We want to give our children a safer, easier and better future than the one we experienced ourselves. But somewhere along the way, we risk forgetting that independence, judgement and resilience do not develop simply because life becomes more comfortable. Are we really preparing young people for a future in which almost nothing can be taken for granted?
There is an old English expression that captures something about human development more effectively than many modern educational theories: “Pressure makes diamonds.” Under enormous pressure and high temperatures, carbon can form diamonds. As a metaphor for human development, the image is almost irresistible. Resistance creates strength. Difficulties develop abilities. What initially appears to be an obstacle may eventually become one of life's most valuable experiences. But human beings are not minerals, and pressure can just as easily destroy as strengthen. The interesting question, therefore, is not whether young people need pressure, but what kind of challenges they need in order to grow.
We live in an age when protecting children and young people from negative experiences has become an increasingly important part of both parenting and education. We try to anticipate problems, prevent conflicts, remove obstacles and create environments in which as few people as possible have to experience failure. The intentions are understandable. No parent wants to see their child suffer. No teacher wants a student to lose confidence. Yet there is a paradox hidden inside this well-intentioned protection. If we constantly try to shield young people from life's difficulties, when are they supposed to develop the experience necessary to deal with them?
This question becomes increasingly urgent as artificial intelligence, automation and digital services transform not only working life but also the fundamental conditions of everyday existence. Future generations will probably have access to more powerful tools than any generation before them. At the same time, they may need a greater capacity to manage change, uncertainty and personal responsibility than many of us have ever required.
When We Make Life Easier, We May Be Making People Less Prepared
Consider something as simple as learning to ride a bicycle. A child can receive instructions, watch videos and listen to adults explaining how balance works. But nobody learns to ride a bicycle merely by understanding the theory. Sooner or later, the child must climb onto the bicycle, start pedalling, wobble and perhaps fall. There comes a moment when the adult has to let go of the saddle. Without that moment, the independence that the entire exercise is intended to develop will never fully emerge.
In many respects, the rest of life works in much the same way.
The first summer job, the first journey without parents, the first conflict that must be resolved without adult intervention, or the first occasion when someone has to face the consequences of a poor decision. These are rarely comfortable experiences at the time. Yet they can become decisive in shaping how a young person understands their own abilities.
Confidence, after all, is not created solely through praise and encouragement. It also develops through the experience of actually accomplishing something that previously seemed difficult. There is a fundamental difference between being told that you are capable and discovering it for yourself.
Here, modern society has developed a peculiar contradiction. While constantly encouraging independence, we organise enormous parts of children's lives down to the smallest detail. Parents can monitor school performance digitally, track their children's locations and communicate with them almost continuously. Conflicts that previous generations might have resolved in the playground can now become the subject of lengthy discussions between adults. Forgotten homework, missing sports equipment and social misunderstandings can quickly be addressed through a telephone call home.
Technology has created opportunities for care and protection that earlier generations never enjoyed. But it has also made intervention possible far more frequently than is always necessary.
When helping someone turns into constantly solving their problems for them, the nature of that help changes. A person who never has to take responsibility for a problem does not have the same opportunity to develop the ability to solve it.
Naturally, this does not mean that children should be abandoned to problems they are not equipped to handle. Quite the opposite. Research in developmental psychology demonstrates that stable relationships with supportive adults play a central role in children's resilience. Harvard University's Center on the Developing Child distinguishes between positive, tolerable and toxic stress. Short-term, manageable challenges can be part of healthy development, whereas prolonged and overwhelming stress without sufficient support can have serious consequences.
The distinction is crucial. Children do not need more suffering. They need more opportunities to face meaningful challenges under conditions that allow them to learn how to manage those challenges.
Failure Is an Experience, Not an Identity
Something else that has become increasingly difficult in parts of our performance-driven society is the ability to regard failure as a natural part of development. We constantly talk about the importance of having the courage to try, while simultaneously organising education, working life and social environments around results, comparisons and success.
Social media amplifies the problem. Success is often presented as something immediate, effortless and almost frictionless. Young people encounter stories about entrepreneurs becoming wealthy before thirty, influencers apparently living perfect lives, and individuals whose careers seem to consist of an uninterrupted sequence of brilliant decisions.
What rarely appears are the years of uncertainty, failed projects, poor investments, loneliness, self-doubt and occasions when people came close to giving up.
This creates a distorted picture of how life actually works.
Most people who have accomplished something meaningful were once inexperienced, uncertain and not particularly good at whatever they were trying to learn. The difference is often that they continued developing despite those shortcomings. Not necessarily by stubbornly repeating the same strategy, but by changing how they thought and acted.
We should therefore become better at distinguishing between failing at something and being a failure. The first is almost unavoidable for anyone attempting something difficult. The second is an identity that nobody should have to carry because of a particular result.
A study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2010 identified an interesting relationship between previous adversity and subsequent resilience. People reporting some difficult life experiences demonstrated, in several respects, better adjustment than both individuals who had experienced extensive adversity and those who reported no adversity at all.
This does not mean difficulties automatically make us stronger. Correlation is not causation. But the findings point towards something worth considering: experiences of managing limited adversity may, under certain circumstances, help people feel better equipped when new problems arise.
