Digital Crisis

References and Resources

Books

• • The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, Jonathan Haidt

  • Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life, Peter Gray

Video

• • The Great Rewiring of Childhood — and How We Reverse It, Presenter: Jonathan Haidt

Websites

• The Anxious Generation – Official website for Johnathan Haidt book

• After Babel – posts by Johnathan Haidt related to his book The Anxious Generation

• Play Makes Us Human – posts by Peter Gray about moving toward more unstructured and outdoor play, allowing children to learn independence, risk management, and social skills beyond the screen.

• LetGrow - Let Grow champions childhood, helping kids build confidence, resilience, and self-reliance through independent play and real life experiences.

• Inspiring Inquiry: Play – Play-based articles, videos and resources

Four Core Harms Reshaping Childhood

Haidt identifies four critical ways smartphones and social media are impacting our children:

• • Social Deprivation – Children need real-world play and meaningful human connection—not endless screen time.

  • Sleep Deprivation – Screens are robbing children of sleep, which affects their focus, emotional regulation, and ability to learn.

  • Attention Fragmentation – Constant notifications and digital distractions are making it nearly impossible for teens to concentrate or think deeply.

  • Addiction – Many digital platforms are designed to hijack attention and promote compulsive use, undermining motivation and self-control.

We Are Facing the Wrong Choice

Too often, we feel forced to choose between banning smartphones or giving in to digital chaos. But that is a false choice. Neither extreme will truly help our children in the medium to long term.

Haidt’s recommendations—no smartphones before age 14, no social media before 16, phone-free schools, and more opportunities for independence and free play (see Peter Gray’s book Free to Play)—are essential emergency steps. But here is the truth - bans alone are not enough. Restrictions without education are like putting a bandage on a gaping wound.

When we impose rules without teaching children why they matter, we set them up to hide their digital lives, find workarounds, and stop trusting the adults who should be guiding them. We risk raising a generation that is not only unwell but also unprepared for the digital world they must navigate.

The Real Solution: Build Digital Agency

It is time for a radical shift. Instead of treating students as helpless victims of technology, let’s empower them to take charge of their digital lives. That means giving them agency—the ability to make informed choices, manage their own screen time, and understand the impact of technology on their well-being.

Most schools are still stuck in outdated models where students are passive recipients of information. We lecture about screen time but do not involve students in meaningful discussions. We create rules without teaching self-regulation. This approach is not working—and it must change.

From the earliest grades, we need to build learner agency: give children a voice, meaningful choices, and real responsibilities. Help them understand how technology affects their minds, bodies, relationships, and learning. Teach them to reflect, manage distractions, and make intentional choices online.

But teachers cannot do this alone. We need to invest in professional development, practical tools, and support systems that help educators move from control-based to partnership-based teaching. Teachers need time and resources to foster reflection, facilitate honest conversations about tech, and share decision-making with students.

Parents Are Essential Partners

Parents are key players in this journey—but too often, schools and families operate in silos. Parents feel overwhelmed and isolated, unsure how to help their child with digital pressures they do not fully understand. Meanwhile, schools hesitate to engage parents in real conversations about technology.

This disconnect is hurting our children.

We need to work together. Schools must educate and support parents—help them understand the risks of early smartphone and social media use and the importance of building agency at home. When parents and schools are aligned—sending the same messages, reinforcing the same skills, and maintaining consistent expectations—children get the clarity and support they need.

The Time to Act Is Now!

This is not just about education—it is about the future of an entire generation. If we do not act, we risk raising children who are disconnected from themselves, from others, and from their potential.

What We Can Do—Right Now

For Schools:

• Read The Anxious Generation by Johnathan Haidt and Free to Learn by Peter Gray

• Watch the video: The Great Rewiring of Childhood — and How We Reverse It, presented by Jonathan Haidt

• Develop curriculum that promotes learner agency from the start: give students voice, choice, and responsibility.

• Implement immediate phone restrictions during instructional time, while building robust digital citizenship programs.

• Develop and teach digital literacy and critical thinking classes that can prepare children to navigate online environments thoughtfully, recognizing the pitfalls of comparison, manipulation, and addiction.

• Invest heavily in teacher professional development focused on policies that encourage schools and communities to prioritize children’s mental health and limit the encroachment of addictive digital platforms as well as building learner agency and facilitating meaningful technology discussions.

