In America the Busy, students juggle more activities and responsibilities than ever before, but at what cost?
In a presentation held at Scarsdale Middle School on January 10th, sponsored by the Scarsdale Parent-Teacher Council and Children, Dr. Lata McGuinn spoke about the negative effects of overtime schedules on children. A clinical psychologist and co-founder of Cognitive and Behavioral Consultants (CBC), McGinn specializes in cognitive-behavioral therapy for anxiety, depression, and related disorders.
Why do children go over their schedule? Rather than just blaming parents, McGuinn, during a presentation at Scarsdale, argued that overscheduling is the result of a combination of factors, including socio-cultural norms, legal structures, and economic power. admits that “we are all part of the problem.”
According to McGinn, Americans are too busy to sleep, too busy to make friends, and too busy to date. She suggests that being busy makes Americans feel “important and worthy,” and because being busy is often a status symbol, many become “ideal workers or students.” Recently, Americans are working harder than ever because “experiencing leisure is associated with guilt.”
McGinn says he uses a “time confetti” method of work that many people think improves productivity, but it’s actually not very effective. This way, your leisure time will be scattered like confetti during your working hours. But this leads to “time pollution”. Because this leisure is not actually fun.
McGinn, who calls America a “busy America,” noted that Americans work longer hours than people in most developed countries, but that working longer hours doesn’t make them more productive. As a comparison, McGuinn points to Denmark, which has the most competitive per capita population in the world and lags slightly behind the United States. I only work an average of 37 hours a week, with six weeks of vacation per year and one year of paid maternity leave.
Notably, Denmark is ranked as the happiest country in the world by the United Nations, while the United States ranks 11th. Danish values such as joy and simplicity are “essential to the culture,” he says McGinn. In particular, she attributes Danish happiness to embracing a “Hygge” culture that prioritizes leisure time and spending time with family, friends and solitude.
While McGinn acknowledged that Denmark is not perfect, he said that in contrast to Denmark, America is “the most insecure country in the world.” To support her claim, she provided some startling U.S. statistics: The average high school student today experiences the same level of anxiety as the average psychotic patient in the 1950s. doing. One of her five of her children has a mental disorder. She said that American children today are more depressed than they were during the Great Depression, and more anxious than they were during the height of the Cold War.
“Our kids are like burnt toast,” McGuinn said. Why are children suffering so much? Overscheduling children’s schedules can cause burnout, which McGinn defines as physically, emotionally, and mentally exhausting. Burnout often leads to low motivation, poor performance, and negative attitudes towards yourself and life in general. According to McGinn, by the age of 13, her three-quarters of children who have participated in organized activities for several years have given up those activities permanently.
However, she did not suggest eliminating all extracurricular activities, but acknowledged that many activities can help you grow, develop, thrive and thrive. We hope our children thrive, but she pointed out that it was “out of balance.” Children have limited energy and stamina. She also noted that over-scheduling children with structured activities can rob them of unstructured free time and affect their creativity and autonomy. She suggested that our obsession with keeping our kids occupied means that they “don’t have time to get bored.”
She also pointed to the harm caused by the “digital age” of social media and the particular threat to children’s malleable minds. , has always occupied the hearts of many people. “Without restrictions, social media becomes a second family and has more influence than a real family.”
McGinn recommended that parents carefully manage their children’s technology use. She conceded that it would be unrealistic to eliminate children’s smartphone use altogether, but parents should have a careful and balanced conversation with their children. Small but impactful steps include implementing a no-screen policy while eating, turning off notifications, and reducing dependency by removing certain apps. Most importantly, teens should not sleep with their phone in their room.
Beyond technology, “it’s imperative that we get out of schedule overruns and re-balance that,” said McGinn, adding that increased awareness and ownership can encourage people to work longer hours and participate in more activities. I added that you can find that it’s not always beneficial. This heightened awareness also applies to noticing how we think and feel during our leisure time, the key moments that allow us to be calm and present.
McGinn concluded by asking the audience to conjure up an image of a seesaw to illustrate balance. She said it’s important to strike a balance between pleasure and mastery, alone time and social time, relaxation and enrichment, structured and unstructured time.
I hope that by adopting this sense of balance, America can go from being the most insecure country to being the happiest country like Denmark.
