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Alarming Decline of Quality Youth Playtime

lucidguppy 8y ago
All these stories on raising children confuse the issue and keep parents in paralysis. If you want to take the pressure off - tell parents their kids won't be left out like millennials are. Give them a safety net. Let parents know their kids will have a pretty good life. On the other hand, if they know their kids will be in a dog-eat-dog world where even hard work gets you nowhere - they're going to raise their kids with a zero-sum game theory.
- jerf 8y ago
  I have to disagree. You want to take the pressure off, you need to take the pressure off. Make it clear that I'm not going to have my kids taken away and/or thrown in jail because they're biking around downtown a mile away from me, or because I left them at home while I went grocery shopping or something. I don't find myself questioning whether I should let them go because I'm worried that they might not get into Harvard or that they may not make as much money as me, or because I'm just so consumed with worry about inequality or something so abstract. I'm worried about them being taken away or me going to jail. Instead of being a black swan event (and we can't get it below that), it's merely "fairly unlikely", which for such a disastrous outcome isn't really unlikely enough.
  - toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
    I have to disagree. You want to take the pressure off, you need to take the pressure off. Make it clear that I'm not going to have my kids taken away and/or thrown in jail because they're biking around downtown a mile away from me, or because I left them at home while I went grocery shopping or something. That is pure FUD. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18983019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18983019
    - velosol 8y ago
      And yet someone relating a swarm of cop cars when they arrived home in: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18984211 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18984211 .
    - barry-cotter 8y ago
      Just in case anyone else feels tempted to click on that link it describes two incidents in which children from the same family were investigated for neglect by CPS. In the second incident the children were taken from a park where they had been dropped off by their parents by the police and then sent by the police to CPS. No attempt was made to contact their parents and they only found out that the police had taken their children by calling 911. No one was fired for either incident.
    - matheweis 8y ago
      It might not result in jail or kids being taken away, but it can absolutely lead to an investigation - as your link demonstrates. It might be FUD, but imagine the unshakable FUD that would result from the deeply invasive and strung out process of being investigated for an unsubstantiated claim of neglect. jerf is accurate that the current system stacks pressure against parents and not in a nice way.
    - jerf 8y ago
      Even if it's FUD, it literally doesn't matter. It's what people think is going to happen. People need to stop thinking that's what's going to happen. It's going to be difficult to make people think it's not happening, though, when it manifestly is and does. I'm already aware it's a low-probability event. The problem is, low probability times catastrophic outcome still leaves something that I worry about enough to affect my life. It needs to be a lot lower.
      - toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
        Even if it's FUD, it literally doesn't matter. It's what people think is going to happen. People need to stop thinking that's what's going to happen. Aside from the fact that it’s never happened, and the whole scare is based around one family and regional government? Maybe I would help if people stopped raising the FUD level by claiming it’s a rational fear? After all, people are scared of many things that don’t exist, and the response isn’t usually to fan the flames of those fears with bullshit. To be clear, the precise probability of this is demonstrably 0, it’s like saying you won’t let your kids out because you’re afraid aliens will abduct them. Rational people don’t then point to that fear as a societal ill, and certainly don’t spread the fear of it around online.
kthejoker2 8y ago
I love how all the suggestions are right in the "helicopter parent" wheelhouse. No "kick them outside and tell them you don't care what they do, just be home for supper."
- Mr_RobRoy 8y ago
  Yep. That's what my parents did with us. "Just be home for dinner." We'd eat dinner and then run back outside for another 3-4 hours of "night games" in the cul-de-sac. Maybe on Tuesday nights we'd come in for the Cosby Show or something. But that was rare. :-)
ovulator 8y ago
Why does it seem that everyone who writes articles like these seemed to have a national forest in their back yard as a kid? Most kids don't have "an expansive wilderness" to explore. Most of them have miles and miles of residential streets to "explore" in Baltimore.
- Florin_Andrei 8y ago
  It doesn't matter, really. The important part is being outside, exploring physical reality.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  Until recently there were pockets of "interesting" places for kids to screw around . If there wasn't some forested land there was an abandoned factory or dead construction site (e.g. the pit in parks and rec). That sort of stuff is fenced off (or otherwise made hard to access) much more thoroughly these days and people are much more likely to call the cops if they see unattended kids poking around.
  - Mr_RobRoy 8y ago
    True. I remember playing in all of the local construction sites with my friends as a kid. There were nails, wood scraps, tools, and even huge piles of hay used to keep the concrete from freezing at night that we would jump into from the second story of the house. Of course, that was all illegal and likely quite dangerous. But man, it was fun! And the danger part of it was what made it so fun. We knew we shouldn't be there and so we hid whenever a car drove by. But that should be a part of childhood. Exploring and making mistakes. I do remember getting busted a couple of times. Those were some life-long lessons that I haven't forgotten, that's for sure. But today, with attractive nuisance laws so strict and the liability associated with those laws so severe, no wonder kids are locked indoors for most of their formative years!
- brians 8y ago
  I grew up in a suburb. It's important to remember that kids are closer to the ground. Shrubbery. Slates and what burrows beneath. Trees—the texture of the bark and the vestibular effects of climbing. Ice on the ground in this season, the smell of gasoline and grass in another, and the detritus of illegal fireworks after a holiday. Seeing strangers. Seeing new strangers. Seeing the same old strangers every day until those strangers are recognized as neighbors. Just being in that world is an experience of wonder and learning.
gerbilly 8y ago
People are afraid to let their kids play outside, and even if they did, there is no one out there to play with because all the other kids are in the house in front of a screen.
- technologyvault 8y ago
  I have 6 kids. We don't allow video games in the house - except Tetris, since that seems to be good for developing intelligence. It can be hard for them to relate to other kids, who only want to talk about Fortnite, which my kids know nothing about.
  - gerbilly 8y ago
    Man, we used to play outside from morning (dawn is really early in the summer) till lunch, then from after lunch till 9:30pm. We lived in the country so we rode bikes, built tree forts, explored the woods. We shot bows and arrows and ran around with pellet guns, took apart old lawnmowers that never got put back together, sorry... :-( From thirteen on, I had little joe jobs pumping gas, washing cars watering plants at a nursery. Later on I worked at a farm. I can still back up a forty foot trailer on a dime. I also learned to jury rig almost any mechanical thing, because equipment was always breaking down.
    - gerbilly 8y ago
      Replying to myself because I thought of more stuff. Some kinds had mini bikes, when we were about eight, but my grandmother forbade me from riding one, but she did let me drive her car when I was about 12 to go visit my friends. Also we'd go camping by this nice place near a waterfall with just two wool blankets. We'd take some cut hay from a nearby field to stuff under the first blanket and cover ourselves with the other.