• Encourage older students to discuss healthy technology use with younger students

• Create systematic parent education programs about digital wellness and healthy technology boundaries

• Establish clear, consistent school-wide policies that prioritize student well-being over convenience

• Measure and track student well-being indicators to assess the impact of interventions

For Parents:

• Read The Anxious Generation by Johnathan Haidt and Free to Learn by Peter Gray

• Watch the video: The Great Rewiring of Childhood — and How We Reverse It, presented by Jonathan Haidt

• Initially, delay smartphone access until high school and social media until age 16 while working actively with your child's school to maintain consistent messages and expectations.

• Restoring Free Play by moving toward more unstructured and outdoor play, allowing children to learn independence, risk management, and social skills beyond the screen.

• Setting firm boundaries by establishing tech-free times and zones, particularly during meals, homework, and before bedtime, to protect sleep and foster deeper relationships.

• Engage in ongoing conversations with your children about how technology affects their thoughts, feelings, and relationships

• Model healthy digital habits and be intentional about your own technology use

For Students:

• Middle through post secondary students: Read The Anxious Generation by Johnathan Haidt and Free to Learn by Peter Gray. Watch the video: The Great Rewiring of Childhood — and How We Reverse It, presented by Jonathan Haidt

• Take responsibility for how tech affects your mind, body, and relationships.

• Reflect honestly on your screen habits and how they support—or undermine—your goals.

• Talk openly with your parents and teachers about your digital life.

• Find strategies to manage distractions and use technology with intention.

• Support your peers in making smart choices and building positive digital communities.

No More Waiting

We cannot wait for the perfect solution. We need to act—boldly, urgently, and together. Let’s combine immediate protective steps with long-term investments in agency and education. Let’s move from control to collaboration, from restriction to empowerment. Let’s meet this crisis head-on—for our children, and for their future.

References and Resources

Books

• The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, Jonathan Haidt

• Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life, Peter Gray

Video

• • The Great Rewiring of Childhood — and How We Reverse It, Presenter: Jonathan Haidt

Websites

• The Anxious Generation – Official website for Johnathan Haidt book

• After Babel – posts by Johnathan Haidt related to his book The Anxious Generation

• Play Makes Us Human – posts by Peter Gray about moving toward more unstructured and outdoor play, allowing children to learn independence, risk management, and social skills beyond the screen.

• LetGrow - Let Grow champions childhood, helping kids build confidence, resilience, and self-reliance through independent play and real life experiences.

• Inspiring Inquiry: Play – Play-based articles, videos and resources

Overview: The Great Rewiring of Childhood

Haidt’s central thesis is both simple and profound. Around 2010, as smartphones and social media became ubiquitous, children’s lives shifted dramatically from real-world play, social interaction, and independent exploration to a screen-based existence. This “Great Rewiring of Childhood,” he argues, has triggered a mental health crisis unprecedented in scale and speed.

Every day in classrooms across the developed world, educators are witnessing an unprecedented transformation in student behaviour and well-being. Since the early 2010s, there has been a steady rise in student anxiety, depression, and classroom disengagement, coupled with alarming declines in attention span, intrinsic motivation, and academic performance. Simultaneously, our students have become increasingly tethered to smartphones, immersed in social media ecosystems, online gaming platforms, and algorithm-driven content that competes relentlessly for their attention.

According to social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, this shift represents nothing less than the rewiring of childhood itself—replacing real-world play, meaningful learning experiences, and authentic relationships with digital interactions that often leave students feeling more isolated and anxious than ever before. Haidt describes the resulting mental health crisis as "the greatest destruction of human capital in our lifetime."

For educators, this crisis is not an abstract concept—it is playing out daily in our classrooms, affecting every aspect of teaching, learning, and social development. We see it in the glazed expressions of students checking notifications under their desks, in the declining quality of homework submissions, in the increasing requests for mental health support, and in the growing difficulty students face in engaging with complex texts or sustained collaborative work. Further, students are now engaging with AI to complete their assignments. Allowing students to disengage even more! They no longer need to fully understand concepts taught in the classroom to pass a course. Now that’s a scary thought for the future!

In his book, Jonathan Haidt investigates the collapse of youth mental health and provides a roadmap for a healthier childhood. In the 2010s, the mental health of adolescents plunged due to the use of smartphones. The book focuses on Gen Z (born after 1995), whom Haidt calls "the anxious generation," and examines how technology improved significantly with high-speed broadband, the iPhone, social media, and the "like" button fundamentally rewired childhood. This represents the first generation to experience what Haidt terms "the Great Rewiring of Childhood" where play-based childhood was replaced by phone-based childhood, and the consequences are terrible.

