#121. "Free Range” Offline and On

But what do I really mean by "free range"? How do we keep kids safe enough?

Dear friends,

A few days ago, a friend sent me a link to this little article, from the online publication Streamline. It is the best very short article I’ve seen yet summarizing my view about children’s needs to be online as well as offline in today’s world.

The article prompts me to think about the concept of “free range kids” as applied to both offline and online freedom. I was one of the founders of the nonprofit organization, Let Grow, some years ago, along with Lenore Skenazy (author of the book Free Range Kids) and two others.

From the beginning, Let Grow has been dedicated to creating more freedom for kids to play and explore independent of direct adult control and monitoring. In founding the organization, we were focused primarily on children’s outdoor freedom. Over decades, but particularly beginning in the early 1980s, adults added ever more restrictions on children’s abilities to play and explore freely outdoors. My research and that of others (e.g. here and here) had shown that such restrictions were likely major causes of increased rates of anxiety, depression, and even suicide among young people over this period. With such control and overprotection, children and teens were (and are) not learning how to take control of their own lives and deal with the inevitable bumps in life’s road. Because they were (and are) being treated as fragile, they were (and are) to some degree growing up fragile.

More recently, however, public alarm has been raised about the dangers to children of online behavior. There is a clear similarity between this alarm and the alarm raised around 1980 about the dangers to children outdoors. Let Grow was developed to mute the alarm about outdoor play and exploration. Now, how would it respond to the alarm about online play and exploration? Are the dangers online so much greater than, and so much different from, the dangers outdoors that we cannot or should not apply “free range” principles to the former?

A popular belief today is that kids’ heavy use of smartphones and social media is a major cause of an increase in kids’ anxiety and depression beginning around 2010. One group of people who do not share that belief are the scientists who have been researching the relationship between kids’ technology use and mental health (see, for example, here). Research has continuously disputed the idea that there is an overall clinically meaningful causal relationship between kids’ uses of smartphones or social media, or screens in general, and their mental health.

In previous letters I have described multiple lines of research evidence countering the idea that smartphones or social media are a major cause of kids’ mental health decline since 2010 (e.g. here, here, here, and here) and supporting the idea that increased pressures for superficial adult-judged “achievements” in school (especially with the advent of Common Core) and elsewhere were major causes of those declines (e.g. here, here, here, and here). I elaborate on such evidence much more fully in my new book, Restoring Childhood, to be released September 15.

Children are growing up in the digital age. The digital world is as much a part of today’s “real world” as is the physical outdoor world. That is not going to change. It’s only going to become more true. To grow up well today, children must learn how to navigate both worlds, which requires that they be able to play and explore in both worlds. To deprive children of freedom in the digital world is no less constraining on their development than is depriving them of freedom in the outdoor physical world.

What I want to do in the rest of this letter is elaborate a bit on what the concept “free range” means to me, as applied to children’s outdoor and online freedom.

“Free Range” Does Not Excuse Adults from Preparing Kids for Potential Dangers

Dangers exist both outdoors and online. We do not do children a service by denying them the opportunity to explore in both spaces, nor do we do them a service if we deny or blind ourselves to the dangers in both spaces. We do them a service by letting them know, in respectful ways, what the dangers are and by providing respectful suggestions about how to deal with them. We help children in their “free-range” explorations also by being on their side, showing that, if they tell us about unhappy encounters, we are not going to punish them by removing some aspect of their treasured freedom, but will listen respectfully and enter into a discussion about how to manage such encounters.

In the 1950s, when my parents (more specifically, my mother and grandmother) allowed me great outdoor freedom, they prepared me for such freedom. They warned me about traffic; about the dangers of chasing a ball into the street; about the need to look both ways before crossing a street, even if I had the green light; about not getting into a car or going off with a stranger who offered me candy or some such inducement. They also pointed out the value, when possible, of going with friends rather than alone, as there is safety in numbers. Before they allowed me to go out on a rowboat fishing without an adult, they insisted I take swimming lessons and prove to be a good swimmer. And even then, I needed to wear a life jacket. My parents were not unique. Most parents understood that they had a responsibility to help their kids understand and deal with outdoor dangers.

My parents allowed me great freedom, but they did not send me unprepared. Age was not the issue. I could understand and follow these rules, and was a good swimmer, by the age of 5. People would have thought my parents were crazy if they said I couldn’t explore independently on foot, on bicycle, or by rowboat until age 13 or 16. If they had deprived me of those freedoms for all those years of my early development, I would have grown up crippled in some ways, and I most certainly would have had a less happy childhood.

The world is different now than in the 1950s. A major difference, of course, is that we now live in the digital age. There is no going back. Our children are growing up in a digital world, and if they are to grow up well, they need to embrace and not be afraid of that world. They need to feel in control of it, not controlled by it. Just as the street, vacant lots, lakes, and rivers were key parts of the world important to my development, the digital world provides a whole set of key components to children’s development today. Children today play and explore and make friends in the digital world and profit from that, in ways that are in essence no different from my play and exploration in the physical outdoor world. To grow up well, they need freedom in both worlds.

