Lawnmower Parenting

As a long-time advocate of free range parenting and co-developer of a curriculum that increases teen resilience, I highly recommend listening to the August 9, 2024, episode on The Daily, "The Parents Aren't All Right."

One of the unfortunate attributes of helicopter and lawnmower parenting we are seeing is that parents are restricting activities that could potentially cause their children physical harm (like climbing playground structures) while allowing few to no guardrails around activities that cause mental harm (like Instagram and TikTok).The average teen spends five hours a day on social media but is outside less than an hour a day, and that time is mostly spent in transportation and not roaming the neighborhood with their friends. 

We've all seen the increase in anxiety, depression, and FOMO, as well as the decrease in overall resilience in teens. The solution we are working on will increase guardrails on social media while supporting healthy offline behaviors. Now, if we can pair that with more parents allowing their children to figure things out on their own, negotiate challenges on their own, and roam the streets a bit, we will start to see an increase in resilience and decrease in anxiety.