If we want children to spend less time online, where do we want them to be instead?

Most parents can answer immediately: outside, with friends, playing soccer in a park, learning guitar, helping at a community event, walking in the woods, or sitting around a dinner table.

Over the past few years, that question has taken on new urgency. Concerns about youth mental health have moved from the margins of public discussion to the centre of it. The conversation has been especially focused on boys and young men, with growing attention to loneliness, declining participation in community life and the challenge of finding connection.

The proposed solutions are surprisingly familiar: Move your body. Spend time with other people. Help someone. Join something larger than yourself.

Your weekday lunchtime roundup of curated links, news highlights, analysis and features.

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The more I think about it, the more I wonder whether this........

© Calgary Herald