It’s Gen Z for “Have a real experience” or, more literally, “Maybe you should get outside.”
The slang meets the moment. By all accounts, Gen Z and Gen Alpha spend much of life indoors and on screens. Even as the world is arguably physically safer than ever, these cohorts aretaking fewer risks and spending less time socializing, dating, and volunteering, while filling the bulk of their leisure time on phones. Meanwhile, academic scores are sliding while rates of anxiety and depression have more than doubled over the last decade, now affecting one in five teens (one in three girls).
That decline in mental health “is a phenomenon unlike anything we’ve ever seen in the data,” says BYU family life professor Adam A. Rogers (BS ’12).
According to BYU psychology professor Jared S. Warren (BS ’96), “More and more, many are struggling to bounce back from challenges that are just part of the human experience.”
Many parents find themselves repeating the mantra of the day, “You can do hard things,” a bucket that increasingly includes stuff from normal life—say, initiating conversation—and once-standard stepping stones, like obtaining a driver’s license (which most teens today put off). At a glance, it may seem that many young people are simply content to “Netflix” (a verb) and ride shotgun.
While many youth continue to thrive, it’s hard not to look at the macro trends—emotional unmooring, siphoned drive, increasing isolation—and wonder what is happening to our kids. As years of media headlines have implied, is this just a fragile crop?
No, say BYU professors across disciplines. Kids, these experts insist, are not fragile, not inherently. The better questions, says Rogers, are “In what ways is the world more challenging? . . . And how can we, therefore, build resilience and prepare them for the road?”
Every generation has faced hardships, acknowledges family life professor Larry J. Nelson (BS ’94, MS ’96). But he argues that young people today face a unique set of headwinds. “The context today has shifted,” he says. Among other challenges, young people today face
Global Uncertainty: Nelson cites the book Generation Disaster, which makes the case that “no past American generation has faced the cumulative load of multiple, simultaneous stressors.” Starting with 9/11, young people have grown up with reports of school shootings, climate change, and natural disasters; the Great Recession, which brought family hardship; a global pandemic; and intensifying political division—all amplified in omnipresent traditional and social media.
“In what ways is the world more challenging? … And how can we, therefore, build resilience and prepare them for the road?”
Adam Rogers
Technology Saturation: “We’re not regulating screen use well enough,” says Rogers. More concerning to him than the video games, shows, and scrolling are the experiences they are crowding out of our lives. Further, artificial intelligence threatens to infringe on true human connection and “cheat our brains” out of problem-solving skill building and creativity, says Rebecca R. Winters (BS ’11), professor of counseling psychology and special education. “I do worry, genuinely, that without proper AI training and safety measures in place, younger generations are going to lose capacity for critical thinking as time goes by.”
A Loneliness Epidemic: In 2023 the surgeon general issued a report declaring a national loneliness epidemic. The lead science editor on the report, BYU psychology professor Julianne Holt-Lundstad (BS ’94, MS ’98), says that young people 15–24 reported the highest rates of isolation, in part due to shallow digital connections and less peer and community face time.
Convenience Culture: Modern culture prioritizes comfort and quick fixes, says Warren. We tend toward shortcuts to pleasure—like shopping and social media—while avoiding longer routes to find deeper satisfaction, mastery, and purpose—like cultivating a friendship or learning a new skill. “Over time, that makes us psychologically weaker,” says Warren. “Humans need resistance for growth and health.”
Despite these headwinds, Nelson has good news: resilience isn’t inborn. It’s derived from a mix of internal factors (such as skills, which can be learned) and external factors, like the influence of schools, neighborhoods, and—above all—close, supportive relationships.
The deck was stacked against these kids, says Warren, describing the high-risk youth in his earliest research. “They came from a community ridden with crime and poverty, a lot of them from single-parent homes.” The ones who got traction had one thing in common: a non-parent adult who cared. “If they had people in that broader social network that they felt they could count on, that made all the difference,” he says. It didn’t matter if it was a coach or teacher, an aunt or uncle.
