are less engaged in the real world and withdrawn into an unrealistic virtual world.

The net result has altered this generations social and neurological development, causing everything from sleep deprivation to addiction and loneliness. Obviously technology isn't inherently evil and has many benefits for our families and children, the key is moderation.

More than moderation is balance. Exposing our kids to new people and social situations and forcing them out of their comfort zones and away from their phones is necessary. Real socialization (not likes and Insta followers) is the only way our kids will ever feel truly connected. I've seen my own kids walk right by peers that were snapchat friends, unable to engage the person in real conversation.

As a community, we need to tip the scale back towards play-based childhoods, teaching our kids how to get grass stains on jeans and ride bikes until dusk. This pattern won't break itself, but it is breaking our children.