Go Touch Grass: Are We Overprotecting Kids in the Wrong Ways?

Are modern parenting styles actually making life harder for kids? In this episode of The Unhinged Father, we dive into The Anxious Generation and explore how overprotection in the real world—while leaving kids unguarded online—might be fueling anxiety, depression, and a lack of resilience.

🔹 Why kids need free play and real-world risks to grow strong

🔹 The hidden dangers of unsupervised screen time and social media

🔹 How parental anxiety skews risk perception in today’s hyperconnected world

🔹 The balance between safety and independence—when should kids have more freedom?

If you’ve ever questioned whether you’re being too protective or not protective enough, this episode is for you. Let’s talk about raising resilient, capable kids in a world that’s both safer and more dangerous than ever before.

🎧 Listen now and join the conversation!

#Parenting #RaisingKids #ChildDevelopment #MillennialParents #FreeRangeParenting #ScreenTime #AnxiousGeneration #UnhingedFatherPodcast

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to The Anxious Generation
• 3:54 The Impact of Reduced Free Play
• 8:21 Navigating Parental Concerns
• 12:12 The Importance of Adversity in Childhood
• 17:27 Balancing Virtual and Real-World Experiences

Transcript

Robbie (00:00)
All right, everyone, welcome in to another episode of The Unhinged Father. Hope you all having a fantastic week. Hope you are having a great year as we jump into the spring season. Got a good episode for you today and let's just go ahead and jump on into it. So I'm reading the book right now. It's actually promoted by the parents group at my work. There's like a book club. I decided to join it, started reading it. It's called The Anxious Generation and...

I'm only about a third of the way through it. So I haven't completely read through everything yet. And don't have all the information, but there's a couple of concepts in there that I thought are pretty pertinent, especially to some of the things that I've talked about in the past. And so I wanted to jump into some of those ideas and just kind of dive a little bit into what my thoughts are on that. But for anyone who does not know what the book is about, essentially it's talking about how there's been a reduction in the amount of free play time that children get.

during the day just like going outside, playing, climbing trees, jumping around, doing whatever the hell they want. And there's been an increase in the amount of screen time, whether that be TV or tablet or phone or video games, whatever it is, there's an increase in this. And they talk about the change or the switch in the parenting styles to where there's a lot of parents who have become more concerned about external

physical safety, you know, they're worried about their kids getting abducted or trafficked or falling and hurting themselves or getting hit by a car or something like that. And there's been like this overprotection of children in the physical space, but this under protection of them in the virtual space. So essentially parents have taken kids out from outside because they think it's too dangerous and then brought them into this world where

they're almost able to do whatever they want. I think that's probably gonna change a little bit is, my parents didn't really know shit about technology when I was growing up and I feel like we were able to do, get away with more things. I'm a little bit more tech savvy than my parents were and I'm sure that I'm gonna be not tech savvy once my kids are teenagers and tricks and tips that I haven't learned being a.

a millennial, which they're basically to be referring to as boomers pretty soon. But you've had this generation of kids that were not supervised at all in this virtual world. And it's actually a world that's way more dangerous to them than the physical world can be on an emotional and psychological level. And what you're seeing is this sudden increase in mental disabilities or mental disorders, specifically anxiety and depression.

It's been part of that can be contributed to the fact that there's less of a stigma on mental health. But on top of that is just the amount of freedom that children are given on social media, video games, all that stuff, and just the effect it's having on the brain. So I think that this is a concept that's pretty interesting because it's going to be something that's really pertinent, especially to anyone that's got children, my age kids that are five, six years old, who are going to be getting close to that age of.

wanting to get online, wanting to get into YouTube, wanting to watch videos, wanting to eventually get into social media. So this was just something that I wanted to dive into a little bit.

And a few things that this author talks about in the book would be the fact that

When children are born, like we've had years and years of evolution to where we're evolutionarily designed to withstand the dangers and the hazards that come along with this, this world, know, bumps, bruises, scrapes, falls, all that stuff. We're a lot less fragile than we think we are when it comes to those types of things, but we're not emotionally designed or psychologically designed to

withstand the hardships of an online world and that may change with evolution like evolutionarily who knows we may eventually evolve to a point where we're able to live more so on like an online society and be disconnected from people in the physical world and not live as much in that physical world I really hope that that doesn't happen that seems like a fucking terrible existence, but what do I know? I'm just a boomer millennial whatever you would call it. So

That's one of the things that's kind of key to this is that we have been designed and have gone through our evolutionary process to withstand the physical world, but we haven't been designed to withstand the internet or the virtual world.

