When I was a kid, childhood meant playing on the street, riding my bike, hanging out with friends.
Most kids now experience a different childhood.
Jonathan Haidt’s bestselling book, “The Anxious Generation,” talks about that. He calls it “a tragedy in two acts.”
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“Act One, we lose the play-based childhood. We stop letting kids run around outside. We’re too afraid they’ll get abducted. … We get gradual loss of play from the ’90s through the early 2010s. … That sets kids up to be weaker.”
Because kids who don’t have real experiences are less resilient.
“If you have a play-based childhood with no adult supervision,” says Haidt, “you learn to be self-supervising. Sometimes you get lost and you’re scared, but you find your way back. Sometimes
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