In fact, increasingly, the digital world and the physical world are not truly distinct. We use digital devices to navigate, both literally and figuratively, the physical world. We use digital devices to figure out how to get together with friends in the physical world. We use digital devices in numerous ways to be safer in the physical world and to get the most out of our adventures there. This is as true for children as it is for you and me.

Children’s digital play is in many ways about issues pertaining to the physical world, just as their imaginary play has always been about the serious world in which they are growing and how to adapt to it. As pointed out by digital play expert Andy Robertson in a yet-to-be published book (Digital Playgue) that I’m currently reviewing, it makes ever less sense to distinguish between digital activity and so-called “real world” activity. They are merged.

We as a species have always been the technological animal, from the days of digging sticks and bows and arrows to the present day of computers and AI. We have never been technology-devoid creatures naked in nature. In every era, children have glommed on to the latest technology because their DNA tells them that this is crucial to their development, despite the fact that the older generation decries the new technology and may try to keep kids from it.

What are the dangers of online activity? There is, of course, the notorious “algorithm,” which is primarily a system that keeps feeding us what we seem to like. That’s good in that it gives us what we like, but bad if it constrains our exposure to other ideas and other sources of enjoyment. It’s also bad if it sucks us into spending more time on some chain of feeds than we want to spend. There are also the dangers of rudeness, even bullying, of inappropriate sexual advances, and of strangers trying to lure one away. It’s not clear that these dangers online are more or less than the same dangers offline. As some kids have pointed out in surveys, at least in the online world you can turn them off, which you can’t do in the school hallway or recess playground where you are locked in with the bullies. There is also the danger of getting sucked into spending money recklessly or even gambling. We need to steel our children (and ourselves) against such vulnerability. Knowledge is power.

This, of course, is just a beginning in thinking about dangers. With a little exploration you can find more and think of ways to help children recognize and guard against them. The overriding point, consistent with so many of my other letters, is that our goal as parents should be to empower our children, not disempower them; help them understand the dangers and help them realize they are strong, resilient, capable and can enjoy their online explorations and play while minimizing the dangers. Knowledge is power.

“Free Range” Does Not Excuse Businesses and Communities from Reducing Some Dangers and Making Others Clear

Eliminating all danger from either the outdoor or online world is not possible and would not be desirable. Children love to play in somewhat risky ways. As I and others have explained before (e.g. here and here), this is how children develop courage and prove to themselves that they can manage risk. Challenges at which they fail are also valuable in play, as they help children learn to manage disappointment and, depending on circumstances, find ways to meet those challenges or change their goals. As Andy makes clear in his forthcoming book, risky play in the online world serves the same functions as risky play in the offline world. The attempts to eliminate all danger from outdoor playgrounds have made them boring and, therefore, pretty much devoid of any children above the age of about five. The same would happen with online play.

But there is a difference between risks and hazards. Risks are dangers that are obvious, aboveboard. Because you can see them, you can choose to accept them as challenges or avoid them. Hazards are dangers that are hidden or not likely to be noticed. Communities have an obligation, or should have an obligation, to remove hazards from the places that children (and adults) inhabit. For example, instead of banning children from walking or biking independently to school, communities should create safer ways (sidewalks and bike paths) to support such independence, to reduce the hazards created by automobiles.

Concerning online danger, we should not let media companies off the hook. There should be clear safeguards concerning pornography, concerning gambling and anything approaching gambling, and any messages tempting kids (and other users) to spend money without clear information about what they are getting. I could go on, but you could probably do at least as good a job as I in coming up with a list.

Concluding Thought

I know I am fighting an uphill battle here. In the 1980s, parents and all sorts of institutions involved with kids developed the view that it was dangerous for kids to explore and play outdoors without immediate adult guards. This resulted in a dramatic reduction in children’s freedom and increase in their rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide. I and some others were already arguing against such restrictions at that time, but the arguments have obviously had little effect. Kids are as restricted outdoors now as much as ever.

In the 1990s, with the advent of computers, video games, and online ways for kids to communicate and play with one another, kids’ mental health began to improve (see here). But now, here we are, in a world where parents and all sorts of institutions involved with kids think it’s dangerous for kids to play and explore online, and laws are being passed aimed at seriously limiting their opportunities to do so. As a society, we are making the same mistake now, about online behavior, that we made beginning in the 1980s about offline behavior. Again, I and some others who have seriously assessed the data are fighting an uphill battle. But I think we will win in the end.

And now, what are your thoughts about all this? This substack is, in part, a forum for discussion, and your thoughts, stories, and questions are treated respectfully by me and other readers, regardless of the degree to which we agree or disagree. Comments add to the value of these posts for everyone.

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With respect and best wishes,

Peter