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?
A Significant Shift in Childhood Development
Over the past 20 years, childhoods have shifted from play-based to tech-based. For many, screens have replaced face-to-face interaction. This has led to a generation of young people searching for identity, purpose, and belonging in the digital realm, often at the expense of deeper connections with themselves, their communities, and the broader world. As a result, many youth struggle to cultivate essential life skills, such as self-awareness, resilience, and social competence. This can lead to feelings of disorientation, anxiety, and uncertainty when faced with the complexities and challenges of the real world. This manifests as a tendency to isolate, increasing feelings of loneliness and resulting in even more screen time. This viscous cycle highlights the parallels between substance addiction and addiction to technology, including similar behaviors and challenges such as lack of control, obsessing, escapism, withdrawal, and more.
Well-intentioned (and often overworked) adults often undermine youth development by “protecting” them from failure and disappointment. Meanwhile, youth are under-protected in cyberspace, exposed to harmful content and addictive social media. Smartphones can act as “experience blockers,” reducing children to passive observers and hindering their ability to navigate challenges and develop essential skills relevant to real-world situations.
United in Cause: Parents, Educators, Experts, and Youth
Many young people intuitively sense that their technology use has become unbalanced, but struggle to break free from these habits. 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 address the potentially lasting consequences of these trends on young people’s lives.
With care and urgency, a simple question emerges: How can we disrupt this trend and provide pathways to more positive and life-affirming outcomes?
A Powerful Antidote
Our species has a long history of providing age-appropriate rites of passage/initiatory experiences designed to foster greater self-esteem and worth, develop essential life skills such as determination and resilience, deepen one’s awareness of self and others, establish a grounded sense of self in relation to Nature and community, and make meaningful contributions to their community.
Deer Hill is dedicated to providing young people with access to 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.
Deer Hill students reconnect with the fundamental goodness of Life.
The insight and skills developed during these passages are universally applicable. Perseverance, self-confidence, socio-emotional intelligence, teamwork and leadership: whether in the forest or classroom, farm or corporate office, students are better equipped to be responsive and adaptable citizens who positively contribute to their families and communities.
Years of personal testimonials reveal that Deer Hill students experience positive shifts in their perspective and feelings about self, community, Nature, Life, and the world in general.
