No, It's Not Only Social Media: Ross Greene on Why Our Kids Aren't Okay

[00:00] Andrew Keen: Hello. My name is Andrew Keen. Welcome to Keen on America, the daily interview show about the United States.

[00:15] Andrew Keen: Hello everybody. It is Tuesday, the 24th of February, 2026. One of the most persistent worries these days is that our kids aren't okay. And we are talking children and psychology today with my guest, who has written a number of books on children and their psychological development and challenges in our modern world. Many of you will be familiar with his best-selling book, Lost at School, and he has a new book out appropriately called The Kids Who Aren't Okay. Ross W. Greene is joining us from Maine, where he lives, a snowy Maine. Ross, the new book is entitled The Kids Who Aren't Okay. I'm assuming that you're not suggesting then that not all kids are in this category? Some kids are actually okay. Is that a fair summary of this new book?

[01:17] Ross W. Greene: I think that is an excellent summary. I would say that more than ever are struggling, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the majority are struggling.

[01:29] Andrew Keen: Ross, this issue of childhood of course, I mean, you're professionally focused on it. You're the founder of Lives in the Balance. You're the inventor of something called collaborative and proactive solutions. So you're all too familiar with these questions. Is it different being a child in the 2020s than it was, I don't know, in the 1970s when I was growing up? You were probably growing up at a particular a similar time. What has happened to childhood?

[02:00] Ross W. Greene: Well, a whole bunch of things have made it harder to be a kid, in my view. And in Chapter 1 of The Kids Who Aren't Okay, I talk about all the things that have occurred, especially over the last two or three decades, that have made it harder to be a kid. And it's quite a long list. So I think it definitely is harder to be a kid these days. Once again, I think most kids are meeting the challenge, but especially our most vulnerable are having more difficulty than ever.

[02:37] Andrew Keen: Why? It's always been tough being a child in a way, and given economics, it's always been hard being a child from an underprivileged family or in a one-parent family. What's changed over the last 50 years?

[02:51] Ross W. Greene: Well, included on my list, my top three—and many people will be surprised that social media is not among my top three, it's certainly on the list. I feel like if we focus only on social media, we'll miss the rest of the picture. My top three are school shootings (you and I did not have to grow up with that), high-stakes testing (where we basically decided that every kid had to get over the same bar by the end of the school year—a bad idea right out of the gate), and zero-tolerance policies (which is where we decided, largely as a response to Columbine, that the best way to keep our schools safe was to tighten the vice grip even further, be more oriented toward punishment). Those of us who are in our age range didn't have to grow up with any of that stuff.

[03:49] Andrew Keen: So, would it be fair to say that the new book, The Kids Who Aren't Okay, it's the American kids who aren't okay? Do you do much comparison between French or or Australian or British or German kids in comparison to the United States, especially given the numbers of school shootings in the US?

[04:11] Ross W. Greene: Yeah, I mean, school shootings is more specific to the United States than anywhere else. But when we talk to educators in all those other countries, many of which I speak in frequently, we find that things are very similar. The kids are struggling quite a bit, and the educators are struggling to know how to help them. So I'm finding this to be fairly universal. It's pretty bad here in the United States, that's for sure.

[04:45] Andrew Keen: We live, Ross, don't need me to tell you, in an age of distrust of institutions, traditional authorities of one kind or another. Your book describes you as Ross W. Greene, PhD. Are you seeing the same distrust of guys like you who claim to be authorities on childhood as you're seeing in mainstream medicine, in politics and culture?

[05:15] Ross W. Greene: Um, I don't run into that too often. I myself am skeptical of what PhD tells anybody about me. I know they put it on the book cover. I think greater credibility is the fact that I've probably worked with almost 3,000 kids and their caregivers over these many, many decades. And this is what I study. So I'm familiar with the research as well. But I definitely don't want people thinking I have credibility just because PhD comes after the comma after my last name.

[05:50] Andrew Keen: What drives you, Ross? As I said, you're the founder of Lives in the Balance, you're a great authority, you've written many books, you speak and lecture all over the world. Are you a parent yourself?

[06:04] Ross W. Greene: I am. I have two kids in their 20s. What drives me is seeing kids get unnecessarily lost, especially because us caregivers often have great difficulty getting out of our own way and continue to do things that are not what these kids need the most and actually frequently end up being very counterproductive. I don't write new books just to get a book out there. I write a new book if I feel like I have something new to say beyond the books I've written already. What drives me is passion for the kids who are struggling.

