What Gray and Haidt both miss about kids' mental health

(but do NOT ignore the news at the end!!!)

The mental health of teens and pre-teens worldwide is far from satisfactory, and two famous American psychology researchers and authors, Jonathan Haidt and Peter Gray disagree as to what the main cause is. After following their work through their Substack blogs (1) for more than one year now, I just can't understand why, at least in those places, there is no mention so far of what would surely be one of the best solutions, whoever is right.

Who's to blame for teens' mental health?

Haidt says the main culprits are smartphones and social media, and as solution he proposes:

1. no smartphones before high school (or age 14)

2. no social media before 16

3. phone-free schools

4. more independence, free play, and responsibility in the real world

Gray, instead, argues (also here) that the mental health crisis preceded smartphones, social media and even public access to the Internet, and that the "smartphone/social media panic that has been simmering for several years and exploded with the publication of Jonathan Haidt's The Anxious Generation" just follows the script of all the other moral panics about kids before it. For Gray it's not a coincidence that, at least in some countries, "the increased rates of anxiety, depression, and other indices of poor mental health coincided with the time when government mandates made schooling more unpleasant and stressful than it had been before."

Source: “Common Core Is the Main Cause of Youth Mental Health Deterioration”

There are surely more causes for the young's mental health status, from sleep deprivation and wrong ways to restore it to smartphones making parents anxious, not children and every other form of overparenting, but let's stick to Gray and Haidt.

Personally, I think that they are both right, but that even if Haidt were wrong, at least 99% of parents should do what he suggests anyway. As a minimum, it would make things much simpler, without any real drawback. I say so because, in the real world I see around me and almost everybody else there is just what, one every 1,000 real parents with both the competence and the time to educate and support his or her kids to get more benefits than hassles from having personal smartphones too early.

For all the other parents, delaying personal smartphones until high school can't go wrong: it's easy, immediately doable, doesn't involve censorship or governments intervention, saves money and does not mean at all "growing up without internet". Let's go back to what Gray and Haidt don't say then.

Where Gray and Haidt agree

As much as they disagree on the main cause of the teen mental health crisis, both Gray and Haidt have the same vision of how sane kids should live, as these deliberately mixed, almost literal quotes from their blogs prove:

• Haidt: More independence, free play, and responsibility in the real world

• Gray: "Children are biologically designed to play, explore, daydream, and mess around in their own self-directed ways. Through behaving in these natural ways, they learn about themselves and the world around them; discover what they like to do and develop passionate interests; learn in social play how to get along with others; learn in risky play how to manage fear; learn they can fail and bounce back from it; learn they can get into trouble and find their way out. That is how they acquire the resilience, confidence, and real-world skills required for success in life.

• Haidt: Keep kids as safe as necessary, not as safe as possible.

• Gray: Learn about your world, your self, and how the two fit together. Because the first fifteen to eighteen years of a person’s life are... primarily years of self-chosen play and exploration in which young people make sense of the world around them, try out different ways of being in that world, develop and pursue passionate interests, and create at least a tentative plan about how they might support themselves as independent adults.

• Haidt: No matter the weather, the darkness, the kids’ protests... just get them outside

• Gray: Kids who grow up in a self-directed education community... are given the time and space they need to figure out who they are and what is important to them. They are able to delve deeply into their own interests, develop deep and meaningful social connections, and create rich and fulfilling lives together.

• Haidt: Find ways to give boys something to be proud of. Help them to discover high-quality leisure activities that... are active, not passive; develop skills to produce valuable things in a physical world

• Gray: [it's bad that] already by 1990 we had taken away most of kids opportunities to play, explore, and communicate with one another independently of adult control in the real world.

What's the REAL appeal of Stranger things? SANE kids living as they should, of course.

The Solution that Must(???) Not Be Named

See what I mean? No matter how much Gray and Haidt disagree on the role of smartphones, social media and school systems, the solution they propose to restore kids' mental health is basically the same: self-directed life, directly interacting with peers, outside more often than not. So why do they never mention one of the already existing, already successful and well time-tested implementations of that philosophy? Why do they repeatedly tiptoe around it, without ever mentioning it?

That is, why ignore a solution based on principles like:

• A week of camp life is worth six months of theoretical teaching in a room

• Know exactly what to do when anything unexpected happens

• Living indoors without fresh air quickly poisons the blood and makes people feel tired and seedy when they don't know why

• Happiness doesn't come from being rich, nor merely from being successful in your career, nor by self-indulgence. One step towards happiness is to make yourself healthy and strong while you are a boy so that you can be useful and so you can enjoy life when you are a man

• Life without adventures would be deadly dull

• The real way to get happiness is by giving out happiness to other people

In case you didn't see it, I'm talking of Scouting. The list above is all quotes from the founder of Scouting, B-P. Scouting associations worldwide have been doing literally everything Gray and Haidt preach for 117 years now. Any of the quotes by Gray and Haidt in the previous paragraph has almost literal equivalents in Scouting mission statements and manuals, if one only bothers to look. And still, as of April 12th, 2025, if you search for "scout" or "scouting" inside those two websites, those words only show up a few times... in readers comments, not in the articles. Why?

Surely, it's not because Scouting is "old". Human psyche changes thousands times slower than technology, and if some education approach worked well one or two centuries ago, its age it's the last reason to abandon it, if it's a reason at all. So, why?

Part of the answer may be the simple fact that, since both Haidt and Gray are American, they may confuse Scouting as such (or fear their audiences do so) with the main American Scouting associations, and the problems those specific associations have had in the last one or two decades. I am also aware that certain problems and misconceptions about Scouting aren't limited to the US, but please do not distract yourself or waste time in the comments by denouncing them!

All those issues could be reasons to bring back to its origins, or otherwise reform, this or that particular association, not to ignore the potential of Scouting for mental health. The only topic worth discussing here is:

Scouting is not the only solution, and it's obviously possible to grow up sane without it. But if the original proposal of Scouting is so close to what (at least) two major experts propose for improving teen mental health, why aren't those experts and everybody else openly telling parents to go for more true Scouting, now? Please let me know, here or by email, I'm really interested!

Last but not least, two public Service Announcements

First, last month I joined Foss Force with a column where I specifically cover digital politics issues, with an European perspective, so please follow that too! For the same reason, from now I will use this front-end to my main, original blog (1) to also cover other areas where "if we keep asking the wrong questions, the answers won't matter", with the same attitude that earned me these endorsements.

Second, divulgation like this is a big part of what I do to pay bills, but I do it without paywalls because otherwise it wouldn't be divulgation. For this and other reasons, I do welcome paid subscriptions, but one time donations are even better. To see how and why, please read the final "Unusual Request" part of this other post. Thanks!

1. Because that's what we all really have here, not "Substacks" nor newsletters, which are just the way to make posts visible because nobody can be bothered anymore to click on link in social media posts or, which would be THE right way to get news, just use RSS, for heaven's sake!