Jonathan Haidt is possibly the most important voice to come across, completely unearthing the impact of a generation due to the ‘experience blocking’ caused by smartphones.
The tl;dr is this awesome piece on Trevor Noah’s podcast
To succumb to a tsunami wave of modern social digital norms, digital based relationships developed over the decades completely washing over us, leaves us to make sense of the decay and debris. The clarity and evidence is in his book, ‘The Anxious Generation.’ Most especially highlighting the impact on the youngest ones, being the most impressionable, likely to be permanent damage if not addressed before the final stages of prefrontal cortex development during puberty.
I made sense of my many post-its below with some of my favorite paraphrases from the book:
“The decline of free play parallels data with the increasing prevalence of smartphones. Free play is necessary for child development. Risky real-life play develops ‘anti-fragility,’ which is the need to get knocked over now and then in order to become strong.
Unstructured free play addresses–head on–making friends, learning empathy, learning emotional regulation, learning interpersonal skills, and greatly empowers students by helping them find a healthy place in their school community–all while teaching them life’s most important skills like creativity, innovation, critical thinking, collaboration, communication, self-direction, perseverance, and social skills.
Adults can’t help but make free play less free. While free play is an activity for it’s own sake, unregulated.
When anyone sees a kid struggling, they want to jump in to help. It’s normal. It’s the natural outcome of being present and seeing a child who’s frustrated or taking a small risk or behaving badly. That is why it is so important that we carve out some time when kids are not with a parent, teacher, or coach. That’s pretty much the only time they will be forced to function on their own and realize how much they are capable of.”
“The Anxious Generation” – Jonathan Haidt