[06:47] Andrew Keen: And when it comes to those struggling kids, you've already touched on this, is it sociologically marked in the sense that it's poor kids who are most affected?

[06:58] Ross W. Greene: Certainly poor kids who are disproportionately affected, but these increased rates that we're seeing of depression and anxiety and concerning behavior and suicidality and chronic school absent—chronic school absenteeism cut across a lot of socioeconomic strata. We don't want to limit our discussion to kids who are of lower socioeconomic status. This is all our kids.

[07:31] Andrew Keen: We live in a strange time where people aren't happy with the nature of things, but it doesn't seem to be a revolutionary time. Back in the '60s, of course, the way kids articulated their distrust or anger was through one kind of cultural rebellion or another, particularly music. Is that coming out, Ross, in cultural terms? Rapping or social media or some other forms of cultural rebellion that kids are manifesting not being okay?

[08:04] Ross W. Greene: I'm not seeing it over not being okay. I'm seeing a lot of parents not being happy with schools. I see a lot of parents who are not happy with how their kids who are struggling are being treated because it's often punitive and exclusionary and the parents recognize that that's not doing their kids any good. We are seeing a lot of parents who are upset over various aspects of the curriculum. So I don't think it's not that people aren't upset. I don't know if there's a revolution going on in terms of people being upset over the sheer volume of kids who are struggling. That's sort of more under wraps.

[08:52] Andrew Keen: And perhaps secretly articulated on screens, in terms of children talking to one another. Ross, I'm talking to you from Northern California, the home of alternative schools, perhaps of alternative culture. It's always struck me as a parent myself—I have kids also in their 20s, they both went to alternative schools, Waldorf, Montessori—that the parents were also part of the problem. At least in the upper-middle class, these helicopter parents who were more and more obsessed with their kids. It's very different from when I was growing up in a similar socioeconomic strata, that parents seemed disinterested, in fact they didn't really want to have that much to do with their kids. Of course that's a massive generalization, but you talk to a lot of people who went through the same experience. Is one of the problems with helicopter parenting, or perhaps are you arguing in The Kids Who Aren't Okay that we need more helicopter parenting, or a different kind of helicopter parenting?

[09:55] Ross W. Greene: I'm not a big fan of helicopter parenting, but I don't—you know, I think kids should be able to make mistakes without feeling like the world is going to come crashing down on them. I don't think they should be overly protected from those mistakes. I think we learn more from our mistakes than we do from our successes. Um, but I would not pin these rates that we're seeing, that we just covered, primarily on helicopter parenting. I would—truth is, I wouldn't blame it on anything. Bottom line is, we have to recognize what's walking in the school and be attuned to it and be more responsive to it. There's a lot of factors that are making life harder to be a kid these days. I suppose helicopter parenting is somewhere on the list, but it's not very high on my list.

[10:55] Andrew Keen: Ross, for better or worse though, and you know this better than I do, we live in an age of blame where everyone wants to blame someone else for whatever's wrong, or at least in their mind what's wrong with the world, with their family. In terms of our culture wars these days, the debates about the family and the value of the family. In your—in your book, The Kids Who Aren't Okay, do you wade into that dangerous territory, particularly for a doctor? But are you concerned with the way in which the family politically has been fetishized?

[11:34] Ross W. Greene: Um, I would like to think that this book has things in it that will offend just about anybody from any political belief system. This doctor is actually not that worried about wading in. Somebody's got to wade in. There are things on both sides of the aisle that are being done that are not so great for kids. Somebody's got to call it. There are things teacher unions have taken stances on, things that people of both political parties have taken stances on, that educators stand in schools and just continue to shake their head at what continues to get thrown at them by—not necessarily politically necessarily, but just what's being put on them as educators, whose primary responsibility is to educate kids. And a lot of the policies that have come down the pike—that were bipartisan—have made it a lot harder for educators to do that.

[12:35] Andrew Keen: Well, I'm thrilled, Ross, that you're going to offend some people. That's the purpose of my show. So perhaps you might offend progressive teachers on the one hand and then perhaps the conservative crowd on the other. What do they get wrong? What don't they understand about why or how the kids aren't okay and maybe even contributing towards it?

