Parents, teachers, and medical professionals are wringing their hands over the alarming, decades-long rise in teenage mental health issues, including depression, feelings of “persistent hopelessness,” and drug addiction.

The root causes remain elusive—cell phones and social media are prime suspects—but a sprawling 2023 study offers another explanation that’s gaining traction: After scouring surveys, data sets, and cultural artifacts, researchers theorized that a primary cause is “a decline over decades in opportunities for children and teens to play, roam, and engage in other activities independent of direct oversight and control by adults.”

READ MORE at Edutopia  https://www.edutopia.org/article/10-most-significant-education-studies-2023/