Nevin Harper discusses Kids These Days
April 23, 2026
Nevin Harper is a professor and acting director in the School of Exercise Science, Physical, and Health Education at the University of Victoria. A registered clinical counsellor who integrates outdoor therapy into his practice, Harper has extensive experience as an outdoor educator, guide, and trainer specializing in outdoor adventure leadership and group facilitation. Here he discusses his book, Kids These Days: Understanding and Supporting Youth Mental Health, which Harper co-authored with Will Dobud. The book is published by New Society Publishers on Gabriola Island.
Your book starts with the question: What’s really going on with youth mental health? How did you and your co-author come to explore this issue? What did you want to contribute to public discourse?
I started working with youth in care and corrections in the early 1990s, primarily in outdoor activity-based programs. I have witnessed trends and changes in practice across decades. My co-author and I were at an international conference for outdoor therapy in 2022 and began a conversation about why there were more therapists, wellness practitioners, and mental health professionals than ever, and yet youth rates of mental illness, loneliness, and self-harm all appeared to be on the rise. That question led me to interview a dozen leading voices across education, therapy, child development, and health fields. These ‘experts’ told us about the research, the action—or lack of action, taken by regulatory bodies, sometimes influenced by corporate interests, and the many variables that could contribute to declines in youth mental health. We wanted to know where we could help, rather than carrying on participating in a system that seemed less than effective. What we learned we wrote about, researched more, and eventually wove stories into a manuscript that became Kids These Days.
Kids These Days pushes back on the claim that social media and the internet have caused a youth mental health crisis. You quote psychologist Martin Brokenleg, from the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, who says young people are starving spiritually because of the absence of human relationships. Who or what’s to blame then for this lack of connection?
We have seen and read books on social media and smart phones “causing” youth mental health issues, overprotective parenting, bad therapy…a host of single-cause books trying to explain away youth mental health issues. It’s too complex of an issue—it’s a wicked problem, one that will not have one answer. There is no perfect intervention. And besides, universal ‘one-size-first-all’ interventions rarely work.
Martin’s comments reflect the underlying need for belonging. It is the absolute starting point for human happiness, safety, and growth. If relationships are compromised, we will fill the gap with whatever we have access to, and today, smartphones and social media fill the gap quickly—in a mostly unhealthy way. So starving is met with gorging behaviors. But to say social media is to blame is simplistic and not the full story. It is one variable, and this is a problem that even if solved, we’ll never know which solution contributed or how much.
The book draws attention to the understudied effects of environmental toxins on young people’s mental health. Can you talk more about this?
One truth became clear to us while writing the book, that adults are responsible for most environments kids are exposed to growing up. We also see every generation berated by the previous for not living up to some expectations or standards. This is the “Kids these days effect.” This leads to adults pointing fingers at the newest generation and trying to change them through interference, interventions, and ideologies. These ended up being the three sections of our book. Toxins in the environment are a type of interference, disrupting growing minds and bodies. The link between chemicals we are exposed to and a host of health problems are not talked about nearly enough. We found behavioral and learning issues, neurological dysfunction, hormone dysregulation, and other issues are the end result of chemical exposures, yet most people experiencing them end up at a doctor and are treated for the symptoms, which in some cases meds are prescribed. Bottomline; there is a need for nuance, and broader thinking before concluding one has a mental health problem.
The book is critical of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), which you describe as the “backbone of the mental health industrial complex.” How can a balance be struck between helping young people be aware of their mental health without the problem of self-diagnosing that you describe?
Few practitioners in the world of therapy are without criticisms of the DSM. The medical model and healthcare system can lead to over-medicalizing contexts such as adolescent lives. What we give energy to grows. If we often talk about mental health issues, we will find them. If we took a positive psychology approach and sought to build resilience, happiness, and grit, we’d have better overall mental health, no? Our approach in the book is not anti-psychology or anti-medication; however, we do take a critical swing at uncooperative systems that treat issues as if they exist between the ears of youth, and recognize less often the realities of challenging environments in which kids grow up that may contribute to what looks like a mental health issue.
In the book, you talk about the “dogma of safety” and “extinction of experience” among young people, who you write lack the autonomy to adventurously explore adolescence. How can adults balance young people’s safety with providing space for them to take risks and fail?
While we wanted to put outdoor therapies out there as an ideal approach to many issues, this wasn’t the focus of our book. We live in a risk-averse society which has put a lot of focus on the concept of safety. While modern life has become safer for most, there may have been an overcorrection. One area of concern we highlight is in child development and ranging—the distance kids have been allowed to explore away from adults and home as they grow up. This physical reality is simply shown by longitudinal family studies where the radius of exploration from the family home has been reduced generation after generation and now sees kids playing in fenced or closed parts of the yard or home on a planned “playdate.” Many might see this as progress, yet there are developmental aspects to having to navigate the streets and neighborhood while out with friends. Our critique includes a theme of over-protecting kids from the natural experiences and struggles of childhood and adolescence.
So, are parents (or more broadly adults) really the problem then, not kids?
Adults these days! Maybe we got the title wrong? We were not sensationalist nor did we have any interest in playing on any moral panic about what is wrong with kids today. We question what is really going on, from many angles. Life is full of variety, and growing up is an adventure, one with many experiences, and parents are often doing the best they can, with the information available to them. We hope this book gets adults thinking about how they can better protect kids’ health. There are harmful products and practices that many continue to do believing they are doing well. There are also uncooperative systems that are driven by a profit motive that equally can cause harms, and many within are knowing of the harms but are unwilling to speak up.
Kids These Days is available through New Society Publishers or wherever you buy books.