Also, the section on college students irks me a bit. I didn't know anyone who was in such close contact with their parents at school. Maybe one in a hundred students are like that, and maybe they really annoy the professors, but it's not common. And the use of cell phones to set up study sessions is a completely silly and trivial complaint.

I guess part of me reads that section and feels vaguely self-conscious, because I was one of those kids who went off to university and became overwhelmed by anxiety and unable to complete my studies. Is this because I am a wimp? Because my parents over-sanitized my childhood?

Wait, no. I gloried in the baking of mud pies, fell out of trees, got a job at 14, and received plenty of physical discipline. My childhood was actually very old-fashioned. The real world, not so much.

The article as a whole contains some very good/interesting points, but I don't think the link between a more old-fashioned childhood and psychological well-being is so simple. Children need a balance between comfort and toughness. Stray too far in either direction, or keep them cordoned off from the social/technological demands of the world, and they will have difficulty functioning as versatile adults. Also remember that we now expect any given person to be capable in a huge variety of different social/professional settings, which is not an easy thing to ask. Maybe anxiety was less severe in the past partly because there were more defined pathways and more familiar environments for young people.


Oh, and I had Dr. Joffe (UIUC) as a psychologist for a while. Did not like. He spent my "therapy sessions" ranting to me about the problems of binge drinking on campus, despite the fact that I have always been a moderate to non-drinker and didn't really care.