Peter Gray, David F. Lancy and David F. Bjorklund:

It is no secret that rates of anxiety and depression among school-aged children and teens in the US are at an all- time high. Recognizing this, the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psy- chiatry, and Children’s Hospital Association issued, in 2021, a joint statement to the Biden administration that child and adolescent mental health be declared a “national emergency.”1
Although most current discussions of the decline in youth mental health emphasize that which has occurred over the past 10-15 years, research indicates that the decline has been continuous over at least the last 5 or 6 decades.2,3 Although a variety of causes of this decline have been pro- posed by researchers and practitioners (some discussed near the end of this Commentary), our focus herein is on a possible cause that we believe has been insufficiently re- searched, discussed, and taken into account by health practi- tioners and policy makers.
Our thesis is that a primary cause of the rise in mental dis- orders is a decline over decades in opportunities for children and teens to play, roam, and engage in other activities inde- pendent of direct oversight and control by adults. Such inde- pendent activities may promote mental well-being through both immediate effects, as a direct source of satisfaction, and long-term effects, by building mental characteristics that provide a foundation for dealing effectively with the stresses of life.