The Kids Are Not Alright. So Why Are We Pretending This Is Normal?

Every generation has a mystery it eventually has to confront.

For ours, I think it’s this: Why are so many more children struggling?

Not just one condition but many.

About 1 in 6 American children has a developmental disability. Autism diagnoses have climbed dramatically. ADHD diagnoses have increased. Asthma remains one of the most common chronic illnesses in childhood. Meanwhile, children's mental health has deteriorated, with anxiety and depression reaching historic levels. Whatever your politics, that’s a lot of parents sitting in waiting rooms they never expected to visit.

The conversation usually falls into predictable camps.

One side says, “It’s all genetics.” The other says, “It’s all environmental.” Reality has an annoying habit of disappointing people who like simple answers.

Genes don’t rewrite themselves in a single generation, as evolution is patient, but our environment isn’t. In the span of just a few decades, we’ve transformed what children eat, breathe, drink, touch, scroll, inhale, and even how they sleep. We’ve filled homes with synthetic chemicals that didn’t exist for our grandparents, changed food systems beyond recognition, increased exposure to ultra-processed foods, altered childhood play, and surrounded developing brains with a level of digital stimulation no generation has experienced before.

At the same time, we’ve become dramatically better at recognizing conditions that were once missed. Diagnostic criteria have expanded, screening has improved, and pediatricians know what to look for in many cases that they never knew. Parents know what questions to ask. Many children who would have slipped through the cracks thirty years ago now receive the support they deserve. That is genuine progress. Experts believe those changes explain at least part of the rise in diagnosed conditions, but here’s where I get uncomfortable.

Sometimes “better diagnosis” becomes a conversation stopper instead of a conversation starter. It can become a polite way of saying, “Nothing to see here.” Except... there is something to see.

Scientists increasingly describe these conditions not as a battle between genes and environment, but as an interaction between the two. Genetics may create susceptibility. Environmental exposures may influence when, how, or whether that susceptibility is expressed. The science isn’t settled on which exposures matter most or by how much, but the gene-environment interaction itself is well established. That should make all of us more curious, not less, because if we’re asking whether today’s childhood is different from it was in 1985, the honest answer is almost laughably obvious.

History has a way of humbling certainty. There was a time when physicians recommended cigarettes (#crazy). Lead paint was considered harmless. Asbestos-insulated schools were normal, and DDT was sprayed on children at summer camps. Every generation eventually discovers that some of its “perfectly safe” assumptions were anything but.

I wonder which assumptions our grandchildren will laugh at. This isn’t an argument for panic. It’s an argument against intellectual laziness. Children deserve something better than ideological food fights where every answer is already predetermined. They deserve research that follows evidence wherever it leads, even when that evidence is inconvenient.

The question isn’t whether genes matter; of course, they do. The question isn’t whether better diagnosis matters, and of course it does. The better question is whether we’re curious enough to keep asking what else has changed, because when the health of an entire generation is involved, certainty is cheap.

Curiosity is a moral obligation.

Until next time, stay curious. Be kind. Build better communities & workplaces.
— Devin

This newsletter explores the psychology of work, leadership, and what it means to be human in a world that’s moving faster every day.

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