  - vokep 8y ago
    It may be hard and you may be viewed as "that weird restrictive parent that won't even let their kids play fortnite", but that doesn't make you wrong. Good stuff, glad parents like you are out there.
buf 8y ago
This is largely an American problem. When I lived in Europe I didn't see people being "fearful" about letting their children roam the streets. During my recent trips to Japan, I also felt that same vibe. Children under the age of 10 taking the trains by themselves or with friends, even in Tokyo. American isolationism creates fearfulness.
- magduf 8y ago
  Exactly. I was in Germany recently and saw small children walking home from school alone. In America, this can get parents arrested in many states. In Japan, they basically force kids to walk to school without parents when they're 7-8 years old. If I ever have kids, I'd want to raise them someplace like that, not in a country where I'm legally required to be a helicopter parent until the kid is a legal adult.
  - GuiA 8y ago
    Raising kids in Japan means that you’re raising them in a culture that has an alarmingly high youth suicide rate [0], and that your daughter taking the subway on her own is likely to be sexually assaulted [1]. And since the original link is about quality youth playtime, let’s not forget all the hours spent at cram schools in the evenings and weekends if you want a shot at a decent university. I’m not a big fan of the US either when it comes to parenting/educational trends, but there’s no silver bullet. (Unsurprised by the downvotes, given how fetishized Japan is in the West and how most are incapable of looking at the country through a critical lens) [0] https://www.humanium.org/en/child-suicide-in-japan-the-leading-cause-of-death-in-children/ https://www.humanium.org/en/child-suicide-in-japan-the-leadi... [1] https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/03/sexual-assault-japan-girl-victim-170307101413024.html https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/03/sexual-as...
    - gumby 8y ago
      Not that this doesn't happen in the US: Palo Alto pays to have human guards at each rail crossing to discourage high schoolers from jumping in front of trains.
jriot 8y ago
The decline in playtime for all is a major concern. It is difficult to find a group to play any pick-up sports e.g., basketball. Even adult leagues are difficult, as no one really commits, just shows up when they can, if they have nothing else better going on.
mikelanza 8y ago
I wrote a book advising parents how to give kids a life of independent neighborhood play. Check out Playborhood - http://playborhood.com http://playborhood.com In a nutshell, I contend that this is a social problem of neighborhood culture, and parents should work to make their neighborhoods as fun and inviting as video games and the Internet. Simply cutting off electronics and shoving them out the door won't do it because there's no one out there - neighborhoods are very boring. Somehow, we need to create a culture of play, first with parents, and later without, in our neighborhoods. The book Playborhood is all about that.
- Mr_RobRoy 8y ago
  I think you're right. Just unplugging and kicking the kids out the door just isn't effective, ultimately. I think that's true mainly because it takes all of the parents in the neighborhood doing the same thing. Otherwise, your kids end up outside with no one to play with because all of the kids their age are still inside attached to their electronic devices. I think it's much harder today to create alternative activities than it used to be.
  - aylmao 8y ago
    I think siblings play an important role here. More than a few times I remember going out and having no one to play with but my brother, only to be joined later on by other kids. Moreover, I can only assume that it was through me that my brother got introduced to the "social scene" of the neighborhood. I was the older one, so when we came out to play, I was in charge of him, and that meant always inviting him to play and introducing him to all my friends. Siblings are like friends you have no option but having (and playing with). Incredibly reliable, in that sense (:
    - Mr_RobRoy 8y ago
      I think that parents who help their kids understand that their siblings have the potential to be their best, life-long friends are doing a wonderful thing for their kids. My sisters and I (2 years between each of us) spent a huge amount of time playing together even up through Jr. High school. We're still very close today.
gumby 8y ago
After wandering around in Germany, coming home late etc my kid was shocked when we put him in a US school 6 year ago (i.e. post smartphone). It wasn't just the unstructured time, but the range of things kids are allowed to do. Amusingly/sadly he said things like "people here haven't heard of freedom". We had neighbors with a kid precisely the same age as him, but the kids were never around, instead being driven from place to place. (BTW it's pretty common to complain about the quality of US education too but in this case it was actually OK, especially when compared to the notorious Berlin schools, and he decided on a US undergraduate education which I think was a good decision.)
- wil421 8y ago
  It was much much different in schools pre 9/11. My high school was like a college campus. We could roam around the campus, eat lunch around campus, and all the doors were unlocked. Is it was easy to get in and no one would really question you during non class times like lunch. Post 9/11 everything was locked down and continued to get worse.
- watwut 8y ago
  What were the exact freedoms your child was missing?
  - gumby 8y ago
    That's a good question. This was through the eyes of a 13 year old. On the general side: I'd say the German approach for kids (2-12) is "super strict on the basics, then have at it." So you are very strict that they must stand behind the yellow line, don't interrupt grown ups, behave yourself at the table, etc, but once you have the core down there are few restrictions (this changes as you grow up...I like to joke that Ordnung is the German state religion). So he was used to unsafe playgrounds, coming home late from just exploring the U-bahn with his friends (all ignoring texts from parents) etc. He compared that to American kids who seemed to always being told not to do things without having a set of basics to make their own decisions. He had one Palo Alto classmate who was grounded if he wasn't home 15 minutes after school let out! An example: in grade six he and his friends found a bottle of vodka in the schoolyard (urban school). As any 12 year olds would, they took one of their gym sneakers, filled it with vodka, and set it on fire. The maths teacher passed by and said "boys, school starts in a few minutes; don't be late" and kept going. He told me he'd be expelled from his US school if he had matches or a lighter. In Germany that didn't even rate a letter home from the school. He also complained that grownups were always involved. Schools have police officers in them, scouts have parents involved, etc. Kids don't get to run things and screw them up like they do in Germany. I went to a Christmas service in a church where the kids wrote and put on a Christmas play -- apparently Noah brought the animals, 2x2, to see the newborn. I am not christian but I'm pretty sure that isn't doctrine -- but everyone seemed to like it. He found the US school routine quite rigid with little time for exploration of the material but instead memorization. If anything the US seemed more like the asian schooling my mother went through, or perhaps the prewar Prussian system. I know the US kindergarteners are told to learn the alphabet while the German one was mainly focused on getting along and learning, by the end of the year, to keep your clothes on all day. They left the alhpabet (in two languages!) to the first grade. HTH
TaylorAlexander 8y ago
As an aside, I think it’s interesting that we prioritize play time for children (or want to) but seem to think little of play time for adults. I think play should be a lifetime avocation, but where I grew up in California this isn’t much of a focus for adults.
koosnel 8y ago
As a child I spent my afternoons with an air rifle in the African bush on my grandfather's farm. Good times. Now I spend 12+ hours a day in front of a computer.
- socialist_coder 8y ago
  Ha, exactly what my wife told me when I shared this article with her.
