Latest / Randy Unscripted / Who Gave Kids Their Freedom Back?

Transcript

Who Gave Kids Their Freedom Back? · Randy Unscripted

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  Black and this is the podcast where I kind of just talk about whatever comes
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  across my brain whenever it just happens to come across it.
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  And it's been a little while since something's come across my brain that I really
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  felt like I needed to talk about. But today I found something and I have to share.
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  So there's something that's happened to childhood that I think we probably should be talking about.
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  And I'm not talking about screen time. I'm not talking about smartphones.
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  I'm going to talk about social media.
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  I'm talking about something that existed before any of those things.
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  And that's freedom. Because there was a time when being a kid meant that at
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  some point your parents stopped watching you.
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  Not permanently, obviously, but gradually.
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  You got old enough to walk somewhere by yourself. You got old enough to ride
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  your bike around the neighborhood, to go to the park without your parents standing there.
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  You got old enough to knock on a friend's door and ask if they could come outside.
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  And you got old enough to figure some things out for yourself.
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  And maybe, maybe eventually you got old enough to watch somebody else's kids.
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  You became a babysitter.
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  And that last one sounds almost ridiculous now, because that's actually what
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  got me thinking about this topic in this episode.
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  And I came across a clip recently from British comedian Jimmy Carr that stopped
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  me, because underneath the joke, I think he's pointing out something that we've
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  done to childhood that deserves a closer look.
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  Carr was talking about how much freedom kids used to have compared with what
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  we allow them to do today.
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  And he made an observation about
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  something that probably sounds almost absurd to a lot of parents now.
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  14-year-olds used to babysit. And now?
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  Well, maybe we don't even trust them to go to the park by themselves. But here's that clip.
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  14-year-olds used to be babysitters. They now need babysitters.
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  We're saying to young people, you can't take risks in real life.
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  We're helicopter parenting. We're not giving them the freedom.
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  So you should allow them more freedom in the real world because otherwise,
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  the only place they get freedom is online and no freedom in the real world.
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  You're not allowed to go to the park and hang out, but you're allowed to do
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  whatever you want online. That feels like a bad idea.
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  Now, obviously, Jimmy Carr is a comedian and he exaggerates things for effect.
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  But there's a serious question that's buried underneath that joke.
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  Why have we become so uncomfortable with giving young people freedom in the
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  real world while simultaneously giving them an extraordinary amount of freedom
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  online because there's something strange that's happening here.
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  We're living in a time when a teenager being responsible for another child can
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  seem almost absurd while that same teenager can have unrestricted,
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  unfettered access to the entire internet from the privacy of their bedroom.
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  I'm not sure we've really thought through that trade-off. We've become incredibly
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  protective of children in the physical world.
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  And at the same time, we're giving them an enormous amount of freedom in the digital world.
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  And maybe that's the problem. Not because children shouldn't be protected,
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  because they should. As a parent, I'll tell you, they should.
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  But because there's a difference between protecting somebody from danger and
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  protecting somebody from ever having to deal with risk. huge difference.
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  Those are, you know, not really the same thing in any way, shape, or form.
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  So that's why I want to explore in this episode. What happened to childhood independence?
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  When did ordinary childhood risk become something that we felt we needed to eliminate?
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  And perhaps most importantly, if we don't allow kids to practice being independent
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  while they're young, how exactly do we expect them to become independent adults?
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  So look back and think about what childhood used to require of you.
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  You know, let's say you forgot something at home. Well, you had to figure out what to do.
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  You got lost. Well, you had to find your way home.
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  You had an argument with another kid. You had to deal with it.
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  Let's say you wanted to go somewhere. Well, you had to figure out how to get there.
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  You got bored. Oh, my gosh, I heard that all the time from my son.
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  I'm so bored. Well, when you got bored, you had to find something to do.
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  And sometimes you just made a terrible decision.
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  Sometimes you did something stupid. Sometimes you got hurt. You got embarrassed.
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  And sometimes you learned a lesson the hard way.
