Eli Stark-Elster

Happy to be here.

Well, to your point, I think many people remember that prior to the 1970s or so, there was much less supervision of childhood in physical space than there is now.

But I think an important point to keep in mind is that that difference is not just between the early part of the 20th century and now, but between now and, as far as we can tell, pretty much the whole course of history.

human history, when you look at the record of childhood across human societies, you find that kids are generally afforded a really high degree of independence and autonomy.

One of my colleagues, Dorsa Amir, has a good term for this.

They spend much of their time in independent peer cultures.

So with other kids forming their own separate little groups away from the adults.

And in the early 1970s or so, the ability for kids to

developed these kinds of independent peer cultures drops really precipitously, and that has not changed to the present day.

Yeah, I think one big factor underlying this shift is the urbanization of the United States.

More and more people have moved into cities, become increasingly dependent on cars, and so you now have physical environments where, one, it is arguably just a little less safe for kids to roam around due to traffic concerns, but parents also have a lot more fear of their kids being

unsafe for that reason.

And even if parents didn't feel those concerns, often kids are just not all that close to other kids physically.

If they want to hang out with their friends, their parents need to drive them somewhere.

So that's a crucial factor.

Another, I think, underlying concern here is just the fear of not just, you know, traffic, but stranger danger.

Yes, yeah, that's correct.

Well, on one hand, the safeguards don't exist.

The author, Jonathan Haidt, has a good analogy that, in some sense, putting kids in social media platforms is a little bit like sending them to Mars.

You know, this is a very recent innovation, and so we understand very little about how these kinds of environments actually work and how they're affecting our children.