Ali Crandall (BS ’00), a BYU professor of public health, encourages adults to be that figure in a youth’s life, to help create a supportive community. “It can be any kids in your life. . . . Take an active interest in them,” she says. “Children and adolescents need a variety of healthy relationships.”
That includes healthy connections with peers, whose empathy and shared experience can not only help buoy kids through adversity but also get them to take on hard things. It’s called vicarious self-efficacy, says Mathew D. Duerden (BA ’03, MS ’06), BYU professor of experience design and management. Seeing someone like you perform a task revises your assessment of your own capabilities (for example, “If she landed a job, so can I”).
“A lot of resilience comes from feeling like you belong some place,” Duerden adds, underscoring the importance of relationships built within a school, neighborhood, community, fan base, youth group. Find spaces where kids can belong, he says. The goal is forming a constellation of genuine, face-to-face connections—not the kind forged from a couch.
In that constellation the parental relationship is paramount—and the researchers say parents would do well to remember it’s not just kids struggling in these fraught times. Parents, Warren says, may need first to address their own stressors and screen distractions—“not unlike putting the oxygen mask on yourself first on an airplane,” he says.
Providing a secure base is key, adds Winters. A big part of that is being present. She recommends spending daily one-on-one, undistracted time with each child—even just 5 or 10 minutes. “It’s like one of those old radios, where you’re getting in tune with one another,” she says. “Being together as a family and a community is a huge way that we can . . . develop a sense of belonging and connection that our kids so desperately need.”
Some parents just floor Rogers—in a good way. Like the father of a kid in his Sunbeams class.
“You know, your son was being teased in Sunbeams on Sunday,” Rogers recalls telling the boy’s father, who paused and said, “That’s good.”
“It almost took me aback,” says Rogers. “I was like, ‘What do you mean?’”
After confirming that it wasn’t bullying, the father explained: “I need him to know that’s just going to happen from time to time. . . . I’m glad he learned what it’s like to be on the receiving end of that.”
Rogers contrasts this approach with some troubling modern parenting tendencies: thinking it’s their job to make their children happy, to remove obstacles, or to ensure their kids “have it better than they did,” showering them with material possessions and comforts.
“Do we want our children to have itbetter than we did, or do we want our children to be better than we were?” he poses. “Maybe the collective, cultural shift we need,” he continues, “is asking, ‘How would I parent in this moment if I wanted to raise a strong, resilient person?’”
We often think about getting to the top of the mountain, Nelson says, but we don’t have to go straight up.
Rogers says there are real benefits to parents pausing before resolving struggle for their children. Take sibling conflict: “As parents, we just want to see it end, because we don’t want to listen to it,” says Rogers. “But when kids realize they have to solve it on their own,” he continues, that requires the skill-building that is going to forge adults who can communicate, negotiate, get creative, and forgive and move on.
While there aren’t one-size answers on parental involvement, Nelson tends to ask, “Is it achievable for them? Then let them try.”
That doesn’t mean parents must be totally hands-off, says Nelson. He studies “helicopter parenting”—doing for your child what they should be doing for themselves— which he distinguishes from supporting children as they try things they’ve never done before. “You don’t have to throw them into the deep end of the pool without a life jacket, but you also can’t keep them on a comfy lounge chair next to the pool,” he says. “If they want to learn to swim, you can walk them into the shallows, but they’ve got to get in the pool.”
Should parents ever rescue? Yes, at any sign of abuse, neglect, mistreatment from adults, bullying, or victimization, says Rogers. “Anything that could create trauma actually creates more fragility.”
“It can be a tricky balance,” says Rogers. He likens this to the Savior’s approach. “He doesn’t always rescue me in the way I think He’s going to rescue me. How can I model that for my child? How do I make sure my child knows they are loved, adored, and respected deeply and that I’m always there for them without me rescuing them every single time?”
All the whitewater rafts were lined up on the riverbank, plus one tiny boat—wooden frame, blue paint flaking.
“Who put their junky old boat here?” a 14-year-old Duerden asked. His dad’s face broke into a mischievous grin. Duerden, he announced, would row that one by himself all week.