The Academic and Mental Health Crisis: Measurable Harm

The Surge of Suffering

In the 2010s, mental illness cases went up considerably. Children and teenagers were experiencing anxiety and depression regardless of their race or social class. Haidt documents how there's a direct connection between the adoption of smartphones and an increase in mental health issues. Along with smartphones came a deluge of social media apps that let you compare yourself to others.

The timing is crucial: From 2010 to 2015 everything changed. This period coincides precisely with widespread smartphone adoption and the introduction of key social media features like the "Like" button, creating what Haidt describes as a perfect storm for adolescent mental health.

The Neurological Foundation: Four Foundational Harms

Haidt identifies four core mechanisms through which smartphones and social media systematically harm child development:

• Social Deprivation: To develop socially, children need to play with each other. Phones negatively impact the quality and intimacy of interactions.

• Sleep Deprivation: Sleep deprivation prevents teens from concentrating and remembering things. Without enough sleep, their reaction times, decision-making, and motor skills suffer... Sleep deprivation also leads to irritability, anxiety, worse relationships, weight gain, and other health-related problems.

• Attention Fragmentation: A constant stream of notifications interrupts students' lives. On average, most teens receive around 200 notifications per day. These interruptions make it almost impossible for teenagers to focus on a single activity for too long.

• Addiction: Social media or gaming addiction isn't the same as being addicted to drugs, but you feel a compulsion to do something and this is so strong that you feel powerless to stop... when you spend too much getting dopamine hits, the brain adapts and everything pales in comparison.

The Decline in Learning: Evidence from Global Assessments

One of the clearest indicators of this trend is seen in international educational assessments, especially PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), which evaluates 15-year-olds worldwide in reading, mathematics, and science every three years.

Key Trends from PISA and Other Studies:

• • Reading comprehension scores in the US dropped significantly between 2012-2018, reversing decades of improvement

  • Mathematics scores have stagnated or declined globally, particularly among students with higher recreational screen time

  • The OECD (which administers PISA) has warned that screen time beyond two hours per day is associated with lower academic performance in all three subject areas.

Gender-Specific Impacts: Different Pathways to Harm

Girls and Social Media: The Visual Comparison Trap

Haidt explains that social media makes girls more vulnerable to depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and suicidal thoughts. Girls spend more time on social media than boys. While boys watch YouTube videos or play multiplayer games, girls use Instagram and Snapchat and those platforms are the worst for mental health.

Four reasons why social media particularly harms girls:

• Visual Social Comparison: When girls constantly compete against other girls on platforms where the only thing that matters is how they look, they develop a mindset of perfectionism.

• Relational Aggression: Girls hurt each other emotionally rather than physically. This is why cyberbullying among girls increased over the past years.

• Emotional Contagion: Girls started sharing everything about them online, even their depression, and this has influenced other girls to feel the same.

• Predation and Harassment: There are parts of the online world where men prey upon girls.

Boys and Digital Withdrawal: Gaming and Isolation

A lot of boys fall into "digital pits". This usually means playing games and watching porn. As a result, they often sacrifice a lot (such as socialization, sleep, grades, and dating) to do those things as long as possible.

Haidt argues that boys were pushed away from the real world and pulled into the virtual world... The more these young men isolate themselves, the more anxious they feel and the harder it is for them to navigate the real world. Unlike girls who experience acute social media-driven anxiety, boys tend toward withdrawal and avoidance of real-world challenges through excessive gaming and digital consumption.

The Neuroscience of Digital Addiction: Understanding the Dopamine Trap

As educators, understanding the neurological mechanisms underlying digital addiction can help us better support our students and advocate for necessary changes in school policy.

The Dopamine-Driven Cycle

Smartphones deliver social media platforms and online games directly into students' pockets, available 24/7. These platforms are deliberately engineered using sophisticated behavioural psychology to capture and hold attention, employing the same intermittent reinforcement schedules that drive gambling addiction. At the neurological level, each social media "like," comment notification, or gaming achievement delivers a small dopamine release—the same neurotransmitter associated with pleasure and reward in the brain's reward circuitry. This creates a powerful conditioning cycle where students repeatedly return to their devices seeking the next dopamine hit. Over time, the brain develops tolerance to these digital rewards, requiring increasingly frequent or intense stimulation to achieve the same neurochemical satisfaction. This is the identical mechanism observed in substance addiction, which helps explain why many students report feeling unable to control their device usage despite negative consequences to their academic performance and well-being.