And I think one of the things that's really hit on a lot in this book that really sticks with me and is I've already thought this way personally, and I've talked about it in other episodes, and I think this is just kind of a good reinforcement of what I've been talking about, but is the fact that kids are anti-fragile is what the author describes them as. And part of what they describe children in being

resembling in terms of like when they're going through this world is that they're similar to like our immune system or even like a tree. They did experiments with trees where they try to plant them in a completely greenhouse environment and those trees, a lot of them ended up dying or collapsing under the weight of their own mass essentially. And part of the reason was is because they were in this this greenhouse sheltered environment.

They weren't exposed to wind. They're just, there was none of this pressure or hardships put upon the trees. And because of that, they didn't develop the way that they're supposed to. The trees are supposed to experience wind and rain and adverse environments and stuff like that. So that way that when they get older, they're, they're prepared for it. They're physically prepared for those types of things. And children are similar. Children need to face.

certain adversity, certain dangers, things like that in order to almost inoculate themselves to them in the future, to grow strong enough to be able to handle these things in the future and collapse on themselves from the weight of their own mass.

similar to immune systems as well. We always hear that your children should be exposed to different illnesses. That's their immune system gets stronger and stronger. The more they're exposed to different things and they need that early on or else when they get older, they can become not necessarily a immunostrong or whatever you would call it. I don't know what you would say, but they don't have the best immune system when they get older and they catch something and it's, it's very detrimental to them as opposed to people who are exposed to things when they're earlier.

and their immune system is able to grow and flourish and really protect them in their adulthood stage.

So yeah, I wanted to touch upon really that concept of children need to be exposed to certain dangers, allowed free time, free play, things like that. And there's a couple aspects of it that I struggle with because I am a millennial dad who's overprotective and I really don't want my kids to get super hurt. And I worry about sex trafficking and all the other shit that goes on there. Part of that is because we're exposed to social media and we just, we have this global perspective of the world, much different than what it was.

15, 20, 30 years ago where, you know, it was all local news or whatever was on CNN or the national news. had to be a big enough story to get there. But now you have social media, you have all these news outlets. And so you hear about things much quicker and you hear about a lot smaller things. And so I think that part of it is we're skewed as adults, as parents to see the bad because the bad gets clicks and that's what's going to be posted out there. So we possibly think that the world is more dangerous than it is.

even though I know that there are shitty people out there and there's shitty stuff, and I wish that we could stop all of that in our neighborhoods and in areas, it's probably more safe than we think that it is.

That being said, I also agree with the fact that we need to let our children go outside as the kids may say, touch grass, bump their knees, fall out of trees, all the stuff that goes along with being a kid and unsupervised playtime is very important to children. Unsupervised interaction with other kids is very important. That's how you learn how to resolve any conflict.

A lot of times parents will step in right away and stop any small conflict from taking place because they want to make sure that their kids feel comfortable, safe, all that stuff. And you can see that in some of the generations that are coming up now is that any pushback, any adversity, it's like, I'm not in a safe space. I can't handle this. I'm going to break down. I'm mentally unable to filter this. They need to stop as opposed to me being able to.

either speak up for myself in a productive manner and resolve whatever conflict it is or to just ignore it and not fucking give a shit. Right. So these are some of the things that are important. As I mentioned, they kind of did a few studies where they were asking millennials and Gen X and baby boomers when they were able to do independent play outside, like when their parents would let them walk down the street.

a quarter mile to their friend's house. And some of them were saying like six, seven, eight years old. My kid's five and a half. I'm not going to let him walk a quarter mile down the street by himself to go see his friends or anything like that. That's, I feel like that's too young and maybe they were exaggerating. know that as a, as a nineties baby, I was born in the eighties, but I grew up during the nineties. I think I over exaggerate how much freedom I was actually given, but I do remember at the age of like,

11, 12 years old, being able to go skateboard down the street to see my friends, being able to go to the school and skateboard there, being able to go ride my bike down to the store, get what I wanted. As long as I let my parents know where I was going, and we didn't have cell phones either, so it was even less regulated back then. It's like, all right, parents, see you later. Like now, looking back, I'm like, fuck, my parents let me do whatever. I could...

see how parents nowadays would be freaked out by that, especially in the age of cell phone and instant connectivity. Just my kids not answering their cell phone. They're not doing this. I don't know where they're at at all times. I get the anxiousness that comes up from being a parent, but I still think that it's really important to give the kids that freedom. The age is the question. That's where I question. I don't think that we shouldn't allow our kids the freedom to bike to the store by themselves. We shouldn't allow them the freedom to go play in the front yard or in the cul-de-sac by themselves. I think the question is,

