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.
From acclaimed Atlantic staff writer and host of BBC’s podcast “The New Gurus” Helen Lewis comes a timely and provocative interrogation of the myth of genius, exploring the surprising inventions, inspirations and distortions by which some lives are elevated to 'greatness' - and others are not*A Guardian, Financial Times, New Statesman and GQ Book for 2025*You can tell what a society values by who it labels as a genius. You can also tell who it excludes, who it enables, and what it is prepared to tolerate. In The Genius Myth, Helen Lewis unearths how this one word has shaped (and distorted) our ideas of success and achievement.Ultimately, argues Lewis, the modern idea of genius — a single preternaturally gifted individual, usually white and male, exempt from social niceties and sometimes even the law— has run its course. Braiding deep research with her signature wit and lightness, Lewis dissects past and present models of genius in the West, and reveals a far deeper and more interesting picture of human creativity than conventional wisdom allows. She uncovers a battalion of overlooked wives and collaborators. She asks whether most inventions are inevitable. She wonders if the Beatles would succeed today. And she confronts the vexing puzzle of Elon Musk, the tech disrupter who fancies himself as an ubermensch.Smart, funny, and provocative, The Genius Myth will challenge your assumptions about creativity, productivity, and innovation --- and forever alter your mental image of the so-called “genius.”