The Escalation Pathway

Research increasingly suggests that when social media and gaming no longer provide sufficient dopamine stimulation, some adolescents seek stronger sources of reward—including experimentation with alcohol, vaping, cannabis, or other substances. This progression from digital addiction to substance experimentation is becoming more common, particularly among adolescents whose developing prefrontal cortex makes them neurologically more vulnerable to all forms of addiction. This is very worrisome, and one wonders why society is not raising the alarm.

The Displacement Effect: What Children Are No Longer Doing

The Loss of Play-Based Childhood

Haidt emphasizes that evolutionarily speaking, human childhood takes a long time because children need that time to learn... Evolution lengthened childhood to make learning easy but also gave us three motivations: free play, attunement, and social learning.

(Note: Attunement, in its simplest form, means being in harmony or bringing something into a state of agreement or balance. It can refer to a person being in sync with their own emotions or being responsive to another person's emotional state. In relationships, attunement is about sensing and understanding another person's feelings and needs and responding in a way that acknowledges and validates their experience.)

Free Play: Kids need to play because it enables them to be socially, cognitively, and emotionally healthy. Playing teaches kids the skills they need to turn into successful adults. The most beneficial kind of play is physical, outdoors, and with other children of different ages.

The Adult Supervision Problem: The activity loses all its benefits as soon as adults get involved. When an adult isn't involved, the benefits are immense. Children learn to care for themselves and others, handle their emotions, read others' emotions, take turns, solve conflicts, and follow rules.

Discover Mode vs. Defend Mode

Haidt introduces a crucial psychological framework: Our ancestors relied on two systems. The behavioural activation system (or BAS) triggered when you encountered new opportunities... The behavioral inhibition system (or BIS) triggered when you encountered threats... Humans in discover mode are happy, sociable, and eager to explore their surroundings. Humans in defend mode are defensive and anxious.

The problem: Overprotecting children turns them into adolescents stuck in defend mode. Meanwhile, a phone-based childhood doesn't help children develop antifragility. There's no physical benefit, mistakes bring heavy costs, and the online world can lead the child to social inadequacy.

Why This Crisis Has Been Allowed to Continue

The Rise of Safetyism

The end of play-based childhood started in the 1980s when society agreed that everything and everyone was a threat to children... We now live in a culture of "safetyism" where safety is the ultimate value and as such, we don't allow anything that compromises it.

This created a paradox: Over the last couple of years, the Western world has made two decisions related to raising children: the real world is so dangerous that children shouldn't go outside without adult supervision, and we've allowed children to explore the virtual world however they pleased.

The Attention Economy Problem

Social media companies do whatever they can to hold people's attention as long as possible, even if that means harming their users. In the attention economy, users are the product. The apps follow what Haidt calls the "Hooked" model: Users receive a notification (trigger), they open an app (action), they get something out of it (reward) and the user feels compelled to put themselves into the app (investment).

Collective Action Problems

Most children want social media accounts to fit in with their peers. As parents, we reluctantly agree because we don't want our children to be excluded. This creates a collective action problem where individual rational choices lead to collective harm.

Spiritual and Social Degradation

Six Blocked Spiritual Practices

Haidt argues that a phone-based life leads to spiritual degradation in all members of society by blocking six essential spiritual practices:

• • Shared Sacredness: To share collective experiences, you need times, places, and objects. The online world offers none of these things because everything is available all the time.

  • Embodiment: Rituals require some level of physicality. Different movements have different meanings. Moving synchronously with other community members creates a sense of similarity and trust.

  • Stillness, Silence, and Focus: Spiritual practices encourage stillness... Practicing silence has various mental benefits, such as reduced depression and anxiety.

  • Transcending the Self: In social media, you're the center of everything you see which trains you to be materialistic, judgmental, and boastful.

  • Slower to Anger, Quick to Forgive: Social media is about the opposite. Judging quickly and without having contempt regarding what happened.

  • Finding Awe in Nature: The vastness and beauty of nature make us look small in comparison... Experiencing this beauty and awe makes the past and future dissolve and roots you in the present moment.