How old do they need to be to get there? And that's something that I think is up for debate. If it was, I don't know, it's hard, because I don't know. I think it depends on each child and where they're at maturity wise. But eight, nine, maybe 10 years old is when you could start giving some of that freedom. think that six is probably too young in all honesty. yeah, that was just something that I thought that was.

was interesting was just the way that we were raised is not how we're allowing our kids to be raised. And in terms of the letting them hit adversity and letting them have hardships come in their lives and being exposed to some of the dangers and slings and arrow that this life can pose to them. I think a lot of times some of the parents who go a little too overboard think like I need to inflict

these hardships or these dangers on my children. And that's not the case. It's not like the trees when they're growing up or our immune system. It's like you take your kid and then, you know, grab some sort of infectious disease and smear it in their face to make their immune system better. It's not like you take a tree and beat the shit out of it with an ax and hit it down so that way it'll grow and flourish. That's not what happens. It's just the everyday things that come up in life and letting them be exposed to that.

as opposed to completely sheltering them and protecting them. And so that's one thing I want to make really clear because I have seen parents who go overboard. They're like, I need to put these hardships in my kid's life and be a dick and all these other things. Right. You see those parents who are just overly harsh, overly critical, overly. I don't know. I don't know how to explain it, but you know, I'm talking about it. You know exactly who the fuck I'm talking about. And if you don't know who I'm talking about, it's because you're probably them. But those parents who go overboard,

You don't need to do that. Just allow your children to live their life. Let them have unsupervised play. Don't schedule every single second of the day for them. And then allow them to get hurt. Allow them to go outside and run around and catch bugs and get their hands dirty and catch lizards and do whatever the hell they want to, right? Let the kids have their own childhood. Let them determine what they want to do. Cause you're also letting them learn.

how to make decisions for themselves, how to prioritize things, and then how to make their own cautious decisions, right? Something might be too dangerous for them to want to do. They don't need you to tell them that. They need to learn how to discern that themselves. Other kids are climbing trees. I don't think that's a good idea. This tree is too rickety. I've already climbed a tree that looks like that and I've fallen off. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to follow the crowd. We're giving our kids the chance to grow, learn.

And on the flip side of all of this is that that unsupervised experience in the virtual world. The virtual world is not going anywhere, and it's going to be important for our kids to learn how to navigate that. But we're already at a point where they do know, like my my five year old. We don't let him use the iPad or the phone or anything like that, but he just sees us using our electronics and automatically knows how to swipe and how to do shit like that. Like they're going to learn.

how to use stuff in the virtual world. So I think it's important to keep them out of that as much as possible. And on the flip side of that, not on the flip side, just in addition to that, part of the problem is that these kids see us constantly using our phones and it's really difficult to be like, no, don't do this, don't do that when they constantly see you on the phone. And I'm guilty of it myself, me and my wife, we're both guilty of it. We're both on our phones looking at, we get...

caught in a social media, something pops up, a notification pops up, we get on social media, we start doom scrolling, the kids are like, mom, dad, you're not paying attention. This stuff is all intertwined and I'm not saying that the virtual world is some area that's inherently bad or inherently dangerous or inherently any of those things. It's just, it's new and it has a lot of pitfalls that come along with.

utilizing it. And there's a lot of ways that we grew up as human beings that we're not getting anymore. Right? Like when they were proposing the zoom classrooms for, for school, I was like, hell no. That's look, it, it's a great option. I think the work from home flexibility, the school flexibility, if a kid's sick, stuff like that in special circumstances, I think that

We've gotten some new flexible technology that helps us to achieve certain things in certain circumstances. But that doesn't mean that that should be the default. The default should still be that kids go into school, meet with their peers, go to lunches, have bullies, learn how to navigate the social structure of the school, the popular kids, the jocks, the nerds, all that stuff. There's a lot of shit that kids need to learn how to do.

And if they don't, if they don't get exposed to that when they're older, they're going to grow up to become anxious, depressed, just not able to deal with the stressors of life type of people. And I don't want that for my kids. And there's no guarantee. Like you could expose your kid, all this stuff, and they could still grow up to be, anxious, depressed, or have things happen. But

in terms of trying to set them up best for the future. Cause you can't control the future. You can't control what your kids do, but to set them up best to have the ideal environment is to expose them to some of these hardships, to this adversity, let them experience, let them grow their emotional and psychological immune system as much as they possibly can and help them become productive little human beings. Let them be happy. Let them not have to try and find happiness in a little box in a phone.

to disassociate from the world like a lot of us do now, myself included. I'm not better than thou I'm not sitting here talking about how like I don't do this shit. I definitely do. I mean, I'm on, we're in the social world right now. We're in the virtual world right now. I'm talking to my computer, send it out to the virtual world for podcasts and stuff. I think there are good things that can come from this, but this shouldn't be the default. If this is all I did all the time,

If I was just on here, if I lived in the virtual world, man, we'd have some real problems. And I think that that's the problem for the kids is that as the kids that are born later and later, there's gonna be more and more of them that's in the virtual world, as opposed to when we didn't have this. I barely had the internet when I was like 14, 15 years old. And it was dial up and it was a ring, ring, all the weird ass noises that it said and then.

