Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s new book The Anxious Generation topped the New York Times bestsellers’ chart two weeks in a row, and has been stirring up a lot of commentary in the meantime. Haidt’s basic thesis is that we have drastically overprotected children in the real world and woefully under-protected them in the virtual world. A new video helpfully lines out this argument, and shows why today’s generation, more than the Millennials who preceded them, struggle so intensely with anxiety, depression, and loneliness.

In a recent interview, author and public intellectual Andy Crouch said that while he doesn’t know if it can be backed up neurologically, there is something about the “glow” of screens that wakens something primordial in the human psyche. We are drawn to things that glow. Anything that resembles fire, or a sun or moon, will automatically draw us to it. The problem is that this can have an entrancing effect, almost like we’re being put under a magic spell. In turn, the real world can start to become dull, and we start to think that it no longer deserves our notice and care.

For parents, raising healthy kids doesn’t just mean limiting screen time, but encouraging their freedom. They must practice becoming independent so they can more easily transition into adulthood when the time comes. Right now, children are going off to college and into the workplace without having been given the opportunity to risk, fail, and have the stamina to try again. That, Haidt says, is setting them up for a much deeper and tragic kind of failure.