I've always "prided myself on giving my sons very long reins," said Rowan Pelling in The Independent. Yet that said, I'm still a "bit in awe" of TV presenter Kirstie Allsopp, who last week revealed that her 15-year-old son has just returned from Interrailing around Europe for three weeks with a 16-year-old friend. "If we're afraid our children will also be afraid," she tweeted. "If we let go, they will fly." Her post caused a predictable furore – and even prompted an anonymous report to social services, who have opened a file on her child, Oscar.
As I see it though, said Sam Leith in The Spectator, we should be celebrating Allsopp's decision to let him stray that far from the coop. Ignore the busybodies and helicopter parents: "The average switched-on teenager" with a smartphone should be perfectly able to navigate a European transport system "without a chaperone". In fact, isn't that sort of thing – taking risks, finding a "bridge to the adult world" – exactly what growing up is all about?
Allsopp's attitude is very "cool" and progressive, said Barbara Ellen in The Observer. But might there not also be a faint whiff of "narcissism" about it: of the desire to be seen as the type of parent who wants to help write their child's "coming-of-age novel" so they can reminisce about their own youthful hedonism? Allsopp's post triggered a sea of "rosy-hued memories" of times past – hitchhiking and drug-taking, roaming free. Back in the real world, though, it's worth recognising the truth that things are a lot more on the edge for teenagers today. "Stabbings, rapes, assaults, spiking"; drugs more plentiful and more powerful than the "half an ecstasy tablet" we'd do at "groovy bops". And pointing out those risks doesn't make you a "terrible killjoy"; as a parent, it's "the job".
It's certainly a dangerous world out there, said Jenni Russell in The Times – just as it was in our day. "Children broke arms", got lost, "could be pressurised into sexual encounters they didn't want". Yet I'd still take real life with all its risks over the modern-day digital alternative. Gen Z have been dealt a double whammy of having their physical freedom restricted as never before while being "gifted" an addictive online universe that has led to a worldwide teenage mental health crisis.
As they retreat "from the tiresome business of dealing with complex reality to a parallel universe of TikToks, Snapchat poses, gaming", they are losing the age-old ability to connect with fellow humans and navigate the physical world. "The danger for this generation doesn't come from encountering life, but from being shielded from it and reluctant to engage with it."
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