[13:00] Ross W. Greene: Oh, you know, just as an example. One example, especially with kids who have concerning behaviors. We are still using a lot of what's called restraints, which is pinning kids to the ground, and seclusions, which is dragging them often into a locked or blocked closet-sized room. Generally speaking, those practices are almost always unnecessary, and yet we're still using them like there's no tomorrow. What that tells us is a few things. It tells us that we have a lot of kids who are out of control in our schools and we have folks at schools who may not be particularly well-trained or well-equipped at least to handle those kids. Who ends up paying the price for that? The kid who's being pinned to the ground, the kid who is being dragged into a locked or blocked door seclusion room. There has been legislation available for our legislators at the federal level to approve since 2011, and our two largest teacher unions in this country have yet to get behind it. One example of a group that I am calling out in this book. Just one. There are many.

[14:26] Andrew Keen: Let me come back at you and again, this is a typically naive question from a parent, someone who isn't an expert. You point out that there is this—we live in the age of anxiety, maybe an epidemic of psychological problems of some kids. You connect it with punishment. But historically schools were much more punitive. I mean, in the—in the 19th century, children were regularly beaten, perhaps even in the 20th century. And you didn't necessarily get this epidemic of anxiety. Is that because we weren't measuring it? Is that because we weren't aware of it? Or has something again changed?

[15:10] Ross W. Greene: It's possible that the fact that we are measuring it now accounts for at least some of why we're seeing such high rates of anxiety and depression. I don't think that accounts for the lion's share of it. And here's what's interesting. When we talk to adults who've had those experiences in their lives, who are our ages, and when they are finally feeling free to talk about what they went through, they are telling us about how traumatizing it was for them, how much it detrimentally affected their lives and their personalities. So what we may mostly be seeing now is kids who are more willing to talk about it than the rest of us were. Just the fact that we may have been more punishment-oriented in the past doesn't mean that our punishments now are anymore productive than they were way back then. We can do better. We know how to do better. And we know the price that people pay for that kind of treatment.

[16:20] Andrew Keen: Is there a difference in terms of physical versus psychological punishment? Are you particularly concerned with one versus the other?

[16:28] Ross W. Greene: Not especially. I think they're both very counterproductive.

[16:33] Andrew Keen: Ross, in this show we've often had guests who come on talking about America—if only America could be more like Scandinavia. Denmark often comes up and Finland. I know that in a lot of studies—in fact there was a book about it, can't remember who it was by, I'm sure you're familiar—comparing the investment in school teachers in Finland, I think, with the United States, and it was dramatically different. School teachers were treated much more—much more favorably, they were paid better, they were taken more seriously. In your analysis of what good teaching is, and I know your book deals with this, is one of the problems that there's not very much good teaching in America because teachers are so badly paid and because no one really respects them?

[17:23] Ross W. Greene: There's no doubt educators in the United States are underpaid. That's a given, right? Compared to other countries, compared to what they should be paid, compared to the role that they play in the lives of our kids, educators are underpaid. There are some incredible teachers out there. Unfortunately, hundreds of thousands of them have left the profession because especially of the conditions under which they now find themselves working. If we want to hang on to them, we have to take a very close look at the conditions under which we are expecting them to work, what we're paying them, this huge responsibility that they have in the lives of our kids. I don't think there's that much bad teaching going on. I think we are placing expectations on kids that are making it very hard on—on educators that are making it very hard for them to do their job.

[18:25] Andrew Keen: Ross, do you distinguish much in the book between public schools, private schools, charter schools? Are they all in the same category when it comes to these challenges? Or are some of these schools doing better jobs than others? As I said, we sent both our kids to alternative Northern California schools, Montessori and Waldorf that's particularly popular these days. One of my children prospered, the other didn't. So it's—it's very hard, at least for me in an anecdotal sense, to come to any generalizations.

[18:57] Ross W. Greene: Yeah, I'm not going to make any generalizations either. The one distinction I will make is that public schools have to take pretty much any kid and by law have to serve every kid well. And those are conditions under which many private schools do not have to operate. Many private schools get to handpick who they take, and they don't necessarily have to keep somebody who's not thriving in their school. Public schools, they got you.

[19:33] Andrew Keen: And does that—much of that come down to investment? Of course, the current American president doesn't seem to be particularly keen on putting resources into certainly the Department of Education. I think he wants to close it down or has closed it down. Is part of your argument in The Kids Who Aren't Okay an argument in favor of investment in schools, federal and state investment?

[19:59] Ross W. Greene: I certainly say in the book that educators are underpaid, but I think a lot of the changes I talk about in the book don't cost more money and in fact are likely to save money. A kid who is not thriving in public school is going to end up with an aide or a paraprofessional or being placed in a special purpose schools. These are expensive options when, if we just took a look at systems in schools that quite frankly we all know aren't working, and educators know that they're not working too. It's just that due to any variety of factors, inertia among them, we keep sticking with them. And we keep losing kids in the process. Um, so no, this is not a book about money per se. This is a book about doing things differently.

