Commonwealth Club Of California Podcast

Today’s kids are caught up in one of the largest mass migrations in human history: the movement indoors. The majority of modern Americans now spend much of their lives penned in by walls, staring at screens. Increasingly, we don’t touch, look at or even speak to each other, connecting instead through apps. When we do get together, it’s for a quick coffee or play date, because who has time for anything else? At home, children see Mom and Dad thumbing away nonstop on their devices and follow suit. The result: Our youth are suffering from a rise in health problems, heightened social pressures and a frightening set of new addictions around technology. For the editors of Outside, this dynamic represents a national crisis. Last fall, the 42-year-old magazine’s cover story, “Rewilding the American Child,” called on parents to set their kids free—from screens, from schedules, from the kind of ever-present supervision that hinders full maturation. In a collection of essays and how-to articles that was nominated for a