Are Kids Too Clean for Their Own Good?

A study earlier this year found that five times more college kids are dealing with depression today than during the actual Depression. That didn't surprise me, as it always feels good to have a purpose, and presumably when you were collecting scrap metal or planting a vegetable garden during spring break, it felt good to know your family was depending on you.

Not that it felt good to starve, just good to be a giver, instead of a ferried-around, hovered-over prince in the back of a Pathfinder. Anyway, now it turns out there is another thought as to why more young people today are blue, and it has to do with germs. A lack of them.

Dr. Charles Raison, a neuroscientist at Emory University, studies the microorganisms that live in our guts. You could say they LOVE our guts. After all, they evolved in tandem with us humans, and there's evidence that they actually serve as our "tutors." Because they are both common and benign, they work on our innards the way a multi-culti kindergarten works on kids; our guts get so used to hanging out with all of them that we realize they are not a threat. Then, when other good bacteria come into our lives, we greet them with a shrug. "Hi. Make yourselves at home."

Same way kids greet kids of another skin color or religion or even hairstyle if no one has kept them separate and told them scary things about the people "not like us."

But now, the theory goes, our children's childhoods are so free of dirt and germs that these "old friends" (that's actually what scientists call the ancient docile microorganisms) are no longer there to teach our insides that they don't have to fear most germs. They are not there to remind our guts, "Those new guys? They're just like us, and WE weren't out to get you, right? So chill."

So upon seeing a new germ — even a good one — the guts go wild.

The analogy to human interactions is uncanny. If you never learn that most people, even strangers, are good, you may well overreact the minute someone different-looking comes to town.

So now it's possible that kids' all-too-clean and clueless guts are overreacting whenever they meet something new, even if it really isn't usually a danger. This might explain the increase in childhood allergies to things most of us didn't have to worry about when we were young. But the newest idea is that, seeing as scientists have long seen a connection between inflammation and depression, it's quite possible it's not Facebook bullies or excessive burgers that are bringing kids down. It could be their cleanliness. Or rather, it could be US, keeping our offspring super-clean, with the wipes and the Purell in every nook and car pool.

The ads for these obsessive soaps suggest that we are surrounded by germs — which is true — and that most of them are dangerous. That's the part that's not true. In fact, it's false. And it's possible that as we remove the "old friends" from our children's lives, we aren't doing them any favors. We are making the world seem scary to their guts. Just because Purell is scaring us to our guts.

Lenore Skenazy is the author of "Free-Range Kids: How to Raise Safe, Self-Reliant Children (Without Going Nuts with Worry)" and "Who's the Blonde That Married What's-His-Name? The Ultimate Tip-of-the-Tongue Test of Everything You Know You Know — But Can't Remember Right Now." To find out more about Lenore Skenazy (lskenazy@yahoo.com) and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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