Our Play-Starved Children: A Selection from Johann Hari’s Stolen Focus (2022)

“We live in one of the safest moments in human history. Violence against adults and children has dramatically plunged, and our children are now three times more likely to be struck by lightning than to be killed by a stranger. . . . Would you imprison your child to prevent them from being hit by lightning? Statistically, that would make more sense. . . . The evidence couldn’t be clearer: if you stop kids from acting on their natural desire to run around, on average, their attention, and the overall health of their brains, will suffer. . . .

Professor Jonathan Haidt—a leading social psychologist—has argued that there has been a big rise in anxiety among children and teens, in part because of this play deprivation. When a child plays, he learns the skills that make it possible to cope with the unexpected. If you deprive children of those challenges, as they grow up they will feel panicked and unable to cope a lot of the time. They don’t feel they are competent, or can make things happen without older people guiding them. Haidt argues this is one reason why anxiety is skyrocketing—and there is strong scientific evidence that if you are anxious, your attention will suffer. . . .

When adults notice that children and teens seem to be struggling to focus and pay attention today, we often say it with a weary and exasperated superiority. The implication is: Look at this degraded younger generation! Aren’t we better than them? Why can’t they be like us? But after learning all this, I think about it very differently. Children have needs—and it’s our job, as adults, to create an environment that meets those needs. In many cases, in this culture, we aren’t meeting those needs. We don’t let them play freely; we imprison them in their homes, with little to do except interact via screens; and our school system largely deadens and bores them. We feed them food that causes energy crashes, contains drug-like additives that can make them hyper, and doesn’t contain the nutrients they need. We expose them to brain-disrupting chemicals in the atmosphere. It’s not a flaw in them that causes children to struggle to pay attention. It’s a flaw in the world we built for them.”—Johann Hari, Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention—And How to Think Deeply Again (2022)