Kids at home on the farm, reading books, exploring nature - that was healthy. Now they're addicted to algorithmic peer pressure before their brains can even adjust to filtering it out.
This affects basic things like the ratio of contacts with your own childhood peers versus those of other ages. It also affects how much the media and pop culture seems to cover your interests versus others. In my experience, it was those larger groups who lived in the echo chamber, while we had more isolation or a sense of being on the outside looking in.
Could it be as simple as the anglosphere has been repeating this kind of baby bust? I can only imagine how it would feel to grow up with this sense of otherness plus the panopticon of social media. I am less certain that the angst about global warming etc can explain it. I think we had a comparable zeitgeist with the cold war and environmental concerns.
But, I can also imagine some other environmental or nutritional hypothesis for an anglosphere trend, rather than demographic experiences...
So of course I found things to get up to that often got me into trouble. Boredom and lack of mental stimulation are not great for anyone, but for kids who don't yet have the skills to deal with it, the results can be a lot worse.
That may be generally true, but it doesn’t imply that time alone is always bad, nor that all time “being social” is good. It’s certainly plausible that the explosion of access to social media has been a net negative and that spending some of that time alone would be better.
Thinking back, the time I spent having sneaked to the school library during lunch break definitely felt healthier than the times I got caught by a teacher and sent back to “socially commune” with my tormentors, er, classmates.
If your peers aren't cruel to you, then spending time around them is extremely healthy.