Play Deprivation Is A Major Cause of the Teen Mental Health Crisis

Authors: Haidt, J., & Gray, P.

Overview

The central idea of my forthcoming book, “The Anxious Generation,” posits that we have overprotected children in the real world, where they need a lot of free play and autonomy, while underprotecting them online, where they are not developmentally ready for much of what happens to them. Much of my thinking about the importance of free play stems from Peter Gray, a professor of psychology at Boston College and one of the world’s leading experts on the psychology of play. In his powerful TED talk, he outlines the evolutionary origins of play—a necessity for all young mammals. Gray then demonstrates how we have systematically deprived children of free play since the 1970s and illustrates that adolescents’ mental health has declined substantially over the same period. He acknowledges that this is a correlation, not proof of causation, although experiments with animals support the claim that play deprivation causes anxiety and poor social development.

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Updated on October 16, 2024

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