You know, start looking at something, takes 10 minutes to download one page. Your mom picks up the phone, disconnects you. You're like, mom, what the fuck? You know, that's what I grew up in. But now it's instantaneous information, instantaneous quote unquote connection. But it's a connection that's not real. It's a really easy to discontinue that relationship. And that's one of the things too that the book talks about a little bit is.

In the real world, if you have a relationship with someone, it's pretty difficult if you're going to the same school as them or in the same class as them to completely dissociate from that relationship. If you have issues, you're going to need to figure out how to work around them or to just forgive them or learn to just deal with them, essentially. Whereas in the virtual world, it's really easy to just unblock someone, block, I'm not doing this, I'm out of this group, I'm in this group.

It's this instantaneous gratification that we've learned through the virtual world. And that's not the way shit works in the real world. And as much as we'd like to live in the virtual world, unless eventually one day we all just plug into the matrix and have robots doing all this shit for us and we live in this metaverse or whatever you might call it, we're gonna have to learn to deal with people in the real world. And me personally, I don't want to live in a virtual world. I wanna live in the real world.

I'm a little scared of how I'm going to handle this when my kids get older. I'm lucky right now they're not in it. My kids do watch like some YouTube, but it's if I put on like super simple songs or if my eldest wants to watch some lizard show, I'm in control of that right now. But I know that there's going to be a time where I'm not in control of that. And to completely just ban that.

You know, at some points you just have to be a parent and say like, no, you're not doing that. And that's another thing parents struggle with is just telling their kids what's what they're always like, no, you little Skylar kale third, you can have your voice be heard and I'm not telling you what to do. No, sometimes you just need to tell your fucking kids what to do. They're little people. We love them and they should have a voice in a lot of things, but sometimes as a parent, it's your job to just be like, no tough shit.

We're not doing that for X, Y, X, Y, Z reason.

That being said, what I was trying to get at was the fact that my kids are gonna want to eventually do this stuff and I can't completely just block them off from it without like making them absolutely hate me, right? Why can't I do this? That all my other friends have this stuff or they're online and this is when they're older. Why can't I do that? So for me, my theory is I want them to be able to do cool stuff outside of the virtual world. Like my kids wanna go ride motorcycles. My kids wanna go to the lake.

My kids want to go down to a hike and look for snakes and lizards and shit like that. Like I'm going to go do that with them because I would much rather them get to do this cool stuff outside of the virtual world. Even if it's more work for me than just giving them this pacifier of the virtual world, letting them go into that and wanting to do that more. And I don't know if it's going to work or not. We'll see right now. It seems to be working. My kid loves animals and stuff like that. We have a little Creek down the street.

I take him down there and it's time out of my day, time that I could be doing work or cleaning the house or whatever it is that I need to get done, but it's time I get to spend with him, that he wants to spend with me and we get to do stuff out in nature, in the real world, as opposed to just giving him an iPad, letting him scroll mindlessly through shit and potentially finding a whole slew of dangers in this virtual world as opposed to just.

you know, the ones that he was built for in the physical world. But that's, that's going to be it for today's episode. I hope that I went in at least somewhat of a tangential direction with that. And then it all kind of connects together and comes back to us at the end. But just a quick recap, essentially letting our kids experience the hardships of the real world cuts, bumps, bruises, conflict with peers, letting them work on that, obviously still keeping them.

The term that they use in the book was allowing the allowable amount of danger versus like no danger whatsoever. Like you want to keep them as safe as necessary versus as safe as possible was the exact wording that they use. And I think that that's something to remember as safe as necessary, not as safe as possible. So don't just completely go hands off because I said it, but keep them as safe as is necessary for them to.

stay alive, to not have serious injury, to whatever you want to put in there, whatever variable you want to put in there. And then also making sure that you're keeping them as safe as necessary in the virtual world as well and not giving them free range to just do whatever the hell they want there. But yeah, let your kids touch grass, as the Gen Zers may say. But that's going to do it for this episode of TUF Hope that you all enjoyed it. And I will see you all next week.