The Solution: Four Foundational Reforms

Johnathan Haidt points out four reforms that provide the foundation for a healthy childhood in the digital age:

1. No Smartphones Before Age 14

Delay smartphone access until children have developed sufficient cognitive and emotional maturity to handle the challenges of constant connectivity and social media pressure.

2. No Social Media Before Age 16

13 is the default age of internet adulthood, but the author thinks it should be increased to 16. This allows for crucial brain development during early adolescence without the additional stressor of social comparison and validation-seeking.

3. Phone-Free Schools

Schools, from elementary to high school, should go phone-free because phones negatively impact children's mental health, as well as academic performance. Haidt emphasizes that phones are the problem, not the internet. Kids and teachers should still be allowed to use the internet for academic purposes.

4.  More Unsupervised Play and Childhood Independence

Free play means opportunities where children play with little adult supervision and no rules... Should a conflict appear, they should also solve it themselves without adult supervision.

What Educators Can Do: Leading the Change

School-Level Actions

Create Phone-Free Environments: To deal with the anxiety of this generation, we should do two things: phone-free schools and free play.

Reintegrate Play: When you deprive children of play, they learn less. Schools should provide opportunities where children play with little adult supervision and no rules. They could have a longer recess to do physical activities they come up with themselves.

Age-Appropriate Development

• • Ages 0-5: Give them time, let them play with other kids, and let them interact in the real world. Also, limit the use of screens.

  • Ages 6-13: Give them more experience in the real world. They should run errands, have sleepovers, walk to school in small groups, and go camping. Also, establish clear boundaries around screens.

  • Ages 13-18: They should develop even more experience in the real world... Finding a part-time job is a great idea and so are high school exchange programs... Restrictions around screens should be loosened.

Call to Action: Collective Solutions

The Path Forward

Haidt's final recommendation is simple but powerful: speak up and link up. When people speak up about a situation, it's more likely that someone else could take action... By linking up, the author refers to connecting with other parents who share similar values to you.

For educators specifically: Teachers should talk to other teachers. The policy around phones should be reconsidered.

The Stakes

Our children's lives shouldn't be an experiment. We tried sending them to Mars even though humanity evolved on Earth. It's time to bring them back to Earth.

Haidt's central message is that the current trajectory is not inevitable. By understanding the mechanisms of harm, implementing research-based solutions, and working collectively, educators and parents can restore healthy childhood development and reverse the mental health crisis affecting an entire generation.

The book provides both the scientific understanding needed to comprehend the scope of the problem and the practical roadmap necessary to create meaningful change in schools, families, and communities.

References and Resources

Books

• The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, Jonathan Haidt

Video

• • The Great Rewiring of Childhood — and How We Reverse It, Presenter: Jonathan Haidt 

Websites

• The Anxious Generation – Official website for Johnathan Haidt book

• After Babel – posts by Johnathan Haidt related to his book The Anxious Generation

This isn't coincidence, and it isn't a character flaw in today's children. According to groundbreaking research from psychologist Jonathan Haidt in The Anxious Generation, we're witnessing the devastating results of what he calls "The Great Rewiring of Childhood"—the replacement of play-based childhood with phone-based childhood.

The statistics are alarming - between 2010 and 2015, as smartphones became ubiquitous, rates of depression among teenagers increased by over 50%. Suicide rates among young girls doubled. Hospital admissions for self-harm skyrocketed across all demographic groups.

But there's hope. Decades of research by developmental psychologist Peter Gray reveals not just what's gone wrong, but exactly how to fix it.

Understanding What Children Actually Need

Gray's extensive research demonstrates that children are naturally designed to educate themselves through free play and exploration. When given the opportunity, children develop essential life skills through unstructured play that no amount of adult instruction can replace.

His work reveals that children are what he calls "anti-fragile"—they don't just survive challenges, they grow stronger through them. But only when those challenges occur in the context of self-directed play, not adult-managed activities or screen-based entertainment.

This research takes on new urgency when viewed alongside Haidt's findings. The mental health crisis Haidt documents isn't mysterious—it's the predictable result of systematically removing the very experiences children need most for healthy development.

How Free Play Addresses Screen-Based Harm

Haidt identifies four key ways technology damages developing minds. Gray's research shows how free play naturally develops the exact capacities that screen-based childhood destroys:

Social Skills vs. Social Media

Where screens create social isolation, free play builds genuine social competence. Children who engage in mixed-age play learn to read facial expressions, negotiate conflicts, and form authentic relationships. They practice the thousands of micro-social interactions that build emotional intelligence—skills that texting and social media simply cannot provide.

