The Question: How Do We Uphold Our Responsibility to the Next Generation?
We believe it’s important to have direct, honest conversations about the state of youth development and our collective responsibility as parents, educators, and mentors. At Deer Hill, we often ask ourselves questions like:
- What can we do to uplift our young people and offset the harmful effects of social media and other stressors?
- How do we provide them the essential tools for maturing into happy, healthy, and compassionate young adults?
- How do we support peer cultures that encourage authenticity?
- How can we reignite curiosity, excitement, and joy in youth as a counterpoint to the boredom, apathy, and stress they often experience?
- How can we encourage youth to “fall in love” with the Earth in all her beauty, diversity, and complexity?
- How can we be an incubator for tomorrow’s creative leaders and change-makers?
Significant Shifts and Challenges in Childhood Development
“Gen Z is the first generation in history to go through the experience that calls them away from peers and family and into an alternative universe that is exciting, addictive, unstable, and unsuitable for children and adolescents”. Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation.
Childhood has shifted radically from play-based to tech-based. Screens have replaced face-to-face interaction, resulting in a generation searching for identity, purpose, and belonging in the digital realm at the expense of deeper connections with themselves, their families, and their communities. As a result, many struggle with essential life skills such as self-awareness, resilience, and socio-emotional intelligence, leading to feelings of disorientation, anxiety, and uncertainty when faced with the complexities and challenges of the real world.
Well-intentioned adults often undermine youth development by “protecting” them from feelings of failure and disappointment. Yet these are vital aspects of real growth, learning, and maturing, supporting resilience, adaptability, and self-esteem. In taking few to no healthy risks, youth are left feeling disempowered and dependent on the adults well into their 20’s and beyond.
A Critical Inflection Point: Disrupting the “New Norm”
Many young people intuitively know that their technology use is excessive, but struggle to break free from these habits. Smartphones act as “experience blockers,” reducing children to passive observers and hindering their ability to navigate challenges and develop skills essential to real-world situations. This is where we, as caring and responsible adults, can make a meaningful difference.
As Jonathan Haidt states in his book The Anxious Generation, “we have overprotected children in the real world while under-protecting them in the virtual world.”
Through hundreds of conversations with parents, educators, students, and experts, a recurring theme has emerged: the pervasive impact of social media, rising anxiety, and deepening loneliness on youth development. These shared concerns highlight the urgent need to definitively address these issues in real time, or they will have far-reaching effects well into adulthood. We are already seeing this impact with Gen Z’s struggles in college, careers, and relationships.
With care and urgency, a simple question emerges: How can we disrupt this trend and provide youth more positive, life-affirming, and connected experiences?
A Powerful Antidote: How Deer Hill Speaks to Today’s Youth
Nature. It is universal that being in the natural world is an antidote to two conditions that are increasingly impacting today’s youth: anxiety and depression. Deer Hill emphasizes connection with nature throughout the entire program as something enriching and healing rather than alien and frightening. Connection. Today’s youth are disconnected and increasingly detached from real people including friends and family. The opportunity to sit in ‘circle’ at the end of every day is the unique chance to tune-in, reconnect, and experience authentic conversations with their peer group; a chance to shed the influences of social media and to speak from a deeper place. Reciprocal Service. The chance to meet and live with Indigenous communities, offering helpful service while learning about people and culture, has proved to be empowering as young people find value and purpose in connecting through shared humanity.
Deer Hill is dedicated to providing young people with life-affirming, uplifting experiences that challenge and encourage them to grow into their best selves, building character, courage, and confidence. Within the context of wilderness and community, and guided by dedicated field instructors and mentors, participants discover a more empowered version of themselves. They learn to approach challenge with curiosity, collaboration, and resilience.