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  That's really an important part of this whole conversation because we tend to
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  talk about risk as though all the risk is inherently bad, but that's not really how life works.
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  There's a dangerous risk, and then there's an ordinary manageable risk.
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  There's a difference between letting a child walk three blocks to a friend's
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  house and then putting them in obvious dangerous situations.
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  There's a difference between letting a teenager make a mistake and then deliberately
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  putting them in harm's way.
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  And there's a difference between allowing somebody to experience consequences
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  and failing to protect them.
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  We don't have to pretend those distinctions don't exist. But somewhere along
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  the way, I think we've become much less comfortable with the idea that children
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  need to experience any risk at all.
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  And that's where things start to get interesting. Because you can't learn judgment
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  without making judgments.
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  You can't learn independence without being independent.
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  And you can't learn how to handle risk if you've never been allowed to encounter
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  any manageable risk in the first place.
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  And that's the part I think we sometimes forget.
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  Childhood isn't just a period where adults keep children alive until they turn 18.
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  It's supposed to be preparation for adulthood. And preparation requires practice.
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  Now, before anybody starts to yell at me through their earbuds or their car
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  speakers, let me make something really clear.
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  I'm not arguing that the past was perfect because it really wasn't.
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  There were dangers when we were kids.
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  There were irresponsible parents, dangerous neighborhoods, predators,
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  accidents. There were plenty of things that could go wrong.
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  And some of the things parents worry about today are legitimate concerns.
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  This isn't an argument that we should simply go back to 1985 and pretend that
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  nothing's changed because the world has dramatically changed.
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  What I'm questioning is whether our response to that change has sometimes gone
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  beyond protecting children and into preventing them from developing independence,
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  because there is a subtle difference.
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  If my child walks to the park by themselves, I'm accepting some level of uncertainty.
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  I don't know exactly what's going to happen. That's what makes it different
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  from keeping them inside.
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  But uncertainty isn't necessarily danger. And maybe we've gotten to a point
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  where we treat the existence of uncertainty as evidence that something is unsafe.
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  And that's a very different standard. Because if you require certainty before
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  allowing someone to do something, you're going to have a very difficult time
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  preparing them for adulthood.
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  There is almost nothing about adulthood that comes with certainty.
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  You make decisions. You assess situations. You decide what the risks are that
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  are worth taking. You figure out what you can handle.
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  And sometimes you get it wrong. And that's life.
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  So here's the question in all this that I keep coming back to.
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  If we don't allow children to practice making decisions when the consequences
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  are relatively small, when exactly do we expect them to learn how?
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  So imagine raising a child who's never allowed to go anywhere alone.
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  They're always driven. They're always supervised. The parents solve the problems
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  for them. Their location is always known.
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  Someone is always available to intervene.
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  Every potential problem is anticipated before it happens. Every mistake is prevented.
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  Every uncomfortable situation is managed.
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  And then one day that kid becomes an adult.
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  Maybe they're 18, maybe they're 22, maybe they're 25, and suddenly they're expected to make decisions.
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  They're expected to manage money. They're expected to navigate relationships.
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  They're expected to deal with difficult people.
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  They're expected to solve problems at work, to assess whether something's safe,
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  to recognize when somebody's manipulating them.
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  They're expected to know when to say yes and when to say no.
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  But where did they learn all of that?
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  They didn't. Because we've confused protection with preparation.
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  And I think that's one of the biggest problems with this entire conversation.
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  Independence isn't a switch that gets flipped when a person happens to turn 18 years old.
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  You don't wake up one morning and suddenly possess judgment because the government
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  says you're an adult. You develop judgment by making decisions.
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  You develop confidence by solving problems. You develop resilience by experiencing
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  setbacks and discovering that you have survived them.
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  You develop responsibility by actually being responsible for something.
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  And those things have to start somewhere. They start small.
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  Go outside. Walk to your friend's house. Ride your bike.
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  Buy something at the store. Figure out how to get home. Handle a disagreement.
