Compost Happens: Why the World Isn’t Quite as Doomed as It Seems (and What We Can Do for the Kids)
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There’s a phrase I hear too often these days, usually over coffee, sometimes whiskey, and almost always after doom-scrolling:
“The world’s going to hell.”
Fair enough. Between climate disasters, political chaos, algorithm-fueled outrage, and wars with no off-ramps, the noise can feel deafening. It’s a mess.
And yet… amid the sturm und drang, I notice something: green shoots breaking through the garbage heap.
I’m not talking about toxic positivity here. I’m not asking you to “manifest” your way out of concern or retreat into some Zen denial bubble. I’m just suggesting that maybe, just maybe, we’re mistaking volume for velocity. The louder the crisis, the more we assume it’s accelerating.
But that’s not always how history, or progress, works.
We’re Wired for Worry
The human brain is basically a 300,000-year-old anxiety app. It’s great at scanning for threats; less great at recognizing slow, steady improvement. Add a media ecosystem that monetizes panic, and suddenly every corner of your day is shouting “crisis” without much room for context.
But here’s the counterbalance: we’re not just bundles of prehistoric wiring and twitchy cortisol. We have intellect. That’s the thing that separates us from the rest of the beasts—we can reason, we can forecast, we can choose not to panic. We can zoom out and see beyond our own front porch. OK, most of us can.
I do worry about the shrinking ranks of the self-aware: folks who never really got the memo on critical thinking, or who were let down by an educational system that stopped at test prep and skipped logic. That’s a concern for another day (and frankly, another essay).
But even with all that said, there are still so many good things happening all around us— quiet, persistent signs of progress. And if we engage our intellect rather than our impulse, we just might notice them.
The Quiet Wins
Here’s a few notable, however flawed, examples of what rarely makes your feed:
Extreme poverty has plummeted from over 30% of the global population in 1990 to under 10% today (1).
Child mortality has dropped by nearly 60% in the same time frame. That’s 22,000 more children surviving each day (2).
More people are literate, vaccinated, and living longer than at any point in human history (3). (Yes, I know vaccines are under assault. I have hopes this is a blip. If not, it will be a major problem.)
Clean energy is no longer niche. In 2024 alone, the world added enough solar and wind to power nearly half the U.S. grid (4). (And yes, EVs are under assault. Again, I have hopes this is a blip (as in, nothing lasts forever.)
Progress is rarely loud. It doesn’t trend. But it’s real, and worth remembering the next time your feed tries to convince you we’re circling the drain.
But What About the Kids?
I worry that my daughter’s generation is growing up under a perpetual cloud—not because the world is necessarily worse than it used to be, but because they’re swimming in a flood of unfiltered, anxiety-inducing content. The data backs it up:
Teens who spend 3+ hours daily on social media are more than twice as likely to experience anxiety and depression (5).
The U.S. Surgeon General has warned that we don’t yet know if social media is safe at any age—and certainly not for children under 16 (5).
States and countries are starting to respond: Australia has passed legislation to bar under-16s from social platforms; U.S. states like Georgia and Utah are pushing for mandatory age verification (6).
The risks aren’t abstract. They’re measurable, and they’re multiplying.
I Didn’t Want to Give My Kid a Phone. Then the Pandemic Hit.
My wife and I had agreed, early on, that our daughter wouldn’t get a smartphone until she was at least 14. We were solidly in lockstep on that. We’d read the studies. We knew what unfettered screen access could do to attention spans, self-esteem, and sleep cycles. We were holding the line.
And then came 2020.
When COVID hit, everything changed. Isolation became the new normal. School went remote, playdates vanished, and our daughter—like so many kids—was suddenly cut off from the social connections that help make adolescence bearable and fruitful. We were deeply concerned about the virus, especially in those early vaccine-less months. So, we made a decision we hadn’t planned on: we gave her the phone a couple of years earlier than we wanted to.
I won’t lie—I had real anxiety about it.
I watched closely. I braced for the doomscroll rabbit hole, the FOMO loops, the algorithmic pull toward anxiety and curated comparison. But she surprised us. She stayed grounded. In fact, over the past year, she’s begun to pull back from social media altogether—on her own. She’s rarely without a book within reach (a joy to behold for a parent who also happens to write books!) She’s realized that most of what gets posted is just airbrushed reality and that real life happens offscreen.
We got lucky. She’s a strong kid who knows who she is.
Not every kid is that lucky—or that naturally resilient. And that’s why I believe so strongly that smartphones should be kept out of schools, and social media access should be delayed until at least age 16. We shouldn’t be handing unfiltered firehoses of influence and distraction to kids whose brains are still wiring themselves.
We Should Ban Phones in Schools and Age-Gate Social Media. Now.
Across the U.S. and U.K., schools banning smartphones have seen real gains: fewer distractions, less bullying, better focus (7). A study in Norway found that banning phones led to higher GPAs, less anxiety, and better behavior, particularly among middle school girls (8). New York will enact a statewide classroom ban this fall—and they’re right to do it (9).
Meanwhile, public support for delaying social media is strong and growing. The brain isn’t done wiring until the mid-20s, and exposing kids to performance-driven platforms designed to hook attention isn’t just risky—it’s negligent. We restrict voting, drinking, and driving for a reason. Social media should join that list.
This isn’t about being anti-tech. It’s about buying time so kids can be kids.
The Green Shoots
Yes, there’s a lot of …compost in the world right now. But here’s the thing about compost: it makes for great plants.
That means growth is still possible. That means flowers are still blooming if we protect the soil. That means we can still raise clear-eyed, emotionally resilient young people if we stop handing them a pocket-sized panic machine and calling it normal.
The world isn’t doomed.
But it is noisy. And maybe the best gift we can give the next generation is a little quiet, a little space, and a little time to grow strong enough to face it all, on their own terms.