nrjames 8y ago
I signed up to take Taekwondo with my daughters. We have a ton of fun both in class and practicing forms and kicks at home. It's a great source of confidence and pride for them. Some of the classes are self-defense / anti-bullying oriented, too, which is nice. It's a really fun parent/child activity that I'd recommend for anybody.
president 8y ago
With globalism, your kids are now competing at a global level. And when you are competing with kids from 3rd world countries that are spending all their free time learning and studying, many of which are immigrating to the U.S. and entering the U.S. job market, there is no time for "play" if you want to make sure you have the competitive edge needed to land a decent job.
- baron816 8y ago
  The countries where kids are spending all their time studying are not “third world countries.”
  - president 8y ago
    Yes, it is mix of first and third world countries. I chose third world in my example as it relates to the tech industry from my perspective. Not sure why you felt like you had to point that out.
    - james_s_tayler 8y ago
      It's not even called Third World anymore. That's a pretty old term.
- MisterBastahrd 8y ago
  Staring at a phone / tablet / tv and playing video games with all of your free time isn't "competing."
  - president 8y ago
    Agreed, nobody said it was.
- aylmao 8y ago
  The number of immigrant workers is so small compared to the number of national workers (17.1% [1]), that although I don't doubt there might be some truth to your statement I personally think it's probably statistically not significant. [1]: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/forbrn.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/forbrn.htm
gambler 8y ago
I highly recommend everyone to read the book The Coddling of the American Mind. A large chunk of it is dedicated to this very question: why children have much less play time today than in the past, how it's harming them and what to do about it. Its conclusions are fairly counter-intuitive, but the reasoning is very convincing and backed up by lots of cited research.
watermelongunn 8y ago
While I agree that kids could stand to get out more, I think everyone here is painting an absurdly rosy picture of the past. I'd like to know what percentage of kids used to spend their time doing hard labor or if their latchkey existence left them feeling so uncared about that they turned into nihilist assholes. Don't get me wrong – in a perfect world, kids would play outside 8 hours a day, but I have a hard time getting past the selection bias presented in the video.
- gambler 8y ago
  Except there is hard empirical data showing that something is actually going wrong. Like rapidly rising teenage anxiety, depression and suicide rates.
  - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    > Like rapidly rising teenage anxiety, depression and suicide rates. Are those symptoms indicative of there being an issue with the kids, or are those the same symptoms in all age groups?
    - aylmao 8y ago
      I gather that it seems to be a growing issue amongst the younger demographics [1]. [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/11/magazine/why-are-more-american-teenagers-than-ever-suffering-from-severe-anxiety.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/11/magazine/why-are-more-ame...
  - airstrike 8y ago
    While I generally agree with the sentiment in this thread and article, it's all gut feeling at this point. The causal relationship is still to be proven, though. There are countless other factors at play.
  - asdff 8y ago
    Has sampling bias been ruled out? With people more open to discussing public mental health in recent years, certainly more people have been seeking treatment and diagnoses have probably improved. I would assume historical data strongly under sampled people with mental health issues due to the great stigma and misunderstandings about these diseases.
socrates1998 8y ago
It is an issue no doubt because parents just honestly don't have the confidence to let their kids go. They are paranoid not just about kidnappers or child molesters, but they are worried about not preparing their kids for school and "getting ahead", thus the over planned childhoods. I really wish parents would just let go a little. 1) Read to your kids at night. Do it as old as they want you to do it. 2) Give them unstructured play time with friends consistently. After age 9 or so, they really can go off on their own without parents around. 3) Younger kids should experience a variety of things well through middle school. The more things they do, the better. Sure, they should get good grades (A's and B's), but obsessing over all A's in middle school isn't worth it. 4) High school is when structure starts to be more important IF they want to get into a competitive school. And forcing a high school kid to get a perfect score on his SAT is a recipe for disaster. It should be the kids choice. Way too many parents are obsessed about making sure their son or daughter get into THE college they want. It's more about the parent than the student. I wish I could tell more parents to let fucking go. Teenagers go to war, they start businesses, they do all sorts of grown up things. Keep them away from drugs and help them find a passion. That's about it.
- dzdt 8y ago
  I am not paranoid about kidnappers and child molesters, but I am paranoid about other grownups who are paranoid about kidnappers and child molesters. I fully expect if I let my kids have the freedom previous generations had I would soon be visited by police and CPS because other paranoid do-gooders would report my kids as being in danger.
  - yaur 8y ago
    The trick seems to be to put them on bikes. At least where I'm at kids that are riding bikes are assumed to be "free range" while kids on foot are assumed to be lost.
    - CryptoPunk 8y ago
      The implication of there being free-range kids is that the rest are factory-farmed.
code_duck 8y ago
I grew up in the 80s and some seasons, I spent every waking hour I could in front of computers and video game consoles, starting with a C64 and an Atari. Perhaps children obsessing over a video games has become more widespread, but it’s not new. If someone threatened to take away my Sega Master system in 1987, I would have seen that as very dire.
pnw_hazor 8y ago
I was a very free range kid. In grades 3-6 I remember spending hours meandering around Seattle's Beacon Hill area on my way home after school. It was great fun exploring under freeways, urban forests, abandoned buildings, etc., by myself or with a friend or two. Today these areas are mostly unauthorized homeless camps filled with garbage, human waste, and used needles. When I was older (middle school) I recall about half-dozen times creeps in cars drove up to me and asked me to come party with them or do some swimsuit modelling. Gross. My kids grew up in different world than I did. Thus they had a much different childhood. I can't imagine letting my two girls roam around like I did. edit: typo(s) and word order ffs.
kirion25 8y ago
It's weird how no one disputes the term quality in the title. Why is technology-based playtime not considered "quality"? Doesn't it demonstrate a biased view of the issue? Don't get me wrong, I also think there might be a problem in how kids grow up nowadays. But in my opinion, it lies more in the variety of entertainment offered to youth, rather than mobile phones/internet/video games being bad.
leoedin 8y ago
I watched a lot of TV when I was aged 10-13. Then I discovered the internet and spent a lot of time on that. I'm 28 now and life seems to have worked out. I wouldn't say I'm maladjusted. I also did outdoorsy stuff, climbed trees, climbed mountains, went canoeing etc as a child. Those things are memorable, but they probably only made up 2% of my free time. Mostly it was indoors - reading, watching TV, surfing the internet, chatting to people online. In the early 2000s there wasn't tablets, but there was internet and internet culture. There wasn't Youtube, but there was funnyjunk. This feels a lot like the classic cycle of fear for the children of today.
- playplay 8y ago
  ofc you wont say that, that's cos you have https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-serving_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-serving_bias
bg4 8y ago
Recommend: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23168823-how-to-raise-an-adult https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23168823-how-to-raise-an...
