Remember your first email address? Or your first online username? Now that you’re done cringing—wait, an extra minute for those getting flashbacks of their blog handle; imagine being stuck with that for the rest of your life. Like that unforgivable hairstyle you had in school. Or that embarrassing fashion trend you used to follow. Imagine being permanently unable to undo a decision you made when you didn’t know better. You can tell where I’m going with this.
As a new generation of parents vowed to never repeat the mistakes of their own upbringing, they ushered in another: a cohort of overly coddled children. Giving them respect, empathy and essentially, the autonomy of a grown adult is ideal. In theory.
Consider this: If you, a citizen of a developed nation (safe assumption if you're reading this on a personal device), met someone from a developing country trying to navigate your comparably advanced society, would you treat them as though they possessed the same experiential knowledge as you? Would you trust that they instinctively understand what to do?
Gentle parenting hinges on validation, lest the child grow up with a distorted sense of self. Somehow this became synonymous with absolute agreement and admission. It is unfortunate to see parents who attempt to befriend their toddlers later try to manage them as teens. You would think it more logical to steward before articulation fully matures, and communicate after it does. Not the reverse.
This conflict-free, emotionally pristine utopian ideal of childhood was meant to protect. Except it only does more harm. Just as our immune systems need early exposure to the nasties (hence why kids with pets tend to have stronger immunity), our psychological immune systems require friction.
Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt warns that while parents are hyper-vigilant in the physical world, they’re alarmingly hands-off in the digital one. In The Anxious Generation, he outlines the detrimental impact of the absence of embodied skill-building; further exacerbated by its replacement with virtual substitutes. Spoiler alert: it’s terrifying.
The youth mental health crisis isn’t caused by world events sounding more apocalyptic. It’s that they are pumped into adolescent brains not as headlines, but anxiety-laced social media posts. Haidt notes that every generation grows up with its version of impending disaster, yet suicide rates drop during collective adversity. See, depression doesn’t occur when threats are faced together. It occurs when individuals feel isolated, or purposeless.
Which is, of course, social media’s specialty. But there’s hope. Besides taking greater care with how children roam on-screen, it is possible to collaborate with them while maintaining authority off-screen. A study showed that when parents engage their children in setting real-world tasks to handle independently, and subsequently reward their effort, it fosters confidence on both sides. As for making irreversible, life-changing decisions… perhaps best to hold off until their frontal lobes are fully baked.
