Cocooning our kids

Anxiety and depression are skyrocketing among our young. While the pandemic and digital media are factors, many experts point the finger at overprotective parenting.

- SARAH CATHERALL

For Gwendoline Smith, safety nets enveloping backyard trampolines sum it up - we are literally cocooning kids from discomfort. "When I first saw them, I thought: give me a break. Before they came along, you were bounced off but you learned," says Smith, an Auckland clinical psychologist and author. "You paid attention and if you didn't, the consequences were that your legs got caught between the springs, or you landed on the ground and you were bruised.

"The trampoline cages reveal a wider problem. We are taking away lessons in consequential thinking: 'If I do this, that will happen.' No, because if it looks like that might happen, Mum will helicopter in and make sure it doesn't."

Smith is articulating what many professionals who work with young people are noting. Anxiety and depression reported in Gen Z (those born between 1997 and 2012) are at record highs, but at the same time, there is a noticeable increase in parents' willingness to shield children from the rougher edges of life, from enclosed trampolines to demands for kid-glove treatment on supposed adventurous activities. Could there be a causal relationship?

According to the Youth 19 project, a large scale study in 2019 of secondary school students, 23% had depressive symptoms (up from 13% seven years earlier), with depression hitting young females, Māori and young people in low-decile communities harder than most. There is agreement that it is important to open up about mental health and get help for those who need it, especially as 2015 data showed New Zealand had the highest suicide rate for teens aged 15-19 in the OECD.