In the second edition of 'Free-Range Kids', Lenore Skenazy provides a compelling and entertaining look at how modern culture fosters excessive worry about children's safety. Using real-world examples, advice, and humor, Skenazy argues that parents and educators can step back to allow children to develop independence. The book includes strategies for rejecting media-driven fear, giving students more independence in schools, and navigating a culture filled with warnings and fears. It also features 'real-world' free-range parent experiences, exercises for parents, and a critique of urban myths about safety risks.
In 'Awe', Dacher Keltner presents a sweeping investigation and deeply personal inquiry into the elusive feeling of awe. The book reveals new research alongside an examination of awe across history, culture, and within Keltner's own life. It shows how awe transforms thoughts of self, one’s relationship to the world, and physical reactions to it. Keltner also explores how awe has propelled human evolution, is beneficial to mental and physical health, and can heal grief, build communal bonds, and humble us by making us feel part of something larger than ourselves.
In 'The Anxious Generation', Jonathan Haidt examines the sudden decline in the mental health of adolescents starting in the early 2010s. He attributes this decline to the shift from a 'play-based childhood' to a 'phone-based childhood', highlighting mechanisms such as sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation, addiction, loneliness, social contagion, and perfectionism that interfere with children’s social and neurological development. Haidt proposes four simple rules to address this issue: no smartphones before high school, no social media before age 16, phone-free schools, and more opportunities for independence, free play, and responsibility. The book offers a clear call to action for parents, teachers, schools, tech companies, and governments to restore a more humane childhood and end the epidemic of mental illness among youth.
In 'Bowling Alone', Robert D. Putnam presents extensive data showing how Americans have become disconnected from family, friends, neighbors, and democratic structures. He argues that this decline in social capital has significant negative impacts on physical and civic health. The book explores various factors contributing to this decline, including changes in work, family structure, suburbanization, and the influence of technology such as television and the internet. Putnam also discusses historical precedents and potential solutions for reviving civic engagement and social connections.
Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt says it is time to reinstate the play-based childhood to bring our kids back from life online and into the real world, away from their increasing obsession with devices.
It’s a fact of modern life that children who are given smart phones are able to access pornography, real images of violence and harmful comparisons with their friends and also influencers around the world.
Social psychologist, Jonathan Haidt argues that as the social norms have changed, and younger and younger children have been allowed access to their own devices, their participation in the real world has suffered.
Jonathan’s theory is that in order to combat the addicting influence of technology on our kids’ lives, families and society must encourage and allow children to enjoy free play, independence and responsibility in the real world.
He says, rather than despairing at the current state of childhood, we have the power to give children fun, excitement and a passport to the real world.
This episode of Conversations touches on Australia's social media ban, screen addiction, smart phones, online gaming, social media, mental health, teens, childhood, free play, children's independence, risk, outdoor play, child development, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, gaming, and Jonathan Haidt.
Conversations 