zoomablemind 8y ago
This view seems to be highly dependent on where you (and your kids) live. If there's a sense of a community, kids do have chances to play together and outside. The parents too have a reasonable feeling of safety for their kids. It goes without need to prove that most parents would rather have their kids learn an autonomous way of playing as soon as possible. This should free the parents' attention for their own 'playtime'. However, if such community does not exist, so goes away that sense of security and those helicopters go hover. The author's nostalgia likely relates to that community. Was it in early suburbia or a quiet village where 'everyone knows your name'? In present day metropolises, despite the density, the residents feel more apart. Meanwhile, the suburbia closed inwards. But kids being kids find ways to adapt... to their parents way of living. If anything to change, that should begin with the parents' view of their own 'playtime'. Camping, or being outside playing? Please, just find fun chances to step out, the kids would follow!
shioyama 8y ago
> Today, however, if I were to learn that my young kids had left the house in the early morning by themselves to rock climb, explore the forest and encounter heaven-knows-what out in the woods, I’d probably start hyperventilating. Why? WHY? I don't understand this sentiment at all. What is the matter with people these days? Parents are suffocating their kids because they can't get over their own paranoia. As another commenter wrote: parents, just let fucking go.
- adam 8y ago
  Do you have kids?
  - shioyama 8y ago
    Yes I do.
- spydum 8y ago
  Because you are inundated with news/social media telling you about all the sex offenders in your area, human trafficking gangs abducting kids, and so on. Reality is these were all there before, and the probability of being a victim is exceptionally low, but most people suck at risk evaluation and understanding statistics...
  - shioyama 8y ago
    I don't think it's only this. People passively contribute to this with their shock at hearing that another parent has let their kids run free. It may have started from media-stocked paranoia, but it has now blossomed into society-nurtured paranoia. --- Discussion about a six-year-old kid: Grandparent: "Where is __?" Parent: "Oh he's out on his bike with his friends." Grandparent: "By himself?" Parent: "No, with his friends." Grandparent: (shocked silence) --- I happily live in Japan, where this paranoia has yet to strike, so letting your kids run free from a young age is fairly normal. But I'm afraid that it soon will, and there will be no turning back.
    - 8y ago
throwaway190102 8y ago
This is part of the basis for a recent book by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. Here's the article that later became the book by the same title: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-cod... Also a relevant article by Lenore Skenazy & Jonathan Haidt with a similar thesis: https://reason.com/archives/2017/10/26/the-fragile-generation https://reason.com/archives/2017/10/26/the-fragile-generatio...
mapster 8y ago
I grew up staying out past sunset daily, rain or shine, playing street hockey, building ramps and forts until I was in highs school. My wife is from Italy and having lived there I see guys my age who are just as street smart/adventurous and well rounded but grew up in apartments with a very different childhood. Americans think our experience is so special :/. That is the phenomena
BadCookie 8y ago
My sister has a 5-year-old son. I asked her what toy I should get him for Christmas. She said, "Oh, he doesn't play with toys anymore. He only plays video games." I was aghast. A 5-year-old who ... doesn't like toys? It can't be healthy. And the really sad part is that my sister doesn't see a problem.
- playplay 8y ago
  ofc it's healthy there's no extensive evidence that it's not healthy, and by default everything is 'healthy', if the kid is happy, along with the various other metrics, then they are healthy games can be a toy, but most video games are not toys, and almost all are designed to be competitive. toys are not competitive things play is not about it being healthy or not, it's about if play is desirable or not -- as 'kirion25' wonders in their comment, the problem is that almost nobody knows anything about play for example one person mentions activities/functions that is leisure, and not everything within leisure is play (play is a subset of leisure) nobody knows if there's any decline or incline in play, where's the extensive evidence that of play's claimed decline? https://dynamicland.org/ https://dynamicland.org/
  - claudiulodro 8y ago
    I dunno. Playing with toys is an important way to build and practice fine-motor skills, and that won't happen by touching a screen all day.
    - playplay 8y ago
      nobody touches a screen, know anything at all about computing technology? or any other forms of tech from medicine to ecology? guess not no wonder why you dunno
m0zg 8y ago
I wonder how much of this is really the "good old days" effect. I recall reading about research fairly recently that suggests we forget the bad things first, and that is why there's nostalgia for the "good old days". I mean it is true that kids go outside a lot less these days, especially American kids. We're immigrants, and we often go to a nearby lake in the summer. Easily 80% of families there are Latino and Russian. I wonder where native-born American parents take their kids, if anywhere. But I also wonder whether it's such a big deal. From what I can _factually_ remember from my own childhood, my "time outside" was rather haphazard and I got into all sorts of trouble (including starting smoking at the tender young age of 8 - this lasted for a few weeks until my parents found out). I very much doubt this was significantly better for me than staying at home.
- bagacrap 8y ago
  It's definitely incredibly easy to forget boredom. As you experience boredom, time slows to a crawl, but you don't remember much later since memories are discrete events. I would wager that a lot of outside time is actually quite boring but romanticized in hindsight. And yes, much of my (memorable) unsupervised outside time was spent jumping off roofs and shooting things with BBs. Kind of like video games except with a decent chance of physical injury. But then again who cares what I did and why do I use my personal experiences as a standard for others?
nloladze 8y ago
This honestly scares me so much. I have a 14 year old brother. I've tried very hard to make him workout, join a soccer team and try to draw in his free time. But there are no kids running around outside, they don't ask each other to hang out. They don't do anything.
daxfohl 8y ago
Is there a corresponding decline in the quality of adult playtime? Is the always connected 24/7 on call lifestyle of parents the root cause? I have to imagine there is some hypocrisy in living that lifestyle and expecting your kids to do otherwise. What about taking electronics away from the parents first?
charliebrownau 8y ago
Are Mothers and Parents held accountable for this decline Silly me , never hold parents accountable. I know lets blame * guns * video games * porn
praptak 8y ago
Urban planning contributes to this problem. It makes no sense to let the kids roam outside when you cannot get anywhere without a car.
tapanjk 8y ago
This is not to undermine what the article says, but I think I am lucky that my kids have access to a nice environment that allows playtime the way we think it should be. I live in a condo in Bangalore, and one thing that is very common in condos here is that kids play in the common areas and elders also meet every evening starting 5PM(ish), until sundown. This is the only reason why I have declined job opportunities elsewhere that may have given me better financial rewards, but would have taken away the above from my family (kids and ageing parents).
deepakhj 8y ago
I had both experiences of a forest and urban area. I lived in western MA backed by woods up until 4th grade. Then I moved to the San Fernando valley. I think starting around age 6-7, I walked/biked everywhere, usually to a friends house, or a park/woods to play. I also went to a magnet public school for middle/high school. It seems in as if everyone sends their kids to private school in San Francisco now which seems crazy to me. Did schools get that bad in the past 20 years?
ibhosszu 8y ago
Thanks!

