Former Senator Ben Sasse has been in the news recently because he has been diagnosed with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer. But even with this diagnosis, he has been speaking and writing. His latest op-ed warns that “The Indoor Childhood is Bad for America.”

We know that the current digital revolution is changing nearly every aspect of modern life. But the issue, he believes, is greater than screen time. He points to a larger problem: “American children are weirdly held hostage indoors.”

A recent survey from the Institute for Family Studies discovered that a majority (60%) of 6-year-olds have unsupervised access to internet-connected tablets, but that same majority (58%) are not allowed to play in their own yards unsupervised. It doesn’t get much better for older kids. More than half of 14-year-olds don’t have permission to leave their streets.

He laments that we aren’t “introducing children to the world in an age-appropriate manner.” Instead, we are “preventing them from developing imagination, resilience, and grit.” They can explore the dark corners of the Internet but cannot explore their own neighborhoods. Parents are ignoring one danger in one area and overprotecting in another.

He reminds us that 11 of the 12 Apollo astronauts who walked on the moon were Boy Scouts who learned to live by the scout’s motto “Be Prepared.” Unfortunately, we are not raising a generation of risk takers today.

Children need to learn from low-risk failures. Instead, they are being tossed into the deep end of adulthood with little preparation. The children aren’t at fault. The parents are failing their children and the next generation. The solution starts at home. It’s time to get children outdoors.