Deep Attention vs. Digital Distraction

Where screens fragment attention through constant notifications, play develops sustained focus. When children become absorbed in building elaborate games, creating imaginary worlds, or mastering physical challenges, they develop the capacity for deep engagement that screens systematically undermine.

Natural Rhythms vs. Sleep Disruption

Where screens keep children in artificial states of arousal, physical play naturally regulates healthy sleep patterns. Children who spend time outdoors and engage in vigorous play develop proper circadian rhythms and experience the deep, restorative sleep essential for mental health.

Authentic Achievement vs. Artificial Rewards

Where social media provides hollow dopamine hits through likes and shares, play offers genuine satisfaction through real accomplishment. Children who master playground challenges, negotiate complex social situations, or create elaborate games experience the authentic sense of competence that builds lasting self-esteem.

The Science is Clear: Play is Not Optional

The converging research from Gray and Haidt leads to an unavoidable conclusion: free play isn't entertainment or a luxury—it's a biological necessity for healthy human development.

Children who engage in regular free play develop:

• • Emotional resilience through experiencing and recovering from minor setbacks

  • Social competence through negotiating complex peer relationships

  • Physical confidence through testing their abilities against real challenges

  • Creative problem-solving through inventing games and solutions

  • Intrinsic motivation through pursuing self-chosen goals

  • Risk assessment skills through encountering manageable dangers

These capacities are precisely what protect against anxiety and depression. They're exactly what Haidt shows our children are losing in unprecedented numbers.

The Choice Before Us

The research presents a clear choice. We can continue down the path that created the anxious generation—more screens, more adult control, more protection from all challenge and risk. Or we can trust what both evolutionary psychology and current mental health research tell us - children need to play.

Every concerning statistic in The Anxious Generation becomes less surprising when we understand what children actually need to thrive. We don't need new therapies, medications, or complex interventions to solve the youth mental health crisis.

We need to get out of children's way and let them do what they're designed to do: learn through play, build resilience through challenge, and develop independence through gradual freedom.

Taking Action Today

The solution to the anxious generation is the playing generation. But this transformation requires coordinated effort from both home and school.

Practical Solutions for Teachers

Strategies teachers can implement immediately to restore healthy development:

Learn More about protecting children from the anxious generation

• • • Read The Anxious Generation by Johnathan Haidt and Free to Learn by Peter Gray

    • Watch the video: The Great Rewiring of Childhood — and How We Reverse It, presented by Jonathan Haidt

Transform the Learning Environment and Parent Involvement

• Increase unstructured time. Children need extended periods of free play without adult direction. This isn't "wasted" educational time—it's when the most important learning occurs.

• Establish clear, consistent school-wide policies that prioritize student well-being over convenience

• Implement immediate phone restrictions during instructional time, while building robust digital citizenship programs and learner agency. 

• Develop and teach digital literacy and critical thinking classes that can prepare children to navigate online environments thoughtfully, recognizing the pitfalls of comparison, manipulation, and addiction.

• Invest heavily in teacher professional development focused on policies that encourage schools and communities to prioritize children’s mental health and limit the encroachment of addictive digital platforms as well as building learner agency and facilitating meaningful technology discussions.

• Measure and track student well-being indicators to assess the impact of interventions

• Visit Letgrow.org for free resources on implementing play-based approaches in educational settings.

• Establish Let Grow Play Clubs. These mixed-age groups allow children to engage in truly self-directed play. Older children naturally mentor younger ones, while younger children challenge themselves to keep up.

• Reduce adult intervention during breaks. Step back and allow children to work through conflicts, negotiate rules, and solve problems independently. Intervene only when physical safety is at genuine risk.

• Create opportunities for manageable risk. Design activities and spaces that require skill and offer appropriate challenges. Children need to experience minor failures and recoveries to build resilience.

• Create systematic parent education programs about digital wellness and healthy technology boundaries

Build Student Agency

• • • Develop curriculum that promotes learner agency from the start - give students voice, choice, and responsibility.

    • Give students genuine voice and choice. Allow children to have real input into classroom decisions, from organizing materials to developing class agreements.

    • Embrace productive struggle. When students encounter difficulties, resist the urge to immediately provide help. Children learn more from working through challenges than from having solutions provided.

