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Key points
- Many kids today are highly anxious—in part because their lives are missing meaning.
- Parents may overfocus on logistics and results instead of how children make sense of the world around them.
- When kids focus on doomscrolling, they can feel traumatized and stressed.
- To help kids find meaning, we need richer conversations.
Undoubtedly, today's kids are highly anxious, with 20.5 percent of children experiencing anxiety symptoms as of 2021. Equally concerning is the lack of opportunities for kids to talk through their struggles. As a recent study in Pediatrics shows, the rates of children in therapy have gone down, even as anxiety diagnoses have risen.
What this means is that kids aren’t often given the support to talk about their issues in deeper ways. When they’re online, they may be “doomscrolling” or scrolling through images of disasters, a behavior that a recent study suggests can lead to feelings similar to post-traumatic stress disorder.
But children’s issues go far beyond anxiety to fundamental questions of meaning and optimism.
I’m a speech-language pathologist who has worked with children from toddlers through young adults. I’m also the mother of two children. As I have seen, many parents and teachers are consumed by logistical conversations—getting from here to there, getting homework done, and managing sports practices. Questions of value, meaning, and life purposes are rarely touched on, even for families guided by religious or spiritual norms.
Kids Are Missing Meaning Opportunities
To find meaning, kids need meaning opportunities. They need deeper conversations and the chance to test their competencies, to give back, to feel a part of something bigger than themselves.
As Michael F. Steger of Colorado State University suggests, “The sense that your personal life is meaningful to you is a cornerstone of psychological well-being.” This feeling is linked to happiness, resilience, and life satisfaction. From a young age, he argues, kids need to feel their lives “matter,” and that they make a difference, no matter how small.
But these days, it’s hard to help kids find that meaning. Several key factors have contributed. For one, it’s hard for kids to find meaning when they are less and less engaged in the "real" (non-virtual) world. Johnathan Haidt speaks to this issue in his 2024 book The Anxious Generation. With children’s independence limited and play moved increasingly online, many parents feel "trapped and powerless.”
However, screen time is far from the only factor. Recent developments have stripped children of the ability to focus on curiosity and discovery. These include:
1. Messages of helplessness and pessimism about large-scale issues.
Watching the current news cycles, kids often hear about great obstacles to health and well-being, generally out of their control. These include ongoing conflicts in distant places, amplified by "always-on" news. There’s also ongoing racism, sexism, and polarizing discourse, where kids see adults unable to have conversations across the political divide. With rudeness and discord as models, kids can’t help but be affected and respond in kind.
An equally large factor is climate change and related environmental destruction. A global survey of 10,000 young people found that nearly half reported that anxiety about climate change affected their daily functioning. Kids are often left to navigate news about climate change alone.
Without enough of a critical lens, they struggle to process information that may be inaccurate, simplified, or overblown. Catastrophic fears like "we will die in a flood tomorrow" (unless there is evidence to the contrary) can prevent kids from seeing the bigger picture. At worst, it can prevent them from living their lives.
2. Messages about youth and beauty that are "pre-aging" kids.
As the mother of a 12-year-old, I'm especially aware of the power of messages about health, wellness, and beauty. In addition to the image-focused "Instagram culture,” there has been a huge recent increase in the marketing of skin care and related beauty products to tweens and teens. Indeed, the baby and child skincare market is expected to rise by 7.7 percent annually until 2028.
Often, these products are focused on anti-aging, emphasizing the prevention of wrinkles for kids who won't have them for decades. Instead of playing with toys, which lend themselves to open-ended learning and exploration, kids are exploring skin care—and often learn to fear the aging process.
Some experience allergic reactions or other adverse physical effects—but even if they don't, kids are coming to believe that they need to worry about getting old. These messages come precisely at a time when tweens and teens are often vulnerable, and focused on appearance and how others think of them.
States including California are working to ban the sale of anti-aging products to kids, which is a start. But we also need conversations about what beauty means—and how kids are beautiful without these status-symbol products.
3. Over-structuring and over-directed activities, including in sports.
An equally pervasive challenge has to do with overscheduling. Many families I meet complain that traveling sports have taken over their lives. Beyond sports, an over-emphasis on constant scheduled activities—at younger and younger ages—has resulted in serious issues.
First, many kids have little time or support for unstructured play and downtime, as Lenore Skenazy, founder of the Let Grow movement, has argued. They lose the chance to collaborate, manage friendships, and let their minds wander in ways that are known to promote creativity. They’re tending to physical and mental burnout. As parents, we risk becoming exhausted and stressed in ways that negatively impact our relationships.
Furthermore, with so much invested, a child’s “meaning world” can become over-focused on success. Sports can indeed develop competence, resilience, and teamwork. But with early specialization, children have far less chance to test different activities in ways that let them understand who they are, what they’re good at, and what they like.
Start with Richer Conversations
Clearly, there isn’t one cause of this meaning crisis, and there’s not one solution. But when kids are getting the message that “the world is falling apart, so focus on success and perfect appearances,” it’s clear that we need a change.
As a start, try sitting with a child and notice the nature of your conversations. Are they mostly logistical—"let’s get to the tournament on time”—or filled with pressure and the need to achieve? Or are they focused on how the child is experiencing the world—what the child is interested in, curious about, or worried about?
Try having a conversation with a child that focuses on how they’re feeling and what sense they’re making of what they see. Simple questions such as “What do you make of that?” or “Why does that matter to you?” can create new patterns and teach kids that we care about their inner lives and experiences. This won’t undo anxiety, but it’s a huge step in showing kids that we’re on their sides.
For more, see the regular newsletter I write on these issues or my book, The Art of Talking with Children.
