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When my husband was 11, he biked alone, on a push-bike without gears, across Yorkshire; a one hundred mile journey on roads he had never been before and without any way of contacting his parents until he reached his destination. It is no surprise that he grew up to be independent, a mountain climber, an explorer, a scientist, a lover of the wild, and even now goes off alone into the bush or on his kayak in the knowledge that he can take care of himself, and has the skill and experience to find his way out of most unforeseen and possibly dangerous situations. The secret is that for him, the risks are worth it.
When I was a child I was rarely driven anywhere; if I wanted to go somewhere I found a way to get there. Home was somewhere you left at eighteen and returned to at holiday time. So it is no surprise that our four children all left home when they went to university or got their first job, travelled alone or with friends to the other side of the world for two or more years as young adults, supporting themselves by working in all manner of jobs and in many countries, and are consequently self-reliant and at ease with their ability to look after themselves in situations many would find scary and daunting. Except, that is, in their more recent concerns for their own children as they become teens in this world we now live in.
In Jean M Twenge’s recent book iGen: Why Today's Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy—and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood—and What That Means for the Rest of Us about the generation she has dubbed ‘iGen’ because of their attachment to their iPhones, iPads and other devices, she suggests that there has been a seismic shift in their behaviors when compared with previous generations. This shift has both positive and negative consequences for our teens’ health, and for our society as a whole.
Teens of today become sexually active at a later age than their parents, and form romantic attachments and have children at a later age (or choose not to have children) in spite of signs that physical changes such as menstruation in girls is manifesting at a younger age. They experiment less with drugs and alcohol, are less likely to drive a car, or have any desire to learn to drive, remain at home for longer, often into their late twenties, and are less likely to follow a religion (although their devotion to their devices is probably even more influential than most religions ever were). They are more likely to believe in equality and find prejudice abhorrent, and they worry obsessively their future, the future of the planet, their school grades, their ability to find work and earn a living, and their physical image and achievements as compared with their real and online friends. All this adds up to a generation who is more insecure, more anxious, and more suicidal than previous generations.
None of this is a surprise to anyone who has contact with the teens of today. None of it is a surprise when we consider the world they are being brought up in—where the daily news is a litany of war, prejudice, alternative facts, climate change and environmental degradation, and where they or their friends are targets of internet bullying. And they see themselves as helpless to change any of this. The number of warm-bodied humans they can turn to share their good and bad times has shrunk both in number and opportunity, and their experiences connecting effectively with actual people are limited by their device addictions.
Many of these factors seem largely out of the control of parents, but there are some things you can do to increase your child’s resilience and happiness. One of the most striking trends in the iGen generation is their obsession with safety and their fear of taking risks in the real world even while they take risks in their digital world. Even in small-town New Zealand, where one might expect kids and teens to feel freer and safer in the environment, a recent change in the school bus route that meant that five to twelve-year-olds had to walk the final 400 meters to their school across a field, across a small bridge over a stream, and across a country road, resulted in increased anxiety in the children. When asked why they didn’t want to walk this short, pleasant distance, they gave answers including ‘I might get kidnapped’, ‘run over by a car’ and so on. This in a town where no child has ever been kidnapped or run over by a car. Clearly, these messages come not from their own heads but from their parents, the schools, and the media. They will carry this fear with them into adulthood and no doubt pass it onto their own children.
The issue here is how to keep our children safe without going over the top. It is necessary if sad that we must teach them how to recognize adults whose intent is to abuse them, and to know how to handle this, hopefully without scaring them into the false belief that every time they venture outside they will be approached by a potential abuser. Having taught them this, and how to check for traffic before crossing a road, surely it is much better to encourage them to take appropriate risks, thus learning that the vast majority of the time, if they are sensible, they will not be kidnapped or run over, than to wrap them in the cotton wool of our own media-fueled anxieties and inject them with fear for the rest of their lives.
Our job is to reduce the anxiety they are plagued with because of the world they have been born into, and the negative effects of the technology that is not going to go away. Make it your mission to find situations where your children and your teens can practice appropriate self-reliance without you hanging over them. Make it a practice to drop them off with one or more of their friends a 10-minute walk from their school; tell them that if they want to go to their friend’s house, or their sports practice after school, they will need to walk or bus there by themselves, or with a friend.
Ensure that they have some days after school and at least one day of every weekend when they don’t have back-to-back organised activities to fill their time and exhaust them (ballet, gym, sports, etc), and on those days encourage them to spend time with their friends simply hanging out, preferably with some of that time engaged in activities that are incompatible with gazing full-time at screens (swimming, riding their bikes, climbing trees, reading a book for pure pleasure, taking a picnic to a nearby beach or park that you know is reasonably safe for their age group ninety-nine percent of the time). If their freedom and risk-taking makes you anxious, then find a positive way to distract yourself instead of worrying whether they made it to school safely. Encourage them to grow up freer, more self-reliant, and less fearful.
Perhaps then their children, should they choose to have any, will not be the inheritors of this preoccupation with safety at the expense of joy.