[20:54] Andrew Keen: In your book and in your professional analysis, do you think of kids as somehow innocent tabula rasas? The sort of traditional Lockean view of childhood and growing up?

[21:07] Ross W. Greene: No. I think kids are somebody the minute they pop into this world. Um, they have lots of characteristics that are baked in. Then it comes down to how well what the fit is or the match is between their characteristics and the characteristics of the environment. I was trained in graduate school that everything's 100% nature and 100% nurture. And that's why in the book I talk about the definition of good teaching and by the way, good parenting as well, is meeting every kid where they're at. And another term that I use quite a bit in the book is developmental variability. Because that is what's guaranteed to be walking into the building. Every kid is different. Um, this is why many initiatives in education that I think have been outstanding—differentiated instruction, personalized learning—are aimed at helping educators know how to meet every kid where they're at. High-stakes testing, telling every kid they've got to get over the same bar by the end of the school year, is exactly not what the doctor ordered.

[22:25] Andrew Keen: Yeah, I like that phrase, "every kid is different." And sometimes you come across people who when they so to speak review their parent might say, "Well, my parent was a very good parent" or "My parent was a very bad parent." And then their brother or sister would say the reverse. As a parent, it's really hard to recognize that every kid is different. What advice would you give both to parents and children about doing that?

[22:54] Ross W. Greene: Um, don't parent or teach every kid the exact same way. Go into parenting and teaching knowing that every kid is going to need something different from you. That's developmental variability coming at you. And um, don't think that if you're treating one kid different, you're being unfair to the rest. If you are treating every kid differently, based on your efforts to meet them where they're at, you're being fair to everybody. But if you're trying to treat everybody exactly the same, you will meet nobody where they're at.

[23:38] Andrew Keen: But fairness, of course, is—is the third rail of American political culture these days. And if you treat one child differently from another, you're always going to get accusations from the child or the parent or the authority that you're favoring one over another. Is that a broader kind of political argument you're making that—that we need to perhaps tone down our obsession with fairness?

[24:06] Ross W. Greene: Well, fairness doesn't say much to me. I'd rather stay away from politically charged terms. Although, there is a politically charged term that I use in the book: equity, that I would rather not stay away from. But for me, the definition of equity is meeting every kid where they're at. And here's what's interesting. I don't know any educators who would argue with that, and I don't know any parents who would put up a big fuss if they knew that their kid was being met where they are at. Poor outcomes occur when we are not meeting kids where they're at and when we're trying to treat every kid exactly the same.

[24:52] Andrew Keen: What about the issue of gender, ethnicity, even sexuality? Again, really controversial terms, people have very strong opinions one way or the other on them. Should teachers or indeed even parents when they recognize that every child is different incorporate gender, sexuality, race into how they behave with the kid?

[25:17] Ross W. Greene: I think that the goal is to meet every kid where they're at. And if a kid is struggling in a particular area, no matter what it is—academics, depression, anxiety, concerning behavior—what we're seeing is a kid who's not being met where they're at, and we need to educate ourselves about what that kid is going through and do our best to make sure at least that this kid feels a sense of belonging in our classroom.

[25:47] Andrew Keen: You're clearly against punishment of one kind or another. You think that's one of the problems with the system. What about medical support for kids? Where are you on that? I mean, you are, as I said, you're a doctor, you're a PhD, so you're—you're well-trained in this. My own experience, again anecdotal, is that kids are taking more and more antidepressants, some perhaps in a healthy way, perhaps in—in others in a less healthy way. Is this part of the problem or the cure for kids who aren't okay? For kids who are depressed, who are anxious, who are lost?

[26:27] Ross W. Greene: Depends on whether the medication is being prescribed intelligently and carefully. There's definitely kids for whom medication is an absolutely indispensable part of the treatment picture. I do think that in the United States we overprescribe more than other countries do. We don't want to use medication as a crutch; we want to make sure that we're doing it the right way. But we also don't want to take a black-and-white view on it: medication bad, medication good. Medication is indispensable for some kids if it's done the right way.

[27:10] Andrew Keen: And what about our "therapeutic culture"? I know with one of my kids, there used to be a time slot on a Friday afternoon where the kids could all go off to their therapist and usually about 80 or 90% of the class would go. Are you at all concerned with the numbers of therapists and the way in which therapeutic language and culture has somehow crept into the mainstream world where everyone talks as if they're a therapist?