All these stories on raising children confuse the issue and keep parents in paralysis. If you want to take the pressure off - tell parents their kids won't be left out like millennials are. Give them a safety net. Let parents know their kids will have a pretty good life. On the other hand, if they know their kids will be in a dog-eat-dog world where even hard work gets you nowhere - they're going to raise their kids with a zero-sum game theory.

jerf 8y ago
I have to disagree. You want to take the pressure off, you need to take the pressure off. Make it clear that I'm not going to have my kids taken away and/or thrown in jail because they're biking around downtown a mile away from me, or because I left them at home while I went grocery shopping or something. I don't find myself questioning whether I should let them go because I'm worried that they might not get into Harvard or that they may not make as much money as me, or because I'm just so consumed with worry about inequality or something so abstract. I'm worried about them being taken away or me going to jail. Instead of being a black swan event (and we can't get it below that), it's merely "fairly unlikely", which for such a disastrous outcome isn't really unlikely enough.
- toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
  I have to disagree. You want to take the pressure off, you need to take the pressure off. Make it clear that I'm not going to have my kids taken away and/or thrown in jail because they're biking around downtown a mile away from me, or because I left them at home while I went grocery shopping or something. That is pure FUD. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18983019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18983019
  - velosol 8y ago
    And yet someone relating a swarm of cop cars when they arrived home in: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18984211 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18984211 .
  - barry-cotter 8y ago
    Just in case anyone else feels tempted to click on that link it describes two incidents in which children from the same family were investigated for neglect by CPS. In the second incident the children were taken from a park where they had been dropped off by their parents by the police and then sent by the police to CPS. No attempt was made to contact their parents and they only found out that the police had taken their children by calling 911. No one was fired for either incident.
  - matheweis 8y ago
    It might not result in jail or kids being taken away, but it can absolutely lead to an investigation - as your link demonstrates. It might be FUD, but imagine the unshakable FUD that would result from the deeply invasive and strung out process of being investigated for an unsubstantiated claim of neglect. jerf is accurate that the current system stacks pressure against parents and not in a nice way.
  - jerf 8y ago
    Even if it's FUD, it literally doesn't matter. It's what people think is going to happen. People need to stop thinking that's what's going to happen. It's going to be difficult to make people think it's not happening, though, when it manifestly is and does. I'm already aware it's a low-probability event. The problem is, low probability times catastrophic outcome still leaves something that I worry about enough to affect my life. It needs to be a lot lower.
    - toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
      Even if it's FUD, it literally doesn't matter. It's what people think is going to happen. People need to stop thinking that's what's going to happen. Aside from the fact that it’s never happened, and the whole scare is based around one family and regional government? Maybe I would help if people stopped raising the FUD level by claiming it’s a rational fear? After all, people are scared of many things that don’t exist, and the response isn’t usually to fan the flames of those fears with bullshit. To be clear, the precise probability of this is demonstrably 0, it’s like saying you won’t let your kids out because you’re afraid aliens will abduct them. Rational people don’t then point to that fear as a societal ill, and certainly don’t spread the fear of it around online.

