there are insufficient farms to offer that to all kids. At least social media levels the playing field somewhat, it does need improvement though.

It doesn't have to be a literal farm though. I spent so much time in my childhood building Legos or with metal construction sets or reading in my room alone.

We just moved from three painfully lonely acres in the countryside to a small city and my kids seem much happier.

Seriously, we moved to the middle of nowhere when I was a kid and it sucked. Nobody to play with. Not much to do outside (it was mostly just fields).

So of course I found things to get up to that often got me into trouble. Boredom and lack of mental stimulation are not great for anyone, but for kids who don't yet have the skills to deal with it, the results can be a lot worse.

Our kids are 4 and 6 and being unable to see friends without a lot of planning was miserable.

Humans, including kids, are inherently social creatures, and are happiest when communing with their fellow creatures (including pets, but mostly other humans). Kids are most happy when they and their friends are playing together, and my personal belief is that they are happiest when helping other people together (so much of my childhood play was around pretending being a hero, sacrificing and risking my life for the sake of others - what if that was channeled to real world aid).

> Humans, including kids, are inherently social creatures, and are happiest when communing with their fellow creatures

That may be generally true, but it doesn’t imply that time alone is always bad, nor that all time “being social” is good. It’s certainly plausible that the explosion of access to social media has been a net negative and that spending some of that time alone would be better.

Thinking back, the time I spent having sneaked to the school library during lunch break definitely felt healthier than the times I got caught by a teacher and sent back to “socially commune” with my tormentors, er, classmates.

I think you're describing a different problem - a societal culture that enables and encourages bullying at all ages.

If your peers aren't cruel to you, then spending time around them is extremely healthy.

Don't overgeneralize. People are different and have different needs. You can speak your truth without having to say it is true for everyone.

Reacting to your first sentences and ignoring the rest, it made me think of my own cohort on the tail end of Gen X, where there were fewer of us following the masses of boomers and their Gen X echo.

This affects basic things like the ratio of contacts with your own childhood peers versus those of other ages. It also affects how much the media and pop culture seems to cover your interests versus others. In my experience, it was those larger groups who lived in the echo chamber, while we had more isolation or a sense of being on the outside looking in.

Could it be as simple as the anglosphere has been repeating this kind of baby bust? I can only imagine how it would feel to grow up with this sense of otherness plus the panopticon of social media. I am less certain that the angst about global warming etc can explain it. I think we had a comparable zeitgeist with the cold war and environmental concerns.

But, I can also imagine some other environmental or nutritional hypothesis for an anglosphere trend, rather than demographic experiences...