More than 500 children between the ages of 8 and 12 nationwide participated in the Harris Poll survey in March, with the assurance that their responses would be kept confidential. They provided clear proof that childhood spent on a phone is very much alive and well. About half of the children aged 10 to 12 stated that most or all of their friends use social media, and the majority reported owning smartphones.
Thanks to digital technology, children can now explore virtual worlds with far more freedom than they can in the real one. Approximately 75% of children between the ages of 9 and 12 frequently play the online game Roblox, which allows them to communicate with both friends and complete strangers. However, the majority of the kids who responded to our survey stated that they are not permitted to go anywhere in public without an adult. More than a quarter of the 8- and 9-year-olds are not permitted to play unattended, even in their own front yard, and less than half have walked down a grocery store aisle by themselves.
However, children told us they yearned for these very freedoms. We asked them to choose between engaging in adult-organized activities like ballet and Little League, playing unstructured games like hoops and exploring their neighborhood, or interacting with others online. The winner was obvious.
An illustration of a graph displaying answers to the query, “How would you rather spend time with friends?” Free play in person was mentioned by 45% of respondents, followed by organized play in person by 30% and online play by 25%. Youngsters prefer face-to-face interactions without screens or adult supervision. However, because so many parents limit their children’s opportunities to interact with others in the real world, children turn to the one thing that lets them hang out without adults watching: their phones.
Parents’ concerns that unsupervised time will put their children in danger of physical or psychological harm have increased since the 1980s. We asked parents what they believed would happen if two 10-year-olds played in a local park alone in a recent Harris Poll. Sixty percent believed that the kids would probably get hurt. Half expected them to be kidnapped.
These intuitions are not even close to reality. Kidnapping in the United States is so uncommon that it would take an average of 750,000 years for a child to be abducted by a stranger, according to Warwick Cairns, author of How to Live Dangerously. Naturally, parents are the best people to evaluate their neighborhoods. However, there is a risk associated with the propensity to overestimate risk. Children are deprived of the opportunity to acquire competence, self-assurance, and problem-solving skills in the real world. Unsupervised play and independence are, in fact, linked to better mental health outcomes.
Despite having fewer children and working more, parents today still spend more time watching their children than they did in the 1960s. Families of all income levels now think that structured activities are essential to children’s success and safety. Thus, travel baseball replaced sandlot games. Competitive cheer squads replaced cartwheels at the park. Children have been overhelped, dropped off, and picked up while strapped into the back seat of their lives. Their anxiety and depression have increased as their level of independence has decreased. Furthermore, they are not the only ones who are in pain. Intensive caregiving was mentioned by the surgeon general in 2023 as one of the reasons why parents today are under more stress than ever before.
Children will always have more free time than adults can keep an eye on, and technology has filled that void. “Go online” has subtly supplanted “Go outside.” One of the few escape routes from a childhood of growing anxiety, smallness, and sadness is the internet. Parents aren’t to blame for this, for sure. The institutions, infrastructure, communities, and social norms that once supported unstructured play have deteriorated. When no one else’s children are around, telling kids to go outside doesn’t work so well.
We are therefore delighted that organizations across the nation are experimenting with methods to restore American childhood, establishing it in the values of liberty, accountability, and camaraderie. A group of parents in Piedmont, California, began dropping their children off at the park every Friday so they could play unattended. It’s good that the children occasionally quarrel or grow bored. A crucial aspect of a child’s development is learning how to deal with boredom and conflict. In other places, schools, libraries, and churches are starting “play clubs” without screens. The Outside Play Lab at the University of British Columbia created a free online tool to help parents understand how and why to give their children more outdoor time in order to facilitate the shift away from screens and supervision.
Two of us, Jon and Lenore, helped found Let Grow, a nonprofit organization that offers a free program to help schools across the country encourage children’s independence. Every month, K–12 students in the program are given the following homework assignment: Try something new on your own, with your parents’ consent but without their assistance. Children use the prompt to cook, climb trees, and run errands. At last, some people learn how to tie their own shoes. One fourth-grader with intellectual disabilities wrote the following, using her own words and spelling:
My first let it go project is this one. I went shopping alone. Although I can handle it, the ceckout was a little challenging, but it was enjoyable. I discovered that I am courageous enough to go shopping alone. My project was fantastic.
Other signs of hope are appearing. Using the “four new norms” Jon outlines in The Anxious Generation, the Balance Project, based in New Jersey, is assisting 50 communities in reducing screen time and restoring unstructured play for children. Newburyport, Massachusetts, is rewarding children who try something new on their own every week this summer. (If other communities wish to follow suit, Let Grow has a toolkit.) The Boy Scouts, which are now open to all youth and have changed their name to Scouting America, are at last expanding once more. We could continue.
Simple yet moving are the findings from the data and the anecdotes parents send us: Children who grow up in front of screens yearn for actual freedom. They seem homesick for a world they have never experienced.
At first, giving them more freedom might make them uneasy. However, parents must open the front door if they want their children to put down their phones. The statement, “I would spend less time online if there were more friends in my neighborhood to play with in person,” was endorsed by nearly three-quarters of the kids who participated in our survey.
What adults lost when children stopped playing in the street, according to Stephanie H. Murray.
Silicon Valley will continue to provide children with increasingly advanced artificial intelligence (AI) “friends” that are always available and will attend to all of their needs if nothing changes. However, children’s deepest wishes will never be fulfilled by AI. Digital natives like this generation still yearn for the time spent with friends, in person, and free from adults, just like the majority of their parents did.
The children of today desire to grow up in the real world. Let’s return it to them.
