The Anxious Generation – which is the trap we push kids into?

‘The Anxious Generation’: which is the trap we push kids into?

The author relates Generation Z, the year 2010 as the year of the introduction of the smartphone, the gender of young people and anxiety disorders.

It turns out that girls are so much more sensitive than boys, and that the anxiety disorders and psychologically poor standing was already underway before Covid 19 made things worse.

The pitfalls are diverse. Girls seek “community” and boys seek “agency”. They also “fight” differently. Girls attack others by damaging social relationships. And social media appear to be well suited for just that.

How did it come to this? Threat of the accusation of “neglect.

A real-life example. A single mom in the USA works three jobs to make ends meet. She has a ten-year-old daughter. The child goes with her to mom’s work to wait for them to go home again. One day the child wants to go to the playground nearby, to play with other children. Mommy agrees. The child plays there, but is accosted by an older lady who asks where her mommy is. The child replies “she is at work”. The older lady goes to the police with a complaint of child neglect against the mother.

Consequence: in addition to a lot of explanations, a fine and a trial for child neglect, the mom buys the daughter a tablet to surf on. This creates social deprivation, for example, the child has too little physical exercise, and also goes along with the mass on the tablet on the simple cognitive path. Intellectual challenges and problem-solving, organizing games on their own, it just doesn’t happen anymore.

And such threat of child neglect is pervasive in the USA. But it is not the only motivator. Alleged dangers, which also used to be present but are seemingly more relevant now, are coming more into the parental environment. The reaction here, in turn, is overprotection. And thus an attempt at 100% control of the child by the parent. The child unlearns entrepreneurship because there is too much influence from the elders.

Three dangerous evolutions lead to mental unwellness.

Three dangerous evolutions that the work “The Anxious Generation ” recognizes are:

• Social deprivation: only online contact through screen time, no more physical contact through play time.
• Cognitively simplified thinking, nothing should be a real challenge anymore.
• Addiction, which also entails physical passivity. Children (apparently according to the study) spend up to 7 to 12 hours a day with their smartphones.

What other consequences are possible as a result of screen time? + My personal assessment.

The studies mentioned in the book mention the following problems:

• poorer academic performance
• depressive feelings
• increase in suicidal thoughts
• increase in anxiety

These issues occur immediately after the introduction of smartphones to the market. By now it is a foregone conclusion that the smartphone is the cause of these feelings, not that these feelings give rise to more smartphone use. Also, we now know from research that laptops and old computers are more likely to be innocent of the phenomenon: children were “only” using them for a few hours.

But what if we color outside the lines of the book, and see if we can draw a significant longer-term consequence?

A key figure in dementia research is Professor Gill Livingston. She states in her presentation “Preventing Dementia: what should we do?“, that a large number of dementia cases are preventable. As suggestions there are  the following four “life wisdom” versus a number of risk factors (there are probably more): (see also The Lancet)

• care for social contacts versus social isolation
• ensure adequate exercise (such as in a walking club) against diabetes and obesity
• provide intellectual challenges in your life. Training at young age.
• care against depression

Let it be precisely those four things that undermine smartphone use among Generation Z from its introduction in 2010. Is it then unreasonable to fear that when GenZ reaches the age of 50, there will be a percentage increase in dementia cases, not merely due to old age?

What can be done about anxiety disorder preventively according to the author?

Prevention, according to the author, can come from several directions: governments and technology companies, parents and schools. I provide a selection of the possibilities according to the author.

Governments

Policies detrimental to the mental health of children and adolescents must change. For example, access to social Web sites could be allowed only from the age of 16 instead of the politically negotiated age of 13.

In many places, the government is responsible for overprotecting children in the real world, and too little in the virtual world.

(Local) Governments should encourage free play in schools, and consider children’s needs in terms of use of public space.

Technology companies

Companies operating social media could implement serious age controls that are GDPR compliant. To that end, the author makes a number of suggestions involving “in-between” organizations.

Parents

Allow free play of the children without supervision. Help increase their mobility as they grow older. Allow them to attend an exchange program. Ban smartphones in the elementary school and secondary highschool. Allow use only from college or university onward. Agree such things with other parents of classmates.

Schools

First, “phone-free” schools: allowing kids to safely store the smartphone in a locker throughout the day. Certainly not just during class time.

Encourage playing together, not overprotecting the children during their play. Giving longer breaks to the children. Recommending a play club. Modify the playgrounds. Let children do something as an assignment, something they’ve never done before. Reorganize their independence.

Finally : Evolutions in 2024: Chiro and Scouts dd 7/07/2024

Young people put aside the smartphone themselves at Chiro and Scouts camps. But not all the time. This does show that youth consider playtime in the real world important enough for that compared to screen time in the virtual world.

Some 18-year-olds are switching to an “old cell phone” but that is still a minority.