Systematic.

I've taught in a fifth- and sixth-grade school in which nearly 650 kids attended.  The building was in the middle of the community's most densely-populated neighborhoods.  Each day the car line for pick-ups and drop-offs wound around our parking lot and out of sight for blocks. 

The bike rack never contained more than three bikes (I knew all three kids and am proud to say they were the most interesting, independent, and inspirational kids in the building; gloriously-crooked trees, every one.)

Execupundit looks at the systematic endangering of a species ...

I used to ride my bike to school, two miles along a narrow, and busy country road. In any case, even if the weather was bad, I was going to take the bus. If my mom had to take me in the car, we were going to the doctor, because I must have been sick if I needed that kind of pampering. But today many schools don’t use buses, because parents pick up and drop off their children, denying them any sense of personal efficacy for arranging transportation. Admittedly, finding the correct bus and boarding it before it leaves is not difficult, but that is still too much for many parents, who park and look for their children so the kiddos are not inconvenienced.

And there is the connection: parents want their children to be home, and safe. Not out riding their bikes, playing basketball or football in the street, not heading over to the reservoir to swim. (Here, Haidt is clearly in league with such critics as Lenore Skenazy and others). We want the precious little tykes to be safe in their rooms. And, as if by a miracle, we are provided with a magic food bag, or rather experience bag, to attach to the children so they are happy to stay in their room rather than ….well, rather than doing pretty much anything. The magic experience bag that comes with a smart phone provides an intensity, variety, and duration of exciting experiences that were impossible for anyone to access 100 years ago, and probably even 30 years ago.

We have made a deal with the Devil, in other words. To keep our kids home, we have made them frightened of the world. To keep our kids from harm, we have exposed them to brain-altering habits, online predators, and addictive pastimes that don’t just have the risk, but the near certainty, of making those now children turn out to be anxious and dysfunctional adults.