For a young person, that lesson can be transformative. Being rejected, losing a competition, failing at a project or discovering that you are not the best at everything does not have to become a personal catastrophe. It can mark the beginning of a more realistic understanding of both your own abilities and the surrounding world.
AI Can Solve the Problems – But Who Develops the Human Ability?
Technological development introduces an entirely new dimension to this discussion.
We are creating a society in which an increasing number of cognitive tasks can be delegated to machines. Artificial intelligence can write texts, solve mathematical problems, develop software, analyse information and propose solutions to complicated questions.
It is one of the most fascinating opportunities of our time. Knowledge and productive capabilities that previously required large organisations can now become available to individuals. A young person with a computer, curiosity and a good idea can accomplish things that would have been almost impossible only a few years ago.
But there is also an obvious risk.
If technology always provides the answer before a person has had time to formulate an independent thought, what happens to intellectual development? If a student can obtain a completed essay, functioning software or a detailed analysis within seconds, how do we ensure that the student simultaneously develops genuine understanding?
This is not an argument against AI. Quite the opposite. It is an argument for changing how we use the technology.
A student who uses AI to investigate alternative solutions, challenge personal assumptions and develop an idea can learn an enormous amount. A student who uncritically hands over the entire assignment, however, risks producing an impressive result without developing equivalent competence.
The real educational challenge will therefore be to preserve meaningful effort while taking advantage of technology's possibilities.
Not all friction is negative. Struggling with a difficult problem, testing a hypothesis, discovering a mistake and developing a better solution are part of the learning process itself.
Of course, we should not defend inefficiency simply for the sake of inefficiency. But we must understand the difference between eliminating unnecessary work and eliminating the work that develops human capabilities.
An educational system that rewards only correct final products risks becoming increasingly irrelevant in a world where machines can generate those products. The most important future competencies may instead involve judgement, initiative, creativity, responsibility and the ability to recognise when an apparently convincing answer is actually wrong.
Such qualities are not developed merely by pressing the correct button.
The Future Needs Independent People, Not Just Well-Behaved Students
I believe we need to begin questioning what it actually means to prepare young people for the future. For a long time, education has largely been built around the idea that students should absorb knowledge, follow instructions, perform well in examinations and then enter the labour market.
There have been good reasons for that model. But the future is unlikely to be as predictable as previous generations often imagined.
Professions will change. New forms of enterprise will emerge. Companies and institutions that appear indispensable today may lose their relevance. At the same time, individuals will gain increasingly powerful opportunities to create their own digital services, products and sources of income.
In such a world, the ability to handle the unknown becomes essential.
Young people should therefore have far more opportunities to work on real projects, develop their own ideas and tackle problems for which no predetermined answer exists. They should be encouraged to organise activities, manage limited budgets, collaborate with people from different backgrounds and discover what happens when an idea encounters reality.
Not because everyone should become an entrepreneur, but because everyone needs to understand that they can influence their surroundings.
We should also encourage young people to encounter other societies, languages and cultures. Spending time in an environment where things do not work exactly as they do at home can be an extraordinarily valuable education. You are forced to think differently, solve unexpected problems and sometimes reconsider assumptions you previously regarded as self-evident.
This is often where genuine independence begins to develop. Not when everything works perfectly, but when you discover that you can actually manage situations that do not.
Yet resilience must never become a convenient excuse for society to abandon its responsibilities. Children growing up amid violence, poverty or profound insecurity do not need additional pressure. They need better opportunities. There is a fundamental difference between being given the opportunity to tackle a challenge and being forced to survive circumstances that should never have been tolerated in the first place.
That is precisely why the adult world's responsibility is so important. We should not manufacture difficulties for their own sake. We should create enough security for young people to dare to face the challenges that life will inevitably contain.
We Cannot Live Our Children's Lives for Them
It is easy to understand why we want to protect the next generation. We know life's disappointments and naturally want to spare our children from experiencing them. We know what it feels like to fail, to be rejected, to make the wrong decision or to face a future that suddenly looks entirely different from what we imagined.
But our experiences can never be fully transferred through explanations and well-meaning advice. Every generation must, in some sense, make its own discoveries.
We can give young people knowledge, love, security and extraordinary technological tools. We can open doors and create opportunities that previous generations lacked. But we cannot create independent adults by constantly making their decisions for them.
At some point, we must let go of the bicycle saddle.
Perhaps this is where the expression “Pressure makes diamonds” acquires its real meaning. Not as a demand that young people tolerate everything, achieve more or become hardened through suffering. Rather, as a reminder that development requires experience, that experience can sometimes be painful, and that life cannot always, or necessarily should, be adapted to our desire for comfort.
We do not need a generation immune to fear, uncertainty and failure. We need a generation that understands these feelings are part of life and has been given the opportunity to develop the ability to manage them.
Perhaps the most important thing we can give young people is not a life without resistance, but the confidence that they can face resistance without losing themselves.
Diamonds are formed under pressure. Human beings are shaped by life.
And life must, at least to some extent, be lived on one's own terms.
By Chris...