kthejoker2 8y ago

I love how all the suggestions are right in the "helicopter parent" wheelhouse. No "kick them outside and tell them you don't care what they do, just be home for supper."

Mr_RobRoy 8y ago
Yep. That's what my parents did with us. "Just be home for dinner." We'd eat dinner and then run back outside for another 3-4 hours of "night games" in the cul-de-sac. Maybe on Tuesday nights we'd come in for the Cosby Show or something. But that was rare. :-)

ovulator 8y ago

Why does it seem that everyone who writes articles like these seemed to have a national forest in their back yard as a kid? Most kids don't have "an expansive wilderness" to explore. Most of them have miles and miles of residential streets to "explore" in Baltimore.

Florin_Andrei 8y ago
It doesn't matter, really. The important part is being outside, exploring physical reality.
dsfyu404ed 8y ago
Until recently there were pockets of "interesting" places for kids to screw around . If there wasn't some forested land there was an abandoned factory or dead construction site (e.g. the pit in parks and rec). That sort of stuff is fenced off (or otherwise made hard to access) much more thoroughly these days and people are much more likely to call the cops if they see unattended kids poking around.
- Mr_RobRoy 8y ago
  True. I remember playing in all of the local construction sites with my friends as a kid. There were nails, wood scraps, tools, and even huge piles of hay used to keep the concrete from freezing at night that we would jump into from the second story of the house. Of course, that was all illegal and likely quite dangerous. But man, it was fun! And the danger part of it was what made it so fun. We knew we shouldn't be there and so we hid whenever a car drove by. But that should be a part of childhood. Exploring and making mistakes. I do remember getting busted a couple of times. Those were some life-long lessons that I haven't forgotten, that's for sure. But today, with attractive nuisance laws so strict and the liability associated with those laws so severe, no wonder kids are locked indoors for most of their formative years!
brians 8y ago
I grew up in a suburb. It's important to remember that kids are closer to the ground. Shrubbery. Slates and what burrows beneath. Trees—the texture of the bark and the vestibular effects of climbing. Ice on the ground in this season, the smell of gasoline and grass in another, and the detritus of illegal fireworks after a holiday. Seeing strangers. Seeing new strangers. Seeing the same old strangers every day until those strangers are recognized as neighbors. Just being in that world is an experience of wonder and learning.

gerbilly 8y ago

People are afraid to let their kids play outside, and even if they did, there is no one out there to play with because all the other kids are in the house in front of a screen.

technologyvault 8y ago
I have 6 kids. We don't allow video games in the house - except Tetris, since that seems to be good for developing intelligence. It can be hard for them to relate to other kids, who only want to talk about Fortnite, which my kids know nothing about.
- gerbilly 8y ago
  Man, we used to play outside from morning (dawn is really early in the summer) till lunch, then from after lunch till 9:30pm. We lived in the country so we rode bikes, built tree forts, explored the woods. We shot bows and arrows and ran around with pellet guns, took apart old lawnmowers that never got put back together, sorry... :-( From thirteen on, I had little joe jobs pumping gas, washing cars watering plants at a nursery. Later on I worked at a farm. I can still back up a forty foot trailer on a dime. I also learned to jury rig almost any mechanical thing, because equipment was always breaking down.
  - gerbilly 8y ago
    Replying to myself because I thought of more stuff. Some kinds had mini bikes, when we were about eight, but my grandmother forbade me from riding one, but she did let me drive her car when I was about 12 to go visit my friends. Also we'd go camping by this nice place near a waterfall with just two wool blankets. We'd take some cut hay from a nearby field to stuff under the first blanket and cover ourselves with the other.
- vokep 8y ago
  It may be hard and you may be viewed as "that weird restrictive parent that won't even let their kids play fortnite", but that doesn't make you wrong. Good stuff, glad parents like you are out there.

buf 8y ago

This is largely an American problem. When I lived in Europe I didn't see people being "fearful" about letting their children roam the streets. During my recent trips to Japan, I also felt that same vibe. Children under the age of 10 taking the trains by themselves or with friends, even in Tokyo. American isolationism creates fearfulness.

magduf 8y ago
Exactly. I was in Germany recently and saw small children walking home from school alone. In America, this can get parents arrested in many states. In Japan, they basically force kids to walk to school without parents when they're 7-8 years old. If I ever have kids, I'd want to raise them someplace like that, not in a country where I'm legally required to be a helicopter parent until the kid is a legal adult.
- GuiA 8y ago
  Raising kids in Japan means that you’re raising them in a culture that has an alarmingly high youth suicide rate [0], and that your daughter taking the subway on her own is likely to be sexually assaulted [1]. And since the original link is about quality youth playtime, let’s not forget all the hours spent at cram schools in the evenings and weekends if you want a shot at a decent university. I’m not a big fan of the US either when it comes to parenting/educational trends, but there’s no silver bullet. (Unsurprised by the downvotes, given how fetishized Japan is in the West and how most are incapable of looking at the country through a critical lens) [0] https://www.humanium.org/en/child-suicide-in-japan-the-leading-cause-of-death-in-children/ https://www.humanium.org/en/child-suicide-in-japan-the-leadi... [1] https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/03/sexual-assault-japan-girl-victim-170307101413024.html https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/03/sexual-as...
  - gumby 8y ago
    Not that this doesn't happen in the US: Palo Alto pays to have human guards at each rail crossing to discourage high schoolers from jumping in front of trains.

jriot 8y ago

The decline in playtime for all is a major concern. It is difficult to find a group to play any pick-up sports e.g., basketball. Even adult leagues are difficult, as no one really commits, just shows up when they can, if they have nothing else better going on.

mikelanza 8y ago

I wrote a book advising parents how to give kids a life of independent neighborhood play. Check out Playborhood - http://playborhood.com http://playborhood.com In a nutshell, I contend that this is a social problem of neighborhood culture, and parents should work to make their neighborhoods as fun and inviting as video games and the Internet. Simply cutting off electronics and shoving them out the door won't do it because there's no one out there - neighborhoods are very boring. Somehow, we need to create a culture of play, first with parents, and later without, in our neighborhoods. The book Playborhood is all about that.

Mr_RobRoy 8y ago
I think you're right. Just unplugging and kicking the kids out the door just isn't effective, ultimately. I think that's true mainly because it takes all of the parents in the neighborhood doing the same thing. Otherwise, your kids end up outside with no one to play with because all of the kids their age are still inside attached to their electronic devices. I think it's much harder today to create alternative activities than it used to be.
- aylmao 8y ago
  I think siblings play an important role here. More than a few times I remember going out and having no one to play with but my brother, only to be joined later on by other kids. Moreover, I can only assume that it was through me that my brother got introduced to the "social scene" of the neighborhood. I was the older one, so when we came out to play, I was in charge of him, and that meant always inviting him to play and introducing him to all my friends. Siblings are like friends you have no option but having (and playing with). Incredibly reliable, in that sense (:
  - Mr_RobRoy 8y ago
    I think that parents who help their kids understand that their siblings have the potential to be their best, life-long friends are doing a wonderful thing for their kids. My sisters and I (2 years between each of us) spent a huge amount of time playing together even up through Jr. High school. We're still very close today.

gumby 8y ago

After wandering around in Germany, coming home late etc my kid was shocked when we put him in a US school 6 year ago (i.e. post smartphone). It wasn't just the unstructured time, but the range of things kids are allowed to do. Amusingly/sadly he said things like "people here haven't heard of freedom". We had neighbors with a kid precisely the same age as him, but the kids were never around, instead being driven from place to place. (BTW it's pretty common to complain about the quality of US education too but in this case it was actually OK, especially when compared to the notorious Berlin schools, and he decided on a US undergraduate education which I think was a good decision.)

