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Early toxic stress and adverse experiences during childhood are known to have a dramatic impact on mental health. Harvard professor of psychology Steven Pinker argues that in many parts of the globe, the modern world is less harsh than it has ever been for children. But mental distress is not only experienced by children who have suffered trauma, early adversity, toxic stress or socio-economic hardship. Children living in relatively easy environments with no or few risk factors also often suffer from mental health problems.
Screens and the Internet
Digital technology is a mixed blessing for today's children. The benefits are substantial for education, communication, connection, and everyday functioning, especially during and since the COVID-19 pandemic. But balance is important and limits for screen time are essential because of the other developmental tasks that need to be achieved away from screens.
Most parents are acutely aware of the rages that children can fly into when they are separated from their screens. There is a link between the amount of time children and teenagers spend in front of a screen and emotional dysregulation. Adolescents who use screens a lot are more likely to be depressed and anxious. Children don't only develop mental health problems because of the overuse of screens, they also use screens in order to try to regulate their own emotions and calm themselves down. This is just one of the many strategies that children use in order to try to feel better when they are stressed, agitated, and unhappy.
Adapting to the environment and defense mechanisms
Children try hard to be happy and to adapt to difficult situations. Sometimes they appear on the outside to be untroubled by stress, trauma, and losses. Children often hide their sad, vulnerable, and scared feelings—even from themselves. Their mental distress can be revealed only in their behavioral symptoms, largely out of their own conscious awareness and out of sight from their parents, teachers and everyone else in their lives. British psychotherapist Graham Music, author of Nurturing Natures, describes the ways in which defense mechanisms start off as adaptive strategies to cope with difficult experiences. The adaptiveness falls away as the environment is no longer persecutory. The COVID-19 pandemic has been a powerful stressor that required all of us, including children, to adapt to a new, real, and very dangerous threat.
COVID-19
Children experienced the harder lockdowns differently, depending on the atmosphere in their lockdown homes, socio-economic status, and other circumstances. Some homes have been violent and toxic with high levels of conflict. Others have been supportive, relaxing, and interpersonally satisfying. COVID-19 has been stressful and traumatic, but not for everyone. Some children have benefitted from reduced social and scholastic demands and commitments. Others have felt isolated and alone. Some children have experienced trauma and loss as a result of COVID-19 related family illness and death. Perhaps more widespread has been the obstacle to development when schooling and normal life were put on hold, for some children for an extended period of time. Being trapped in a turbulent, dysfunctional, toxic, or emotionally tense home environment with no school, sports, or outside hobbies or activities with friends was difficult for many. Dependency on parents, separation anxiety, and difficulty leaving their homes (or even their bedrooms) has sometimes persisted even after lockdowns have lifted. Some children have become more withdrawn and have climbed further into their screens, away from the challenges of the outside world.
Modern parenting and family life
Some of today's families are proudly diverse and complex. Humanity is making positive strides in areas such as assisted reproduction and attitudes towards race, same-sex parents, and gender. The world is making space for those who would have been widely reviled or even incarcerated a century ago. But children still want and need their parents and the loss or absence of a parent from a child's life can be extremely traumatic. High-conflict divorce can put severe stress on children, leaving them pulled and sometimes torn apart by warring parents. Today's world places high and conflicting demands on parents to raise children in particular ways—often leading to guilt when their children are not perfect and problem-free. Parenting styles vary across cultures and generations. In many countries, it is now against the law to use any kind of physical punishment. Yet sometimes parents struggle to navigate limit-setting and discipline without resorting to violence. Human beings are notoriously difficult to live with, so family relationships are often complicated and even volatile. Intergenerational transmission of family dysfunction can occur across different areas of behavior and within interpersonal relationships. This can be emotionally traumatic for children and for their parents as well.
Various aspects of 21st-century life can disturb children, but there are also great benefits for those who are not facing adversity. Perhaps what has really changed is that today's adults notice when children are suffering—and do as much as they can to try to help.
