3 | Editorial
In the books children love, youngsters face adversity and adventure without adults and come up trumps.
There’s a new reason to be nostalgic about the most beloved children’s books. The Harry Potter series, Alice in Wonderland, the Narnia fantasies, The Hunger Games, the Famous Five stories – none would be written now because no contemporary author could conceive of unsupervised children. As for Winnie-the-Pooh, what parent today would let Christopher Robin, barely out of nappies, roam a 100-acre wood, let alone with an obese tree-climbing bear, a depressed donkey and an ADHD tiger? “Rabbit” might have been of sound character, but what about “all his friends and relations”? Surely they could all have been vetted in advance of a supervised play date.
Still, today’s parents are belatedly realising free-range kids may be much safer than those indoors hanging out with online friends. We now know that too much screen time can damage children’s psyches, disrupt their sleep and predispose them to obesity and poor health. The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health has just issued recommendations to limit children’s online time after data collated on 11,000 14-year-olds showed depressive symptoms rose steadily the more they used social media. At five hours a day, 38% of girls and 14% of boys said they felt tired, worthless, tearful, miserable or restless.
Many parents would say what the heck are they supposed to do without their computers? The old parental edict, “Go and play outside/Make your own fun”, would occasion bewilderment or scorn. “Do something IRL! [in real life]” might get through, though. Self-directed entertainment is a vital skill that’s being lost. If children and teens don’t have enough “real time” activity – sports, crafts, offline games or just mucking about – their online time can become a disproportionate and destructive influence.
Somewhere between hippiedom and the “tiger parent”, we’ve begun steadily downgrading children’s developmental need for a degree of independence, inventiveness and adventure IRL. Baby boomers had to be chivvied from the great deity, television, but they walked, bussed or biked to school, sports and hobbies, and played in parks, streets and wilderness areas for hours without adult supervision.
It’s unfair to make “cotton wool” and “snowflake” charges against today’s parents. Heavier and faster traffic is a legitimate concern, as is stranger danger. Backyards and green spaces are fast disappearing. But the paucity of free-range experiences risks saddling children with a sense that they’re not trusted, nor can they be safe, unless Mum or Dad is eternally on guard.
Typical of this is a petition to legalise footpath biking for children under 14 – and accompanying adults. We catastrophise what were once mere mishaps. A child being left off the school bus or deposited at the wrong stop is now headline news.
Unaccompanied children are now unwelcome in our libraries. That’s a precious habitat lost for children to explore new ideas by themselves.
We’ve rightly done much to protect children – free doctors’ visits and vaccinations, car seats, criminalising smacking, endless refinement of the education system – but helicopter parenting and the internet may be making them weaker and sicker.
Our health services are struggling to treat the growing number of children with mental-health issues. Britain estimates a quarter of late-teenage girls show signs of depression.
Fearful of the physical dangers of letting them roam afar, parents may have unwittingly overstructured and risk-proofed their leisure time. At least it’s now well known that the internet is rather more dangerous than a bike. Online bullying and an unhealthy obsession with looks and image curation can bring lifelong mental suffering, even suicide. Further harm may come from our bombarding children with images of themselves from infancy and sharing them online, giving them a distorted, even objectified impression of their place in the world. Worshipped and adored in their family’s social-media world, they may find it hard to cope IRL with being thought no more special than anyone else.
Holocaust survivor, neurologist and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl’s observations about choice, challenge and resilience remain a cornerstone of human well-being. To become adults with agency and confidence, children must learn that stress, failure, mistakes, disappointment and upsets are not always avoidable, are almost always finite, and can make them stronger and wiser.
That’s why in the books children have always loved best, youngsters face adversity and embrace adventure without adult guidance, rescue or restriction of any “lashings of cream and jam”, and come up trumps.