Eli Stark-Elster

But something I would emphasize is maybe a sort of counterpoint to that.

I think we often emphasize what technology is doing to our children.

And this move into digital space, the fact that kids spend all this time on their phones and playing video games and so on, is often framed as something that they're being sort of tricked into doing by tech companies or what have you.

But I think when you look at the trend in human evolution and this desire kids clearly have to

build their sort of secret worlds away from us, I think a different picture kind of arises.

And I think the picture that arises is kids are using digital space as sort of the last frontier to get away from us.

Exactly.

Yeah.

They, from what we can tell, are driven to find spaces away from adults where they can spend time unsupervised with their peers doing what they want to do.

And in particular, playing in different ways in physical space that is now just far too difficult for a variety of reasons.

In digital space, though, adults really have no idea what's going on.

We have very little control.

And so they found this glass domain where they can do the same thing, but in digital space instead of physical space.

I think immensely important.

There's a lot of good data on trends in mental health, starting from when childhood autonomy begins to kind of decline.

And we see a very stark trend that different measures of mental health among children begin to decline at around the same time their autonomy becomes more and more restricted.

There's a study conducted by UNICEF every few years called the Innocenti study, where they track independent mobility in different countries, the amount of freedom kids have to

move from place to place by themselves against measures of well-being.

And you see a very clear trend that greater mobility leads to greater well-being and vice versa.

So we have a lot of data suggesting that it's extremely important for kids to have these independent spaces away from us.