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环球科学

年轻人更容易抑郁的原因，是手机、父母还是贫穷？｜科学60秒

环环球科学约 7 分钟

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青少年心理健康状况为何持续下行？
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“如果你认为在任何时刻，一切皆有可能发生，而你却无能为力，这就是一种非常令人焦虑的人生观。”@Lucija Rasonja from Pixabay
彼得·格雷（Peter Gray）：“证据表明，准确来说是大量压倒性的证据表明，如果你剥夺了孩子们独立活动的机会，他们就无法学会如何独立，这将导致他们焦虑、抑郁、对未来感到恐惧，以及我们现在看到的所有情况。”
这已经是一项全美国性质的紧急状态。从2010-2020年，儿童和青少年的心理健康水平在持续下降；到2019年，自杀已成为10~24岁人群的第二大死因。
而这种心理健康状况的恶化可能已经持续了几十年，美国波士顿学院（Boston College）心理学和神经科学研究教授彼得·格雷的团队最近在《儿科杂志》（The Journal of Pediatrics）发表了一项研究，发现至少自1960年以来，儿童和青少年的抑郁、焦虑和自杀率都在持续上升，他们认为这与无人监管的游戏和其他独立活动的减少有关。
格雷表示，游戏是孩子们追求快乐的方式，这是心理健康的直接来源，因为心理健康的部分真正含义是“我很快乐”或“我对现在的生活非常满意”。游戏和其他独立活动对儿童的心理健康和恢复力也有深远的长期影响。
“我认为，真正的危机在于年轻人正在失去一种意识，即‘我能解决问题，我能应对生活中的坎坷’。”格雷说，“而孩子们学习做这些事情的方式是通过游戏，因为在游戏中他们须要担起责任解决自己的问题，他们会与同伴协商，想办法解决彼此间的矛盾，如果有人受伤了，他们会想办法解决。”
当孩子们被允许做出决定和解决问题时，他们就会具有所谓的“内部控制点”（internal locus of control）。他们开始觉得自己可以控制自己的经历和生活，而不是反被经历控制。
格雷团队引用了心理学家琼·特文格（Jean Twenge）的研究成果。特文格观察到，从20世纪60年代到90年代，焦虑症和抑郁症患者急剧增加，在同一时期，她还报告了内部控制点的急剧下降。格雷说，这种相关性可能表明内部控制点的下降与心理健康下降的原因相关。
格雷：“有证据表明，各年龄段人群如果具有较弱的内部控制点，都会在未来的出现焦虑和抑郁。如果你认为在任何时刻，一切皆有可能发生，而你却无能为力，这就是一种非常令人焦虑的人生观。”
控制也是另一套既定研究的核心，被称为“自我决定理论”（self-determination theory）。这项研究表明，儿童和成人都有三种基本的心理需求，如果这些需求得不到满足，我们就不会快乐。
第一种需求是自主（autonomy）：我可以自由选择自己要做的事情，我可以掌控自己的生活。
第二种需求是胜任（competence）：我不仅可以自由选择我想做的事情，而且我能够做到。
第三种需求是关系（relatedness）：有其他人站在我这边也很重要。根据这一理论，与同伴的联系是幸福感的一个极其重要的促成因素。
这些理论在土著文化中得到了印证，在土著文化中，年幼的孩子在4岁之前都与母亲极为亲密。4岁以后，他们就可以自由地跑来跑去，和其他孩子一起玩耍。他们可能会被派去跑腿。在所有被研究过地土著文化中，儿童都拥有极大的自由，同时承担着极大的责任，人们对孩子的能力也有更高的预期。
这些人类学研究结果表明，从演化的角度来看，独立活动、个人责任以及自主探索和学习最好从幼年开始。
这是一个非常有说服力的论据，尤其对于小时候送过报纸牛奶、早早就自己步行或坐公交上学放学、和各个年龄段孩子一起在户外玩捉迷藏的人来说。但是，这其中……[查看全文]

Is Too Little Play Hurting Our Kids?


Peter Gray: It's not just moderate evidence. It's overwhelming evidence that if you take away children's opportunities for independent activity, they're not going to learn how to be independent and that's going to lead them to be anxious and depressed, fearful about the future, and all the things that we're seeing now.
Joseph Polidoro: It's been declared a national emergency. Mental health among children and adolescents decreased steadily between 2010 and 2020. By 2019, death by suicide had become the second-leading cause of death for those between age 10 and 24.
But this mental health decline may have been decades in the making. And according to a team of researchers, it's partly because we're not giving kids the independence they need.
For Science Quickly, I'm Joseph Polidoro.
Gray: I'm Peter Gray, I'm a research professor of psychology and neuroscience at Boston College.
Polidoro: In the September issue of The Journal of Pediatrics, Gray and his co-authors observed a continuous increase in depression, anxiety, and suicide rates among children and adolescents since at least 1960. And they link it to a decline in unsupervised play and other independent activities.
Gray: Play is how children pursue what's fun for them. That's an immediate source of mental health—part of mental health really means "I'm happy" or "I'm most satisfied with my life right now."
Polidoro: Gray says that play and other independent activities also have far-reaching long-term effects on children's mental health and resilience.
Gray: I think that the real crisis is that young people are losing a sense of, "I can solve problems, I can deal with bumps in the road of life." And the way the children learn to do these things is through play where they are responsible to solve their own problems. They negotiate with their peers. They figure out how to solve quarrels among themselves. If somebody gets hurt, they figure out what to do about being hurt.
Polidoro: When kids are allowed to make decisions and solve problems, they exercise what's called their internal locus of control. They begin to feel they have control over experiences and their lives, rather than experiences controlling them.
Gray and his team cite work by psychologist Jean Twenge. She observed a dramatic increase in anxiety and depression from the 1960s through the 1990s. During the same timeframe, say Gray and his team, Twenge also reported a steep decline in internal locus of control. Gray says this correlation likely suggests that the decline in internal locus of control helps explain the mental health decline.
Gray: There's evidence for people of all ages that having a weak internal locus control is predictive of future anxiety and depression. If you believe that anything can happen at any time and you can't do anything about it, that's a pretty anxiety-provoking view of life.
Polidoro: Control is also central to another set of established research, called self-determination theory. This research shows that children and adults have three basic psychological needs. If they're not fulfilled, we're not happy.
Gray: The first of those needs is autonomy. The sense that we have some freedom to choose what we're going to do, that we're in charge of our own life.
The second of these needs is competence. Not only am I free to choose what I want to do but I can do it.
And the third is relatedness. It's also important that I have other people on my side on this. Connection with peers by this theory is an extremely important contributor to the sense of well-being.
Polidoro: These ideas are borne out in indigenous cultures, where very young children are close to their mothers until about the age of four. From that point on …
Gray: … they are free to run and roam with other kids. They may be sent on errands. In every one of these cultures as far as have been studied, children have an enormous amount of freedom, and also an enormous amount of responsibility. There's higher expectations of what children can do.
Polidoro: These anthropological findings suggest that from an evolutionary perspective, independent activity, personal responsibility, and self-initiated exploration and learning ideally begin at an early age.
It's a very convincing case, especially for anyone who remembers adolescents with paper routes, grade-school kids walking to school unsupervised, and kids of all ages playing together outside. But...[full transcript]

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论文信息

Gray, P., Lancy, D.F. and Bjorklund, D.F. (2023). Decline in Independent Activity as a Cause of Decline in Children’s Mental Wellbeing: Summary of the Evidence. The Journal of Pediatrics.

DOI: 10.1016/j.jpeds.2023.02.004

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