wil421 8y ago
It was much much different in schools pre 9/11. My high school was like a college campus. We could roam around the campus, eat lunch around campus, and all the doors were unlocked. Is it was easy to get in and no one would really question you during non class times like lunch. Post 9/11 everything was locked down and continued to get worse.
watwut 8y ago
What were the exact freedoms your child was missing?
- gumby 8y ago
  That's a good question. This was through the eyes of a 13 year old. On the general side: I'd say the German approach for kids (2-12) is "super strict on the basics, then have at it." So you are very strict that they must stand behind the yellow line, don't interrupt grown ups, behave yourself at the table, etc, but once you have the core down there are few restrictions (this changes as you grow up...I like to joke that Ordnung is the German state religion). So he was used to unsafe playgrounds, coming home late from just exploring the U-bahn with his friends (all ignoring texts from parents) etc. He compared that to American kids who seemed to always being told not to do things without having a set of basics to make their own decisions. He had one Palo Alto classmate who was grounded if he wasn't home 15 minutes after school let out! An example: in grade six he and his friends found a bottle of vodka in the schoolyard (urban school). As any 12 year olds would, they took one of their gym sneakers, filled it with vodka, and set it on fire. The maths teacher passed by and said "boys, school starts in a few minutes; don't be late" and kept going. He told me he'd be expelled from his US school if he had matches or a lighter. In Germany that didn't even rate a letter home from the school. He also complained that grownups were always involved. Schools have police officers in them, scouts have parents involved, etc. Kids don't get to run things and screw them up like they do in Germany. I went to a Christmas service in a church where the kids wrote and put on a Christmas play -- apparently Noah brought the animals, 2x2, to see the newborn. I am not christian but I'm pretty sure that isn't doctrine -- but everyone seemed to like it. He found the US school routine quite rigid with little time for exploration of the material but instead memorization. If anything the US seemed more like the asian schooling my mother went through, or perhaps the prewar Prussian system. I know the US kindergarteners are told to learn the alphabet while the German one was mainly focused on getting along and learning, by the end of the year, to keep your clothes on all day. They left the alhpabet (in two languages!) to the first grade. HTH

TaylorAlexander 8y ago

As an aside, I think it’s interesting that we prioritize play time for children (or want to) but seem to think little of play time for adults. I think play should be a lifetime avocation, but where I grew up in California this isn’t much of a focus for adults.

koosnel 8y ago

As a child I spent my afternoons with an air rifle in the African bush on my grandfather's farm. Good times. Now I spend 12+ hours a day in front of a computer.

socialist_coder 8y ago
Ha, exactly what my wife told me when I shared this article with her.

nrjames 8y ago

I signed up to take Taekwondo with my daughters. We have a ton of fun both in class and practicing forms and kicks at home. It's a great source of confidence and pride for them. Some of the classes are self-defense / anti-bullying oriented, too, which is nice. It's a really fun parent/child activity that I'd recommend for anybody.

president 8y ago

With globalism, your kids are now competing at a global level. And when you are competing with kids from 3rd world countries that are spending all their free time learning and studying, many of which are immigrating to the U.S. and entering the U.S. job market, there is no time for "play" if you want to make sure you have the competitive edge needed to land a decent job.

baron816 8y ago
The countries where kids are spending all their time studying are not “third world countries.”
- president 8y ago
  Yes, it is mix of first and third world countries. I chose third world in my example as it relates to the tech industry from my perspective. Not sure why you felt like you had to point that out.
  - james_s_tayler 8y ago
    It's not even called Third World anymore. That's a pretty old term.
MisterBastahrd 8y ago
Staring at a phone / tablet / tv and playing video games with all of your free time isn't "competing."
- president 8y ago
  Agreed, nobody said it was.
aylmao 8y ago
The number of immigrant workers is so small compared to the number of national workers (17.1% [1]), that although I don't doubt there might be some truth to your statement I personally think it's probably statistically not significant. [1]: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/forbrn.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/forbrn.htm

gambler 8y ago

I highly recommend everyone to read the book The Coddling of the American Mind. A large chunk of it is dedicated to this very question: why children have much less play time today than in the past, how it's harming them and what to do about it. Its conclusions are fairly counter-intuitive, but the reasoning is very convincing and backed up by lots of cited research.

watermelongunn 8y ago

While I agree that kids could stand to get out more, I think everyone here is painting an absurdly rosy picture of the past. I'd like to know what percentage of kids used to spend their time doing hard labor or if their latchkey existence left them feeling so uncared about that they turned into nihilist assholes. Don't get me wrong – in a perfect world, kids would play outside 8 hours a day, but I have a hard time getting past the selection bias presented in the video.

gambler 8y ago
Except there is hard empirical data showing that something is actually going wrong. Like rapidly rising teenage anxiety, depression and suicide rates.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  > Like rapidly rising teenage anxiety, depression and suicide rates. Are those symptoms indicative of there being an issue with the kids, or are those the same symptoms in all age groups?
  - aylmao 8y ago
    I gather that it seems to be a growing issue amongst the younger demographics [1]. [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/11/magazine/why-are-more-american-teenagers-than-ever-suffering-from-severe-anxiety.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/11/magazine/why-are-more-ame...
- airstrike 8y ago
  While I generally agree with the sentiment in this thread and article, it's all gut feeling at this point. The causal relationship is still to be proven, though. There are countless other factors at play.
- asdff 8y ago
  Has sampling bias been ruled out? With people more open to discussing public mental health in recent years, certainly more people have been seeking treatment and diagnoses have probably improved. I would assume historical data strongly under sampled people with mental health issues due to the great stigma and misunderstandings about these diseases.

socrates1998 8y ago

It is an issue no doubt because parents just honestly don't have the confidence to let their kids go. They are paranoid not just about kidnappers or child molesters, but they are worried about not preparing their kids for school and "getting ahead", thus the over planned childhoods. I really wish parents would just let go a little. 1) Read to your kids at night. Do it as old as they want you to do it. 2) Give them unstructured play time with friends consistently. After age 9 or so, they really can go off on their own without parents around. 3) Younger kids should experience a variety of things well through middle school. The more things they do, the better. Sure, they should get good grades (A's and B's), but obsessing over all A's in middle school isn't worth it. 4) High school is when structure starts to be more important IF they want to get into a competitive school. And forcing a high school kid to get a perfect score on his SAT is a recipe for disaster. It should be the kids choice. Way too many parents are obsessed about making sure their son or daughter get into THE college they want. It's more about the parent than the student. I wish I could tell more parents to let fucking go. Teenagers go to war, they start businesses, they do all sorts of grown up things. Keep them away from drugs and help them find a passion. That's about it.

