Chapter 3 Summary

• The human brain has two modes: ‘discover’ and ‘defend’. Youngsters born post-1995 are more likely to be in defend mode.

• Just as the immune system must be exposed to germs so as to become strong, children must be exposed to setbacks and failure. Over-protection prevents this.  

• Risky, physical 'free play' has ‘anti-phobic’ effects. And kids need lots of it. They will seek the level of risk and thrill they are ready for to master their fears and develop their competencies.  

• Changes to public media during the ‘80s and ‘90s led parents to believe there were more threats than there were. They began to parent in ‘defend’ mode.

• The resultant trend in ‘safetyism’ makes it harder for children to learn to deal with risk, conflict, frustrations and care for themselves generally.

• Evolutionary biology has provided an attachment system to help young mammals learn skills for adulthood while still being able to retreat to the safety of the parent in the event of threat. Fearful parenting, however, keeps children on home base too much, preventing children from having the experiences they need to grow strong and develop a secure attachment style.

• Children thrive best when they have a play-based childhood in the physical world.   

Discover Mode Versus Defend Mode

Human beings evolved with periods of safety and abundance and periods of scarcity, danger, drought and starvation. Our ancestors therefore needed psychological adaptations to thrive in both settings.

This shaped the brain into two specialised systems: The behavioural activation system (BAS) which switches on when we spot an opportunity and floods the body with positive emotions and shared excitement. And the behavioural inhibition system (BIS), activated when threats are detected, and associated with stress hormones. Haidt calls these our 'discover’ and ‘defend’ modes.

People with chronic anxiety are in defend mode. Animals that evolved with little risk of death, like top predators or herbivores on predator-free islands, often seem serene and confident, and spend most of their time in discover mode. Rabbits and deer, by contrast, have a default setting of defend mode because their environment is more threatening.

In humans, and other highly sociable mammals such as dogs, this default setting contributes to personality. Those who spend more time in discover mode are typically happier, more sociable and eager for new experiences. Those in defend mode tend to see new situations, people and ideas as potential threats.

Being stuck in defend mode is an obstacle to learning and growth.   

Students on the Defensive

As soon as Gen Z arrived on college campuses, college counselling services were overwhelmed. The exuberant Millenials in discover mode gave way to the anxiety-ridden Gen Z’s in defend mode. Books, words, speakers and ideas that caused little or no controversy in 2010 were, by 2015, increasingly described as harmful, dangerous or traumatising.

The new phone-based childhood shifted a generation of children towards defend mode.

Kids Are Antifragile

The author Nassim Taleb coined the phrase “antifragile” to describe things that need to get knocked over occasionally in order to become stronger.

Trees exposed to strong winds in early life become trees able to withstand stronger winds as adults. Children similarly need manageable stressors to develop psychological strength.  

The immune system needs early exposure to dirt, parasites and bacteria to develop properly. The same principle applies to the psychological immune system: children need to learn how to handle frustrations, minor accidents, teasing, exclusion, perceived injustices and ordinary conflict without falling prey to hours or days of inner turmoil.

We cannot live amongst other human beings without conflict and deprivation. Happiness comes not from eliminating every trigger, but from learning that external events do not have to control our emotions. To develop these skills, parents and care givers ought to deliberately expose the children in their care to small frustrations: “If you want to watch TV put away your toys first.” or, “Yes, your sister got something you didn’t; that happens sometimes!”

Well-intentioned parents who create a bubble of satisfaction, protecting their children from frustration, consequences and negative emotions may inadvertently block the development of competence, self-control, frustration-tolerance and emotional self-management. Research has linked ‘coddling’ and ‘helicopter parenting’ with later anxiety, lower self-efficacy and difficulty adjusting to college.

Children are intrinsically antifragile; overprotected children are more likely to become adolescents stuck in defend mode: learning less, having fewer close friends, feeling more anxious and experiencing greater distress from ordinary conversations.

Antifragile Kids Need Risky Play to Stay in Discover Mode

Risky play is thrilling and exciting play involving uncertainty and some possibility of physical injury. Children naturally add risk to their play through heights, speed, rough-and-tumble, tools, elements (e.g. experimenting with fire), and brief separation from adults.

Video games may show avatars doing all these things, but they do not provide real-world experience of managing the body, uncertainty and consequences. Children need to navigate the physical world before spending large amounts of time in the virtual one.

