Its not just screen time, our school system is failing kids and pushing them to socialism
A veteran researcher of children’s play and wellbeing makes a bold claim in his new book: It’s not too much screen time but rather a bad school system that’s making young people so depressed and anxious.“School by its very nature is a stress-inducing environment,” author Peter Gray told The Post.“You are being given the message that somehow poor performance predicts a poor future for your life.
This is an anxiety-provoking situation.How could it not be?”Gray, a research professor in psychology and neuroscience at Boston College, argues in his new book “Restoring Childhood: How to Set Kids Free in the Age of Anxiety” (Thesis, out Tuesday), that an increasingly high-pressure school environment is the real culprit for the decline in teen mental health.And, while I don’t agree with him that concern over the inordinate amount of time kids are spending online is a “moral panic,” I do think he’s right that my generation has been failed by our school system.
We’ve been taught that test results and college placement are more important than practical knowledge and social skills.As a young person who grew up with an iPhone in my pocket, I can personally testify to the fact that it sucked up most of my free time and left my generation worse off.Still, Gray has opened my mind up to the possibility that school is also a key factor at play.If social media is to blame for youth depression and anxiety today, he writes, why were teen suicide rates in the ’90s nearly as bad as in the post-social media era? And why do youth self-harm rates spike during the school year, not during the summer when kids are spending the most time online?That seems to suggest that school could be an exacerbating factor.“Every single study that I have been able to find in which a demographically balanced sample of school-age kids are asked the question, ‘What is the leading source of your anxiety or depression or stress?’ … school comes out on top,” Gray explained ...