Why are young people today more anxious? Spoiler alert: It’s not just their phones that are to blame

Technology and the use of devices have changed the way we interact, even from a very early age. It’s not uncommon to see seven-year-olds going to their friends’ houses to play with their own tablets under their arms. The interaction usually goes like this: they chat for a while, and after just a few minutes, each one immerses themselves in the digital games on their tablets. If someone, for whatever reason, doesn’t have a device with them, they run the risk of being left out or reduced to a mere spectator.

This dynamic is very common in the United States, but is by no means exclusive to it. Everywhere, we see children glued to their phones during family meals or groups of teenagers sitting on a bench, not talking to one other, because they are all focused on what’s being posted on social media. Unfortunately, the price of all this is the mental health of the youngest generation.

People born after 1996 suffer higher rates of anxiety, depression, self-harm, and mental health problems than previous generations in both Europe and the United States, as well as in Australia, according to hundreds of studies by Dr. Jean M. Twenge, a professor at San Diego State University.

But the origin of the problem dates back a few years earlier, to the 1980s, when devices had not yet burst into our lives, and is related to parenting. This is when, due to unfounded fears, overprotective parenting begins to take hold, which distanced children from play and reduced their autonomy.

Hypervigilance in the real world stands in stark contrast to the freedom children and teenagers have when using digital devices, as noted by New York University psychology professor Jonathan Haidt, author of the bestseller The Anxious Generation. Both factors — technology and parental mindsets — are creating a generation more vulnerable than ever. To address this, we must take action in the areas we have control over.

According to Haidt, we should avoid giving teenagers a smartphone before they start high school, restrict access to social media until at least age 16, and even ban cell phones in schools and colleges. However, beyond limiting device use, we must also rethink our approach as parents. As psychologist Alison Gopnik suggests in her book The Gardener and The Carpenter, we should adopt a more “gardener-like” approach to parenting.

While gardeners create spaces for plants to grow safely and reach their full potential, carpenters strive to create a perfect blueprint and carve furniture to fit the original design. It seems that the overprotection shift of recent decades has been driven by a carpenter-parent mentality: high expectations for our children, exhausting extracurricular classes, an unprecedented obsession with being good parents, and excessive supervision that has come at the expense of in-person play with other children.

Becoming gardening parents means giving our children more autonomy at every age. We can assign the youngest children simple household chores at first and more sophisticated ones later. We need to learn to manage our own anxiety as parents — we must allow our children to be out of sight by asking them to run small errands nearby, encourage sleepovers with friends, and avoid micromanaging all their tasks, even at school.

We also need to foster their independence in getting around: encouraging them to go to school in groups if possible, or, for example, letting them go safe distances alone from the age of nine. We can sign them up for camps and nature experiences with other children and, of course, avoid filling their afternoons with endless enriching activities that exhaust them and leave little room for free play. Ultimately, the best gift we can give our young children is the chance to be kids — without devices and without constant parental hovering.

When they are adolescents, promoting autonomy, mobility, and a screen-free life should be important pillars of their education. They can be encouraged to participate in exchange programs, to have more experiences in nature, to seek out opportunities to do certain jobs, to volunteer, or to care for other people or animals.

They should also be invited to participate in real-life conversations with real people, away from devices that hypnotize them. In other words, the goal is to create spaces for them to build relationships with others without screens, which promotes healthier brain and mental development, and helps them strengthen their self-confidence, reduce their anxiety, and be better prepared for the challenges they will face in life.

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