[27:40] Ross W. Greene: There's certainly people out there who talk like they're a therapist who I—when I listen to them I say to myself, "They don't really know what they're talking about." If a kid needs therapy, we want to make sure that they get it. It's interesting. This book is mostly about problem-solving. Um, some people, a lot of educators are worried that mental health professionals are trying to turn them into therapists. Um, I'm not trying to turn educators into therapists. Educators have always been in the problem-solving business. Um, this is a book about solving problems with kids rather than over-punishing the behaviors that are being caused by those problems in the first place.

[28:34] Andrew Keen: You mentioned social media. You said that's not in your top three. Our governor, Gavin Newsom, has recently backed social media restrictions for teens under 16. It's been banned in Australia, I think in France, more and more questions on social media. In your ranking, if it's not in the top three, is it in the top five or ten when it comes to kids not being okay? Are they addicted to their screens? You again don't need me to tell you, there's a massive debate on social media and its impact on our age of anxiety. What's its place and role and what should teachers do in terms of allowing or not allowing devices in the classroom?

[29:19] Ross W. Greene: Oh, I don't think devices should be in the classroom unless they're used for educational purposes. Um, you know, we're going to—we're going to find out soon because Australia banned social media for kids 16 and under. Um, I'm skeptical. Um, the research on the harms of social media is mostly correlational, not causal. If one definitive thing can be said about the impact of social media on kids' mental health, it would be that those who are vastly overusing it, which is not most, are the ones whose mental health is being affected adversely the most. Um, I think it's a complex issue. There's no doubt there are things in social media that kids are being exposed to at increasingly young ages that you and I had never heard of at the ages at which kids are being exposed to them. Um, do we want to wait for the research to show up before we try to do something about it? Not necessarily, but I don't think cell phones should be in schools generally speaking. Um, I think that we do want to take a look at what kids are being exposed to in social media and think about how we can address it. I find that when we mandate things, um, we might be taking a step in the wrong direction. There are some schools that have been involving kids in solving the problems of cell phones and social media in school. And since this book, as well as my entire career, is about how to collaborate with kids on solutions, I would certainly hate to leave kids out of the loop on an issue that affects them enormously.

[31:07] Andrew Keen: Yeah, and you're an education philosopher really, and Lives in the Balance and your theories about collaborative and proactive solutions. Presumably you can program these AIs to—to do the right thing with kids.

[31:25] Ross W. Greene: Presumably so. Um, if you go into AI and ask AI, ChatGPT for example, how areas of conflict in the world are going to be solved and whether it's optimistic and what areas are less likely to be resolved than others—and I've done this—you'll get a very educated answer. Um, hard to imagine that being a bad thing.

[31:54] Andrew Keen: Finally, Ross, your book has a very sad picture on its cover of a boy with his fists clenched over his head, certainly a kid who isn't okay. Why should we be particularly concerned? What happens to these kids who aren't okay when they grow up? Do they go to prison? Do they commit suicide? Do they sit in rooms on their own? Can they do jobs? Can they enter into relationships? What kind of world are we threatened with if these kids who aren't okay aren't addressed and they grow up into adults who aren't okay?

[32:32] Ross W. Greene: It's highly variable. Um, we certainly are not increasing the odds of a good outcome if we don't understand what's getting in the way with these kids and if we don't um treat them in a way that is productive. We are greatly decreasing the odds of a productive outcome. Some pull through. What's interesting here is um this book isn't just about the kids who aren't okay even though that's the title. One of the things I say in the book is that all of the recommendations in the book, including the importance of meeting every kid where they're at, is just as applicable to every kid. And I fervently believe that we need to get busy teaching kids how to collaborate on solving problems, otherwise they're going to turn out just like we did.

[33:31] Andrew Keen: Well, there you have it. The book is out today, The Kids Who Aren't Okay: The Urgent Case for Reimagining Support, Belonging, and Hope in Schools. I often think that the word urgent is overused in book titles, but this certainly is an urgent—urgent issue. Ross, um, congratulations on the book, and best of luck getting that urgent message across to both parents and teachers. Thank you so much.

[34:02] Ross W. Greene: Thank you. This was a great interview.

[34:05] Andrew Keen: Hi, this is Andrew again. Thank you so much for listening or watching the show. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe. We're on Substack, YouTube, Apple, Spotify, all the places. And I'm be very curious as to your comments as well on what you think of the show, how it can be improved and the kinds of guests that you would enjoy hearing or listening to in future. Thank you again.