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  Make a decision. make a mistake, learn from it, and then do it again.
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  That's how you build a person who can eventually operate independently.
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  You can't prepare somebody for independence by making sure they have never had to be independent.
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  And this is where the whole thing gets really strange because while we've been
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  taking freedom away from the physical world, we've been giving an enormous amount
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  of freedom to children in the digital world.
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  Think about what a kid can do online.
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  They can communicate with strangers.
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  They can join communities. They can create an identity. They can watch almost
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  anything. They can search for almost anything.
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  They can participate in arguments with people they've never met.
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  They could be exposed to adult ideas and adult material.
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  They can encounter scams, encounter manipulation, encounter people pretending
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  to be somebody they're not, encounter algorithms designed to keep them looking
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  at screens for as long as possible.
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  They can post something. They can follow them for years.
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  And they can do all of this while sitting six feet, maybe six inches away from their parents.
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  That's the contradiction.
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  We worry about the kid while walking to the park. But we're perfectly capable
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  of giving that same kid a device that can then connect them to practically every corner of the planet.
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  And I'm not saying that the answer is to take the phone away. That's too simplistic.
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  The internet is not going away. Technology is not going away.
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  And pretending that children can simply be kept away from the digital world
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  forever, well, that's just not realistic.
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  But we should at least recognize what we're doing.
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  We're not eliminating freedom. We're relocating it. We're saying that you can't
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  go there and you can't do that. You can't wander around, leave the neighborhood.
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  You can't make that decision.
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  But here's a smartphone. Here's
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  the internet. Here's access to millions of people. Go ahead, have fun.
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  And then we're surprised when that's where the young people spend their time.
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  Maybe they aren't simply choosing the internet over the real world.
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  Maybe we've made the internet one of the few places where they still feel like
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  that they have some control over their lives.
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  And that's worth thinking about.
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  But there's another problem with this. The physical world gives you feedback. Immediate feedback.
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  If you ride your bike too fast around the corner, you might wipe out. You learn something.
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  If you wander too far and get lost, you learn something.
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  If you say something stupid to somebody's face, you get a reaction.
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  And you learn something. If you make a bad decision, you have to deal with the
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  consequences of that decision.
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  But the internet doesn't always work that way.
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  Online consequences can be delayed. They can be amplified. They can be invisible.
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  And sometimes the people who are providing the feedback aren't people who have
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  your best interest at heart.
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  A kid can spend hours online and come away feeling like they've been socializing,
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  learning, exploring, and exercising independence.
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  But they may actually be operating inside of an environment where somebody else controls the rules.
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  The platform controls what they see. The algorithm controls what gets recommended to them.
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  The community controls what gets rewarded. And advertisers have an interest
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  in keeping their attention.
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  And that's a very, very, very different kind of freedom. It can feel like freedom
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  without necessarily being autonomy.
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  And maybe that's the part of the reason that this conversation even matters.
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  If the only place young people get to experiment with identity and independence
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  and social interaction and risk is online,
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  we're asking a digital environment to do a job that it was never, ever designed to do.
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  So what do we do? Because I don't think the answer is to pretend that we're
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  living in the past because we aren't and we shouldn't.
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  The goal isn't to recreate somebody else's childhood. The goal should be to
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  figure out what healthy independence looks like now.
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  Maybe it's letting a kid walk to a friend's house.
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  Maybe it's letting them go into the store and to buy something without a parent
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  standing right beside them.
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  Maybe it's allowing a teenager to spend an afternoon somewhere without being
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  tracked every single second.
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  Maybe it's giving them a responsibility that actually matters.
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  Maybe allowing them to solve a problem before we jump in to help them.
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  Maybe it's letting them be bored. and that one might be harder than everything
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  else because we've gotten so good at eliminating boredom that we've also eliminated
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  one of childhood's greatest creative forces.
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  When you're bored, you have to figure something out. You make something,
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  you explore, you imagine, you bother your siblings, you go outside,
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  you discover something or you sit there and do absolutely nothing for a while. And you know what?