Researchers have found this kind of exposure can have an anti-phobic effect. Phobias overwhelmingly centre around things that do not kill us (enclosed spaces, the dark etc). Very few people develop phobias to things that can actually kill (cars, knives etc). For safety reasons, we evolved to pay attention to certain things and we have an ability to acquire a fear from a single bad experience or from seeing others show fear towards something. But, as a child gains exposure, experience and mastery of the world around them and themselves in that world, fear usually disappears.

As the child becomes more competent, they may approach what once frightened them, seek guidance from someone older e.g. an older child and learn to distinguish genuinely dangerous situations from manageable ones. Fear can become thrill and triumph, while the brain shifts towards discovery mode. Through exploration, children learn to judge risk, take appropriate action and discover that when things go wrong, they can usually cope without an adult's intervention.

A phone-based childhood cannot develop this kind of antifragility. Children need physical, outdoor play and appropriate risk. So we should be aiming to keep children as safe as necessary, not as safe as possible.

Socially, children also need to learn friendship 'in person'. They need to make mistakes, repair those mistakes through apologies and learn relationship skills through facial expressions, touch and real-time interaction. This develops social competence. Online, mistakes can attract intense criticism from multiple people, including those who are not in the child's friendship group, and rather than leaving the child feeling competent, it leaves them feeling socially incompetent and more anxious about future interactions with others.

The Beginning of the End of Play-Based Childhood

Earlier generations were generally given considerably more freedom to roam, and at a much younger age. Children walked to school, invented games, encountered conflicts and adventures, and played in mixed-age neighbourhood groups.

Even though fears of abduction and sex criminals had been rising since the 1980s, the general pattern for kids in elementary and middle school up through the 1980s was still that, after school and on weekends, they were out playing in their neighbourhoods in mixed-age groups, seeking thrills, having adventures, working out conflicts, engaging in antiphobic risk-taking, developing their intrinsic antifragility, and enjoying being in discover mode together. And then they would come home when the streetlights came on.

From the 1990s, however, parental fears increased, and the result was a gradual reduction in children’s independent play and exploration and, with it, their resilience.

Fearful Parenting in the Anglosphere

Adults, schools and other institutions increasingly taught Gen Z children that the world was unsafe, even though children were safer in public than they had been during previous decades when risks from crime, sex offenders and drunk drivers were higher.

Busier roads, less social cohesion, and fewer familiar adults ‘watching the street’ contributed to parents feeling that everyone and everything was a potential threat.

British sociologist Frank Furedi linked this partly to a breakdown in adult solidarity. As the idea of 'stranger danger' grew, adults increasingly told themselves not to intervene with other people’s children. But when adults stop helping one another, parents are left more isolated, making parenting harder, more fearful and more time-consuming.

Children in Europe and other parts of the world enjoyed far greater freedom to play and explore than they did in the UK or USA. UK parents felt increasingly compelled to drive their children, even short distances, unlike parents in countries such as Germany and Scandinavia.   

Safetyism and Concept Creep

‘Concept creep’ describes the expansion of psychological concepts. Words such as ‘addiction’, ‘trauma’, ‘abuse’ and ‘safety’ have all broadened their meaning.

‘Safety’, for instance, once referred primarily to physical safety. However, from the late 80s, the idea of emotional safety increasingly entered the conversation, rising dramatically between 1985 and 2010.

Psychological safety properly means feeling able to speak up, disagree and take interpersonal risks without being punished or humiliated. It is an important indicator of a healthy work culture because people can challenge ideas respectfully.

What emerged on some college and university campuses as ‘emotional safety’ became much broader: essentially, “I should not have to experience negative emotions because of what someone else says or does. I have the right not to be triggered.”

Safety consequently became an unquestionable value for many in Gen Z.

Antifragility and the Attachment System

Mammal babies have a long period of dependence in which they must develop the skills needed for adulthood while staying safe. Staying close to Mum provides protection, but as they mature, their brains need practice in skills such as running, fighting and befriending, motivating them to explore.

Every child needs an adult as a ‘secure base’ for comfort and protection. But if safety were the only goal, children would never leave that base. Yet, as soon as they can crawl, they begin exploring. When something frightening happens, they return to Mum, settle and then venture out again.

A securely attached child usually settles within seconds or minutes, returns to discover mode and continues learning. Over time, children become less fearful and more willing to explore independently. Eventually, they internalise the secure base so that they no longer need their parent physically present to feel supported. They learn to face adversity for themselves and grow up to be resilient adults, confident in their own abilities.