Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Restoring Childhood: How to Set Kids Free in the Age of Anxiety

Restoring Childhood: How to Set Kids Free in the Age of Anxiety

Gray, Peter

Hardcover

General ParentingMental Health

Publisher Price: $32.00

PREORDER - Expected ship date September 15, 2026

ISBN13: 9798217046430
Publisher: Thesis
Published: Sep 15 2026
Pages: 352
Weight: 1.11
Height: 1.19 Width: 6.23 Depth: 9.32
Language: English
What if the cause of the youth mental health crisis wasn't social media at all?

When was the last time you actually saw a group of kids--without adults--playing on a playground? Forty years ago, an American ten-year-old could expect to walk to school, bike to a friend's, or play pick-up games with other kids in the neighborhood. Today, our children are supervised and controlled at every opportunity.

As author, researcher, and psychology professor Peter Gray shows in Restoring Childhood, kids aren't depressed and anxious because of social media. They're retreating to social media in large part because they lack agency and autonomy in the real world. Social media use is instead often a symptom of the larger problem: the disappearance of childhood as a stage of life solely for experimentation, play, and learning you can do things on your own. And if we continue to tighten the leash on our kids, no amount of screen-time restriction will reverse the alarming mental health crisis we see our kids enduring today.

Restoring Childhood is a radical examination of how certain societal trends--from round-the-clock news coverage, to increasing reliance on cars, to the introduction of Common Core, to growing wealth inequality--conspired to create a fundamentally anti-child environment. If we want to raise mentally healthy and resilient kids, Gray argues, we must restore childhood to children. We must, individually and collectively, prioritize adult-free play, and the time for it--in our schools, in our neighborhoods, and as parents.

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