Montana's baby boomers grew up in neighborhoods teeming with kids. When the calendar turned to June, those kids were outside. All day. Day after day.

We rode bicycles with playing cards tied to the spokes with clothespins. We burned bugs on the sidewalk with our Cracker Jacks magnifying glasses. We roller-skated, climbed trees, raided raspberry patches, and played everything except possum: Jacks, Red Rover, 500, Kick-the-Can, Home Run Derby… everything.

On summer days, we filled the city parks, where high school students taught us tap dancing, baton twirling, and acrobatics. Every two weeks or so, a show wagon, croquet tournament, or other entertainment gave us a chance to show off our talent—or lack thereof. In the afternoons, we'd hop in a neighbor's car to go swimming at the city pool. It was all free.

In the fall, these summer neighborhoods became just a little quieter. Baseball games on sandlots gave way to touch football and leaf forts. With winter came ice skating. Ah, the peaceful feeling of skating through a starry night, skates over your shoulder, the clatter of your boots muffled by the snow, until you saw the glow of floodlights bathing the rink in a halo of light, and serenity turned to exuberance: a game of pull-off pom-poms had just begun!

Subsequent generations of children have not had that experience. Free city recreation programs were rare in the '80s. Even unorganized activities disappeared. Gone are the ballparks that hosted impromptu games from dawn to dusk. It's rare to see a ballpark – or a soccer field – used for anything other than occasional, adult-supervised play. (And let's be honest: adult-supervised play isn't real play. It's a performance.)

Parents don't watch their kids run out the door to play with anyone in the neighborhood. Instead, they make playdates. Letting their kids go to the park without them and only expecting them to be home for dinner can result in everything from mom-shaming to a visit from child services.

How do kids play today? Indoors. On screens. Elementary school children spend an average of 4 to 6 hours of screen time per day. Teens average 9 hours. Aside from just twiddling their thumbs, screen time exposes kids to far worse predators than they're likely to encounter at the local park. Perhaps most frightening is the self a child can become over the years of this isolation and algorithmic manipulation: an anxious, gloomy, lonely shadow.

But surely not in Montana, right? Where clouds of ice cream cones and babbling brooks invite children to play and dream? Wrong. Last year, according to data on children's mental health in Montana, 43% of high school students felt persistently sad or hopeless. When you feel that way, you are not performing “well.” Candidates for office rant about “back to basics” (that sells well), but the most basic thing our children need is joy.

Instead, one in eight children ages 10 to 17 in Montana attempted suicide last year, with the suicide rate double the national rate. Yes, many factors contribute to this phenomenon, but with social isolation and lack of social connections being the main factors, screen time needs to be taken seriously. Our Surgeon General just did that.

I'm not sure a warning label can change such ingrained behaviors – in children or in us. And I suspect the more fundamental danger is the toxic smog of division, anger and judgment that today's “adult society” forces on children. All day. Day after day. There is already a warning label: the data.