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  Maybe. Just maybe that's okay. Not every moment needs to be optimized.
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  Not every experience needs to be supervised. Not every mistake needs to be prevented.
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  Sometimes a child needs to discover that they are capable of figuring something out.
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  And parents need to discover that too. Because this isn't just about children. It's also about us.
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  It's hard to give somebody freedom when you're afraid of what might happen when
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  you do. It's hard to watch your kid make a mistake.
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  It's hard to let them walk away when every instinct tells you to follow them.
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  But eventually, that's the job. Not to make sure that nothing bad ever happens
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  to them, but to prepare them for the world in which we won't always be there.
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  And maybe that's the uncomfortable part. We don't actually raise children that need us forever.
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  We raise them so that they eventually don't.
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  So in all of this, maybe the question isn't, are kids safe?
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  Because we could keep asking that question forever, and we could make the circle
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  around them smaller and smaller. We could eliminate more and more of the uncertainty,
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  and we could supervise more, track more, restrict more, control more.
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  And we could probably convince ourselves that we're doing it because we love them.
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  But maybe the better question might be, are kids learning how to be responsible for themselves?
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  Because those are two different things.
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  A person can be extremely protected and completely unprepared.
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  And a person can experience reasonable amounts of risk and become more capable because of it.
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  Again, I'm not talking about abandoning children. I'm talking about giving them
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  progressively more responsibility as they demonstrate that they're ready for it.
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  That's what growing up is supposed to be.
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  You start with a little freedom. you demonstrate that you can handle it,
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  you get a little more, you screw up, you learn, you try again.
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  Eventually, you're ready to walk out the door and make your own decisions. That's the process.
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  And maybe, maybe we've just interrupted that process. Maybe we've decided that
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  the safest childhood is the one where nothing happens.
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  But something does happen. The child grows up anyway, and eventually,
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  they're going to have to enter a
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  world where nobody's standing over their shoulder telling them what to do.
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  They're going to have to make decisions.
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  They're going to have to assess risk. They're going to have to deal with people.
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  They're going to have to fail. They're going to have to recover.
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  They're going to have to be independent.
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  So maybe the question isn't whether we should give kids more freedom. Maybe it's this.
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  How much freedom should a child have at each stage of growing up?
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  And are we giving them enough opportunities to practice using it?
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  Because if the only place we're willing to let our kids be independent is the
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  internet, we probably shouldn't be surprised when that's where they go looking for freedom.
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  And maybe that's the part we need to rethink. Not whether children deserve protection,
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  because of course they do.
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  But whether in our effort to protect them from the world, we've forgotten that
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  eventually we have to prepare them to live in it.
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  So one of my favorite things about podcasting is being able to hear from listeners.
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  And whether you agree with anything I have to say or not, if you think I've
• 19:07
  missed the mark, if you think I'm right on it, your feedback helps make conversations better.
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  You can reach out by heading over to randyunscripted.com slash contact.
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  There is a contact form there you can fill out and send me a message.
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  I read every message that comes in. I listen to every voicemail.
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  And while I may not always be able to respond personally, I genuinely appreciate
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  hearing from you, the listeners.
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  Recently, I had a former colleague that I worked with when I worked at Huntington
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  High School reach out to me because he had found the podcast and he wanted to
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  say that he really enjoyed some of the stuff I was doing.
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  So I want to give a shout out to Mike Macy. Thank you, Mike,
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  for that. I hope you enjoy this episode as well.
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  But, you know, just send me a note if you want to or leave a voicemail and I'd
• 19:59
  be glad to talk to anybody and get your feedback and do things with it.
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  And I'm so grateful that you've chosen to spend some of your time today with me.
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  So until the next episode of Randy Unscripted, I want you to keep thinking for
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  yourself, keep asking questions, and don't be afraid to challenge the assumptions
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  that are out there in the world.
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  I'm Randy Black, and this has been another episode of Randy Unscripted.