The Great Rewiring is not just about changes in the technologies that shape children’s days and minds. There’s a second plotline here: the well-intentioned and disastrous shift toward overprotecting children and restricting their autonomy in the real world.

According to a 2015 report from the Pew Research Center, parents (on average) say children should be at least 10 years old to play unsupervised in their own front yard.[54] They say that kids should be at least 12 years old before being allowed to stay alone in their own home unsupervised for one hour. They say that kids should be 14 before being a