Overprotection assists authoritarianism?

[Notyomama]

I'm curious to hear other viewpoints on this. I was listening to Trevor Noah's podcast recently and he interviewed Jonathan Haidt, author of 'The Anxious Generation.' The book is about how younger generations struggle with anxiety and mental health issues. A lot of the blame is put on social media, gaming and the internet in general, which I agree with to a certain extent though I think it's not the full explanation.

One thing that he said which struck me was that overscheduling and overprotecting children makes them more vulnerable to accepting an authoritarian/right wing mindset. They become so used to having others protect them and tell them what to do that they become anxious when they have to deal with adversity and make their own decisions, so they seek out 'parental' figures to solve their problems for them - i.e. dictator types that provide a villain (immigrants, people who are different) and certainty about how to vanquish said villain.

His argument was that it's important to let children experience disappointment and failure so they can learn to get back up and rely on their own resources. He argued that our level of overprotection is so extreme that we make playgrounds soft and don't allow children to experience a bump and some pain - we don't let them 'learn to fall well.' He believes that trying to protect kids too much lets them down in a big way, by leaving them resourceless and vulnerable to manipulation.

It seems a bit simplistic but it also makes logical sense.
I think he definitely has a point but I was curious to hear other views on it so I can form my own thinking a bit more.

I think it probably does contribute to ideological issues, although I wouldn't necessarily see it as a right wing / left wing thing. The left can be ever bit as intolerant & authoritarian as the right (hence the extremely brutal history of communism). I think it may well be making young people more intolerant of disagreement & insistent on 24/7 affirmation of their chosen opinions & identities....the whole "someone disagreeing with me makes me feel unsafe!!!" thing. Also the downside of the Internet is that you can always find other people to affirm & reinforce your views, no matter how extreme. Again I think thats a problem across the political spectrum.

That's a good point - I think his overall view was that younger generations have a sort of helplessness and a fear of difficult emotions, which I think has some merit. Even among adults of my age (40s) there seems to be a belief that all stress is bad, you shouldn't ever feel worn out or weary, etc. when life just isn't like that. Of course it's worth minimising unnecessary stress or stress caused by people just creating trouble, but life is inherently stressful, things go wrong and you sometimes just have to endure it.

What shocked me was when a friend who's a uni lecturer said she had parents ringing up on behalf of her students to question grades etc. There is no way in my time that anyone would have done that - my parents had no idea what was going on at uni and I'd rather have died than have them interfere.

Well, I certainly had parents appearing on ‘consultation day’ in the summer (when students could come in to the dept to see academic staff about their exam grades) to query grades or tell me there must be a mistake because Johnny had definitely attended every class etc etc in my first academic job —and that was 25 years ago.