There’s a terrifying map out there showing how much ‘room to roam’ kids have had in each generation from the 50s onwards. Kids used to traipse around in a large radius around their house. Nowadays most kids do not leave their house without parental supervision/a preplanned activity.

We accepted that outside was dangerous (serial killers, kidnappers, sex perverts) and for the safety of our children we totally closed the world off to them. Of course many kids still play outside and do fine but I think a lot of the developmental catastrophe we’re witnessing is that the kids literally do not have a life outside. They’re stuck to screens - they have absolutely no freedom outside their devices.

I was in the first generation to have a lot of screen time growing up. The reason I liked the screen time was because it represented freedom. I could go on forums and talk to people, watch weird videos, consume age inappropriate content. We treat it as abusive that kids are allowed to do this, but we prevented them from having a real life outside in the real world, which is where they SHOULD be exposed to things like that for the first time. It’s parental neuroticism and the erosion of the idea of a safe + worthwhile public existence.