    • Allow natural consequences. Let children experience the results of their choices in safe, educational contexts. This builds decision-making skills and personal responsibility.

Address the Screen Problem

• • • Implement phone-free classroom policies. Research clearly shows that smartphones harm learning and social development. Classrooms should be sanctuary spaces free from digital distraction.

    • Teach about technology's impact. Help students understand how devices are designed to be addictive and how screen time affects their developing brains.

    • Model healthy technology boundaries. Demonstrate how to engage fully with the physical world without constant digital mediation.

Essential Actions for Parents

What families can do to protect children from becoming part of the anxious generation:

Learn More about protecting children from the anxious generation

• • • Read The Anxious Generation by Johnathan Haidt and Free to Learn by Peter Gray

    • Watch the video: The Great Rewiring of Childhood — and How We Reverse It, presented by Jonathan Haidt

Restore Independence

• • Restoring Free Play by moving toward more unstructured and outdoor play, allowing children to learn independence, risk management, and social skills beyond the screen.

  • Start with age-appropriate independence projects. Allow children to walk places, make simple purchases, or handle minor challenges without adult intervention. Use resources from letgrow.org for specific, research-backed suggestions. Download Independence Project ideas from letgrow.org appropriate for their child's age.

  • Create boredom deliberately. Stop filling every moment with adult-directed activities or entertainment. Boredom is the birthplace of creativity and self-direction.

  • Let children struggle with problems. When children face challenges, ask "What do you think you should do?" before offering solutions. Children build competence through working through difficulties.

Prioritize Play Over Protection

• Protect unstructured time fiercely. Treat free play as essential as sleep or nutrition. Children need substantial periods without adult direction or screen entertainment. Connect with other families ready to prioritize play over protection

• Allow reasonable risks. The safest thing for children's long-term development is learning to assess and manage risk independently. Scraped knees heal; learned helplessness doesn't.

• Support mixed-age play. Seek opportunities for children to play with siblings, neighbours, or community groups of different ages. This natural mentoring builds social skills and confidence.

Address Technology Mindfully

• • • Initially, delay smartphone access until high school and social media until age 16 while working actively with your child's school to maintain consistent messages and expectations. 

    • Create device-free zones and times. Bedrooms, family meals, and the hour before sleep should be technology-free spaces.

    • Model healthy relationships with technology. Children learn more from what they see than what they're told. Demonstrate how to engage with the world without constant digital mediation.

    • Work with schools to support policies. Policies that give children more freedom and responsibility.

    • Engage in ongoing conversations with your children about how technology affects their thoughts, feelings, and relationships

Building Community Support

Neither teachers nor parents can solve this crisis alone. Both Haidt and Gray emphasize that cultural change requires collective action:

For School Communities

• • • Connect with like-minded families. Find other parents who prioritize play and independence. When multiple families adopt similar approaches, it becomes easier for individual children to experience freedom.

    • Advocate for policy changes. Support school board members who understand the importance of recess, the dangers of excessive screen time, and the value of student agency.

    • Partner with community organizations. Work with local groups to create safe spaces and opportunities for independent play and exploration.

For Neighbourhoods

• • • Organize walking school groups. Allow children to travel to school together without adult supervision, building independence and community connections.

    • Create informal play opportunities. Encourage spontaneous gatherings in parks, empty lots, or community spaces where children can engage in self-directed activities.

    • Challenge overprotective norms. Gently push back against the culture of constant supervision by modeling trust in children's capabilities.

The research is conclusive. The path is clear. Our children's mental health depends not on managing their anxiety, but on restoring the conditions that prevent it from developing in the first place.

The time for action is now. Our children are counting on us to choose play over phones, independence over anxiety, and trust over fear.

References and Resources

Books

• The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, Jonathan Haidt

• Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life, Peter Gray

Videos

• • The Great Rewiring of Childhood — and How We Reverse It, Presenter: Jonathan Haidt

  • The Decline of Play, Presenter Peter Gray

Websites

• The Anxious Generation – Official website for Johnathan Haidt book

• After Babel – posts by Johnathan Haidt related to his book The Anxious Generation

• Play Makes Us Human – posts by Peter Gray about moving toward more unstructured and outdoor play, allowing children to learn independence, risk management, and social skills beyond the screen.

• LetGrow - Let Grow champions childhood, helping kids build confidence, resilience, and self-reliance through independent play and real life experiences.

• Inspiring Inquiry: Play – Play-based articles, videos and resources