Duerden’s reaction? “Sheer terror,” he recalls. Their family ran a rafting company, and Duerden was skilled but scared. “I thought I’d flip and drown the first day,” he says. He didn’t. And the clincher, Duerden says, is that accomplishing the feat changed the way he carried himself going into high school that fall. “No one there knew I had done that,” he says. “But I knew.”
That’s the beauty of a challenging accomplishment, says Duerden: confidence in one area spills over into others. He has measured it in studies. The science shows that self-efficacy—the belief that one can do something—is a better predictor of performance than actual skill.
The accomplishments don’t have to be triumphs worthy of an Instagram post. When Duerden helped lead a semester at the London Centre, the first assignment he gave students was to master the Tube—alone. “Many said it was one of their most transformative moments,” he says, realizing they could safely traverse a foreign place.
Nelson helped fashion a right-sized triumph for his shy 4-year-old at a McDonald’s. She’d received a toy horse she already had and wanted to trade it. After making sure the situation was safe and coaching her on what to say, Nelson had her make the trade herself. “She looked at the counter, looked at the horse, and took the deepest breath you ever heard,” he says. But she “came back with a big smile on her face.”
Nelson likens building efficacy to hiking. We often think about getting to the top of the mountain, he says, but we don’t have to go straight up. “I can take switchbacks. It’s challenging—it’s still uphill—but now it’s achievable.”
Warren says parents can model this by taking on stretching, achievable goals—running a marathon, learning a language, playing an instrument, learning to meditate, researching genealogy. “Let children see that it’s not always fun,” he says. “When kids see that over and over again from a parent, they start to see what’s possible.”
The grocery-aisle meltdown. The sibling squabble in the car. The summer refrain, “I’m bored!”
These are training grounds for emotional regulation. “Emotional strength is like a muscle,” says Winters. “It’s something you need to be constantly flexing and working on.”
Too often, the experts say, parents hand a device to a kid in distress. “It’s become a centerpiece of how we help kids regulate their emotions,” says Rogers. “And that sets a tone on how they come to rely on technology moving forward.”
“Feelings are just information. We need to help our children get to this idea of acceptance, where they recognize it’s okay for us to feel this way, . . . that I can get through this moment, however long it may last, and then decide how to move forward.”
Rebecca Winters
Better to stow the tech and help kids learn to cope with unwanted feelings. Warren says parents can provide emotion coaching, helping kids acknowledge, name, and allow space for feelings. “There’s this implicit sense that I’m not supposed to feel this way,” Warren says. “That resistance against the emotion actually can make it worse.”
“Feelings are just information,” adds Winters. “We need to help our children get to this idea of acceptance, where they recognize it’s okay for us to feel this way, . . . that I can get through this moment, however long it may last, and then decide how to move forward.”
Breathing and mindfulness practices can help. For teens and adults, Warren and his BYU grad students share free modules at mybestself101.org, and Warren offers guided meditations for building resilience and managing difficult emotions on YouTube. For young children, Winters uses bibliotherapy, reading books that illustrate emotion skills and principles.
From a calm state, problem solving can begin. This all played out recently for Warren when his teen daughter’s text thread “blew up” with a rude message. How should he respond, if at all? His start: asking his daughter about her emotional state and acknowledging, “Yeah, this is hard.” That alone put her in a better place to think about next steps. As she pondered texting back or starting a new thread, Warren acted as a sounding board: “Okay, and what would happen long-term if you did that?” The key, he says is to provide scaffolding for your children but “let them make the decision.” And to help them move from a reactive state, whether that takes five minutes or sleeping on it. “We can think of a range of possibilities when we’re in a calmer state,” he says.
Parents should remember that stress, in small doses, is good. Research shows “that a little bit of stress for a child produces strength like a vaccination,” says Nelson. “It builds resistance against future stresses.”
There are well over 100 kids in his neighborhood, says Rogers, yet “the streets are empty, the parks are empty.” From a child development perspective, it’s unsettling.
That’s because play is the work of childhood, Rogers says—a training ground for social interaction, creative problem solving, decision-making, and so many of the things that underpin mental and emotional health. But play is changing in fundamental ways.
