Restoring Childhood: How to Set Kids Free in the Age of Anxiety is a new book by Professor Peter Gray that decisively dismantles not only screen time rhetoric but the roots and reasoning of the anxious generation that parents understandably worry about.

Dr Peter Gray is the psychology professor whose work Jonathan Haidt uses to emphasise the importance of independent play. This is a foundational part of Haidt’s argument: that the overuse of smartphones is a major factor in rising levels of anxiety, distraction, and suffering by displacing this important part of childhood. Gray’s new book pushes back on Haidt’s theory to show how the science actually suggests that kids aren’t depressed and anxious because of screens but because play is being squeezed out by strict curricula, round-the-clock news coverage and growing wealth inequality.

Working to support parents who have children who love video games means that I have closely tracked this discourse. I had assumed (along with most parents who read it) that Haidt’s case in The Anxious Generation , for screens being a driver of teenage anxiety and a blocker of outside play, was founded on strong science. It’s hard not to be moved by his call for us to “bring our children home” from the screen-based childhood experiment back to play-based childhoods.

However, reading Restoring Childhood was a pivot point for me. It quickly became clear that all is not what it seems. Gray tells quite a different story from the one commonly heard on talk shows and read in news headlines. This is driven by his greater years on the planet, which result in him taking in a longer view of the data about childhood. The graph he uses to describe the changing landscape of children’s mental health dates from 1950’s and uncovers not the alarm of dramatic hikes in children’s suicide rates but a more complex picture of ups and downs over the last 70 years.

This longer historical view, combined with Gray’s understanding and attentiveness to the centrality of play in the lives of children, makes it clear that the worrying increase in teenage suicides did not first begin with smartphones or social media. His book describes a more complex history, built from his evolutionary biologist’s understanding of children’s drive to play, combined with a sensitivity to how adults repeatedly solve their fears about childhood harms by restricting children’s freedoms.

For many, the most anticipated element of Gray’s book will be how it responds to the debate led by the claim in The Anxious Generation that deterioration in children’s mental health is the result of smartphones and social media. Gray reviews the methodology used to demonstrate this theory and shows that “consistent with what most research experts in this field have contended, the theory receives little support from any of these research approaches”. He highlights that “technology is not a major cause of the rise of kids’ suffering that began around 2010”. Instead, he finds stronger evidence that this rise relates to the scholarisation of childhood that “greatly increased the pressure and decreased the pleasure of schooling, resulting in large increases in anxiety, depression, and suicide among school-aged kids”.

Gray makes it clear that teenage anxiety is not likely to be helped by taking away screens but by reestablishing and providing many more ways for children to play, discover autonomy and independence. In fact, he has a chapter that connects the downturn in suicide rates in the 1990s to the rise of computers and the internet that brought “new ways for kids to play, explore, communicate with one another, and manifest competence to themselves and others”.

It’s a compelling view that accounts for the evidence in ways that other professors in this field, including Candice L. Odgers and Christopher J. Ferguson, applaud. However, for me, the biggest value of this book has been how Gray makes clear that digital and non-digital play are two sides of the same coin. My work running the Family Gaming Database for parents and hosting live gaming events in the US , UK and Germany , has revealed many examples of how video games contribute to the kind of independent play children have previously found outside.

Covering the topic of healthy gaming over the years has led me to talk to many organisations campaigning for a safer online world. It’s become increasingly common for these organisations to leverage the current desire for the screen-free childhood to amplify their message. The irony that Gray makes clear in his book is that video games also offer many of the possibilities for play that these organisations often aim to promote.

Gray has written previously about stepping away from the Let Grow organisation he co-founded with Jonathan Haidt, Daniel Shuchman and Lenore Skenazy. This brilliant initiative aims to help children build confidence, resilience, and self-reliance through independent play and real-life experiences. However, Gray stepped down from the board of Let Grow after parting ways with Haidt’s view of children’s use of smartphones and digital activity. The charity has increasingly embraced Haidt’s messaging, as seen in its 2025 annual report’s inclusion of the call to “replace screen time with the competence, resilience, and joy that only independence and free play can build”.

Restoring Childhood makes it clear that re-establishing children’s freedom for independent play at the expense of their freedom to play on screens simply doesn’t make sense. It might appear to be a useful lever to advance laudable aims for childhood protections, but is in fact (once again) adults solving fears about childhood by limiting the very freedoms we want children to have. Although statements about the play-based childhood being replaced by the screen-based childhood sound true, once we admit that a lot of nutritious play is happening on screens, the logic falls apart. Something is up with screens and children, but it’s not blocking their instinct to play.

This clarity that comes from Gray’s attention and commitment to children’s play means that Restoring Childhood is full of hope. With the steady hand of a grandparent, Gray brings many years of play wisdom and rigour to illuminate the current debate. With him, we see why play is so important and how to be on the side of it in children’s lives. This is not to let technology companies off the hook, but to focus on the biggest factors that stand in the way of children finding confidence and independence. For me, rather than calling for entirely safe video games, we better support children’s digital play by calling for transparency about unforeseeable harms that are an unreasonable risk. Play is always somewhat risky, but these risks must be reasonable.

Perhaps best of all, Gray’s advice doesn’t result in a new list of things for parents to worry about or get right. Instead, it dismantles screen-time discourse to set us free to be on the side of both play and our children. Not to always say yes, but to be available when needed as enthusiastic supporters of their play-led journey into the world.

It’s time to bring our children home, not to screen-free childhoods but to fear-free, freedom-full childhoods that enable them to play as they desire, even if that’s in a video game.