What if the anxiety epidemic among our children isn't a mental health mystery, but the predictable result of a childhood we rebuilt in under five years?

Between 2011 and 2015, smartphone ownership among teens exploded from 23 to 73 percent — and adolescent anxiety, depression, loneliness, and self-harm rose sharply alongside it. In The Lost Body, philosopher Adriano Solera weaves together neuroscience, developmental psychology, and hard data to explain what really happened when the feed replaced the playground, and why our children are physically present but psychologically somewhere we cannot follow.

This is not a panic and not a lecture. It is a clear-eyed account of how a generation grew up inside an unmonitored experiment — and a hopeful blueprint for how families, schools, and society can restore what was lost.



Inside, you'll discover:



- Why adolescence is the worst possible time to hand a child a device engineered to defeat self-control

- How the collapse of free play and risk left children fragile long before phones arrived

- The distinct crises facing girls in the mirror and boys in retreat — and the mechanisms behind each

- Why sleep and attention quietly erode young minds, and what actually reverses it

- Real case files of families who pulled the plug — the resistance, the boredom, and the recovery

- A practical, age-by-age blueprint for parents from toddler to teen, plus what schools and governments must finally do

Your child's deepest needs have not changed — and the world is still there, if we're willing to protect their access to it.



Adriano Solera is an Italian philosopher and nonfiction author working at the intersection of the contemplative tradition and the applied ethics of everyday life. He studied philosophy and theology at one of the oldest European universities and spent several years in a Catholic monastic community, immersing himself in the discipline of silence, the rhythm of the day, and contemplative reading, before returning to secular work. For roughly twenty years he combined philosophical writing with a private practice of accompanying people through major life transitions — a change of career, an exit from a business, a re-evaluation of values in mid-life. From this union of monastic and secular perspectives he developed his "Philosophy of Slow Presence," a worldview in which the modern person suffers not from a shortage of goals but from a chronic desynchronization with their own life. Today he runs an independent author's practice and a closed accompaniment service for mature executives and entrepreneurs, writing unhurried, dense books about everyday ethics, time, and maturity.



1. The Vanishing Childhood: What Kids Lost Between 2010 and 2015

2. Brains Under Construction: Why Adolescence Is the Wrong Time for a Smartphone

3. The Collapse of the Playground and the Rise of the Feed

4. Sleep, Attention, and the Slow Erosion of a Young Mind

5. Girls in the Mirror: Social Media and the Female Adolescent Crisis

6. Boys Adrift: Gaming, Porn, and the Retreat from Reality

7. Loneliness in a Connected World: The Paradox of Constant Contact

8. When Schools Became Screens: Classrooms in the Age of Distraction

9. The Spiritual Hunger Beneath the Anxiety Epidemic

10. What the Data Actually Says: Answering the Skeptics

11. Case Files: Families Who Pulled the Plug and What Happened Next

12. A Blueprint for Parents: Practical Rules from Toddler to Teen

13. Schools That Work: Building Phone-Free Learning Communities

14. What Governments and Tech Companies Must Finally Do

15. Restoring Play, Risk, and Real-World Freedom

16. Raising a Generation That Can Look Up



Help your child reclaim attention, resilience, and real life