The “youth mental health emergency”: Too much “safety” has backfired

"[NPR Radio] is devoting this whole week to the 'youth mental health emergency.' That is how this sad and scary moment is being described, as childhood anxiety, depression and self-harm shoot upward....
    "[Children’s] free time and free play have been declining since the 1970s, replaced by adult-supervised activities. The understandable goal was to keep kids safer and safer, by always watching, teaching, and helping them... Wouldn’t conventional wisdom suggest that keeping someone safe would make them feel LESS anxious?
"    'You’d think!' [says Let Grow co-founder Peter Gray] 'But here’s the catch ... Everyone has something called a "locus of control." When you have a well-developed INTERNAL locus of control, you feel you can handle things, solve problems, make your own decisions. You are in control of your life.

    "'An EXTERNAL locus of control is when you feel people or forces outside of you are in charge. Someone else is directing you. You don’t have the ability — or even the opportunity — to deal with the problems and possibilities of everyday life. 'And people who lack that ability, regardless of age, are far more susceptible to anxiety and depression.'...
    "'Overprotective parenting has become the norm and it’s very difficult to do something counter to the norm.”...
    "To [the] query about social media being the real problem, Gray pointed out study after study has found that kids online would RATHER be hanging out together in real life. But when that’s impossible — or when there’s always an adult supervising — online becomes the only place to gather....
    "By overseeing so much of kids’ lives we accidentally sucked out the independence, competence, autonomy and fun. It’s not hard to give all that back, once we realise that truly making kids SAFE means protecting their internal locus of control."

~ Lenore Skenazy in her post 'Peter Gray on NPR Today: Constant Adult Supervision is Destroying Kids’ Mental Health,' quoting Peter Gray, author of this recent piece in The Journal of Pediatrics: 'Decline in Independent Activity as a Cause of Decline in Children’s Mental Wellbeing'