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This piece was adapted from Russell Moore\u2019s newsletter<\/a>. Subscribe here<\/a>.<\/p>\n M<\/span>ost people know that something is going badly awry with the next generation.<\/p>\n We know this not because older people are, as always, complaining about how the morals and manners of kids these days are so much worse than they used to be. We know it instead because the young people themselves are telling us so. In almost every category<\/a> of mental health disorder\u2014anxiety, depression, and so on\u2014we see spikes that are unprecedented. The question is why, and why now?<\/p>\n It\u2019s not often that an executive summary from The<\/em>Journal of Pediatrics <\/em>ricochets around the internet. But this week we saw just that with the findings of a study<\/a> from three researchers entitled \u201cDecline in Independent Activity as a Cause of Decline in Children\u2019s Mental Well-Being: Summary of the Evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n The broad thesis is that, while many factors have led to the national emergency we are seeing with adolescent mental health, there is one major factor that is insufficiently recognized: the decline in unstructured, unmanaged, and unsupervised play.<\/p>\n The study shows, for instance, how rates of children playing outside has plummeted. This is not because of the \u201claziness\u201d of video-gaming kids but because of parents\u2019 fears of crime or traffic or, I would add, of not being seen as good parents.<\/p>\n This research is supported by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt\u2019s upcoming book<\/a> The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness<\/em>, which releases in March 2024. After reading the manuscript, I believe this will be a decade-shaping book\u2014Haidt\u2019s arguments are compelling and reshaped my thinking.<\/p>\n Haidt demonstrates that what we are currently seeing are not just the \u201cnormal\u201d patterns of anxiety true in every era. Something has dramatically changed since 2010. One of the major points of the book centers on a shift from what Haidt calls \u201cplay-based childhood\u201d to childhood based on \u201csafetyism\u201d\u2014defined by \u201cover-supervision, structure, and fear.\u201d<\/p>\n It turns out that play and exploration are essential for what it means for us to thrive as human beings. And by play<\/em>, I do not mean organized sports or hobbies (while those are important). I mean the sort of unstructured freedom to independently encounter obstacles and problems\u2014and overcome them. And to pursue this for its own sake, not to put an item on a college admission application or a r\u00e9sum\u00e9 or even to gain status with one\u2019s peers.<\/p>\n This might look like spending a day wandering through the woods, playing an impromptu stickball game with the neighbors on a city street, or combing the neighborhood looking for arrowheads or lost coins\u2014without a hovering parent in sight.<\/p>\n Why do we need this?<\/p>\n In the book<\/a> Wayfinding: The Science and Mystery of How Humans Navigate the World, <\/em>M .R. O\u2019Connor notes that one of the things that distinguishes human beings from animals is that our cognitive abilities are rooted not in instinct but in process.<\/p>\n No one tells cicadas when it\u2019s time to find a mate or bees how to get back to the hive. Human beings, though, need to be lost. We need to find ourselves in situations where we must collect information, remember markers and monuments, and find our own way.<\/p>\n In this kind of \u201cwandering,\u201d we learn how to \u201crecord the past, attend to the present, and imagine the future.\u201d A child who gets lost in a game of Capture the Flag or who doesn\u2019t know how to get back from where she meandered in a forest becomes embedded in a story\u2014a story filled with manageable \u201ccrises.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOut of the stream of information generated by our movement, we create origins, sequences, paths, routes, and destinations that make up narratives with starting points, middles, and arrivals,\u201d O\u2019Connor writes<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s this ability to organize and remember our journeys that gives us the ability to find our way back.\u201d<\/p>\n