For one thing, a kid’s radius has gotten much shorter. “At 7 I was able to go pretty far with my friends,” says Rogers. For many parents, the world just feels scarier nowadays. But Let Grow, a movement advocating for childhood independence and free play, compiles national data showing that kidnapping, crime, and child sexual abuse rates are all about the same or lower than decades ago; the sexual exploitation of children is up only online. Even so, parenting culture has shifted, with more management of children’s activities and more surveillance, be that in person or via tracking apps and GPS devices.
Active kids have more grit—the ability to stay on a difficult task—and are more likely to report feelings of well-being.
What kids have lost in autonomy has been replaced with extracurriculars and time gaming, surfing the web, and otherwise watching screens. By age 8 technology fills around four hours of kids’ daily discretionary time, per Common Sense Media. “Anything screen based may be wonderful entertainment,” says Rogers, “but it is . . . not play,” at least not in the sense of the developmentally rich spontaneous activity of children.
In this time of modern malaise, Duerden advocates for “a robust leisure portfolio” and not to let play wither, even as kids get older.
That portfolio should include physical activity. Studies show sedentary behavior negatively affects adolescents’ mental health well into adulthood. Active kids have more grit—the ability to stay on a difficult task—and are more likely to report feelings of well-being. Exercise also helps reduce anxiety.
A leisure portfolio also could include time in nature—one of our best teachers, says Warren. Compared to the instant gratification of a scroll through social media, “nature reminds us of the time it takes for things to happen, that you’ve got to cultivate things, that there are storms in life,” Warren says.
Structured activities can also be arenas of grit—though you’ve got “to thread the needle,” says exercise science professor Matthew K. Seely, founder of the Strong Youth Project, which seeks to improve organized youth sports. He’s found that age-appropriate extracurriculars are great—in moderation. Abundant findings correlate youth extracurriculars with a range of positive outcomes, from better grades to more resilience to higher self-esteem.
But there is also research indicating a point of diminishing returns—even detriment—when extracurriculars are overdone. Overbooked kids are more likely to struggle with anxiety, depression, and self-direction. Packed schedules also eat time away from other important activities, like family life and socializing.
While unstructured play may not look like it, it may be the most powerful leisure of all, ripe with opportunities to fail and try again without pressure and without prescriptive instruction. “The little experiential learning they can get every single day makes for a very self-directing, self-regulating child,” says Rogers.
To that end, Crandall suggests leaving room for boredom. “We’re terrified of being bored nowadays,” she says, but it’s fertile ground for creativity. Parents can note their kids’ interests and provide raw materials—cooking supplies, tools and materials to build stuff, library books on a subject—tinder to turn their spark to a flame.
Rogers believes that, more than learn-to-read-by-3 programs, what toddlers really need is a park and some peers—and parents keeping some distance. It looks different for tweens and teens, but the essence is the same: they need space and downtime to explore their interests, express creativity, and socialize.
No matter the headwinds, says Crandall, positive experiences can tip the scales toward mental health and resilience. Her research explores how positive childhood experiences can counteract adverse ones. “These positive things are going to push back,” she says, “and sometimes they can push harder than all the negatives.” Many of those positive experiences revealed in the research—such as fostering belief in a higher power and creating meaningful routines and rituals—align closely with living the gospel.
Routines, for instance, foster stability and healthy habits, say the experts. Parents can consider consistent family meals, set scripture study, and hold weekly family “sacred time,” à la home evening, suggests Winters, along with unique-to-their-family routines.
Crandall also beats the drum for powerful family stories—from genealogy and from the living. “Create a family narrative,” she says. Share stories about family members—their accomplishments and their hard times. This helps to normalize failure. They can even be tales of things that have happened within the child’s own life—“reminders that they have been successful in the past and can be successful again.”
Service, likewise, is a gold mine for young people. BYU research demonstrates that youth who get involved in service (chores count) have lower rates of depression, plus more self-esteem, gratitude, and perseverance.
In short, says Crandall, we can’t let our children languish. “Languishing is when you’re feeling a lack of purpose in life, and it mimics mental illness, it mimics depression,” she says. “We assume if [our children] are home, they’re safe. But that doesn’t mean they’re flourishing.”