dzdt 8y ago
I am not paranoid about kidnappers and child molesters, but I am paranoid about other grownups who are paranoid about kidnappers and child molesters. I fully expect if I let my kids have the freedom previous generations had I would soon be visited by police and CPS because other paranoid do-gooders would report my kids as being in danger.
- yaur 8y ago
  The trick seems to be to put them on bikes. At least where I'm at kids that are riding bikes are assumed to be "free range" while kids on foot are assumed to be lost.
  - CryptoPunk 8y ago
    The implication of there being free-range kids is that the rest are factory-farmed.

code_duck 8y ago

I grew up in the 80s and some seasons, I spent every waking hour I could in front of computers and video game consoles, starting with a C64 and an Atari. Perhaps children obsessing over a video games has become more widespread, but it’s not new. If someone threatened to take away my Sega Master system in 1987, I would have seen that as very dire.

pnw_hazor 8y ago

I was a very free range kid. In grades 3-6 I remember spending hours meandering around Seattle's Beacon Hill area on my way home after school. It was great fun exploring under freeways, urban forests, abandoned buildings, etc., by myself or with a friend or two. Today these areas are mostly unauthorized homeless camps filled with garbage, human waste, and used needles. When I was older (middle school) I recall about half-dozen times creeps in cars drove up to me and asked me to come party with them or do some swimsuit modelling. Gross. My kids grew up in different world than I did. Thus they had a much different childhood. I can't imagine letting my two girls roam around like I did. edit: typo(s) and word order ffs.

kirion25 8y ago

It's weird how no one disputes the term quality in the title. Why is technology-based playtime not considered "quality"? Doesn't it demonstrate a biased view of the issue? Don't get me wrong, I also think there might be a problem in how kids grow up nowadays. But in my opinion, it lies more in the variety of entertainment offered to youth, rather than mobile phones/internet/video games being bad.

leoedin 8y ago

I watched a lot of TV when I was aged 10-13. Then I discovered the internet and spent a lot of time on that. I'm 28 now and life seems to have worked out. I wouldn't say I'm maladjusted. I also did outdoorsy stuff, climbed trees, climbed mountains, went canoeing etc as a child. Those things are memorable, but they probably only made up 2% of my free time. Mostly it was indoors - reading, watching TV, surfing the internet, chatting to people online. In the early 2000s there wasn't tablets, but there was internet and internet culture. There wasn't Youtube, but there was funnyjunk. This feels a lot like the classic cycle of fear for the children of today.

playplay 8y ago
ofc you wont say that, that's cos you have https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-serving_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-serving_bias

bg4 8y ago

Recommend: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23168823-how-to-raise-an-adult https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23168823-how-to-raise-an...

zoomablemind 8y ago

This view seems to be highly dependent on where you (and your kids) live. If there's a sense of a community, kids do have chances to play together and outside. The parents too have a reasonable feeling of safety for their kids. It goes without need to prove that most parents would rather have their kids learn an autonomous way of playing as soon as possible. This should free the parents' attention for their own 'playtime'. However, if such community does not exist, so goes away that sense of security and those helicopters go hover. The author's nostalgia likely relates to that community. Was it in early suburbia or a quiet village where 'everyone knows your name'? In present day metropolises, despite the density, the residents feel more apart. Meanwhile, the suburbia closed inwards. But kids being kids find ways to adapt... to their parents way of living. If anything to change, that should begin with the parents' view of their own 'playtime'. Camping, or being outside playing? Please, just find fun chances to step out, the kids would follow!

shioyama 8y ago

> Today, however, if I were to learn that my young kids had left the house in the early morning by themselves to rock climb, explore the forest and encounter heaven-knows-what out in the woods, I’d probably start hyperventilating. Why? WHY? I don't understand this sentiment at all. What is the matter with people these days? Parents are suffocating their kids because they can't get over their own paranoia. As another commenter wrote: parents, just let fucking go.

adam 8y ago
Do you have kids?
- shioyama 8y ago
  Yes I do.
spydum 8y ago
Because you are inundated with news/social media telling you about all the sex offenders in your area, human trafficking gangs abducting kids, and so on. Reality is these were all there before, and the probability of being a victim is exceptionally low, but most people suck at risk evaluation and understanding statistics...
- shioyama 8y ago
  I don't think it's only this. People passively contribute to this with their shock at hearing that another parent has let their kids run free. It may have started from media-stocked paranoia, but it has now blossomed into society-nurtured paranoia. --- Discussion about a six-year-old kid: Grandparent: "Where is __?" Parent: "Oh he's out on his bike with his friends." Grandparent: "By himself?" Parent: "No, with his friends." Grandparent: (shocked silence) --- I happily live in Japan, where this paranoia has yet to strike, so letting your kids run free from a young age is fairly normal. But I'm afraid that it soon will, and there will be no turning back.
  - 8y ago

throwaway190102 8y ago

This is part of the basis for a recent book by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. Here's the article that later became the book by the same title: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-cod... Also a relevant article by Lenore Skenazy & Jonathan Haidt with a similar thesis: https://reason.com/archives/2017/10/26/the-fragile-generation https://reason.com/archives/2017/10/26/the-fragile-generatio...

mapster 8y ago

I grew up staying out past sunset daily, rain or shine, playing street hockey, building ramps and forts until I was in highs school. My wife is from Italy and having lived there I see guys my age who are just as street smart/adventurous and well rounded but grew up in apartments with a very different childhood. Americans think our experience is so special :/. That is the phenomena

BadCookie 8y ago

My sister has a 5-year-old son. I asked her what toy I should get him for Christmas. She said, "Oh, he doesn't play with toys anymore. He only plays video games." I was aghast. A 5-year-old who ... doesn't like toys? It can't be healthy. And the really sad part is that my sister doesn't see a problem.

playplay 8y ago
ofc it's healthy there's no extensive evidence that it's not healthy, and by default everything is 'healthy', if the kid is happy, along with the various other metrics, then they are healthy games can be a toy, but most video games are not toys, and almost all are designed to be competitive. toys are not competitive things play is not about it being healthy or not, it's about if play is desirable or not -- as 'kirion25' wonders in their comment, the problem is that almost nobody knows anything about play for example one person mentions activities/functions that is leisure, and not everything within leisure is play (play is a subset of leisure) nobody knows if there's any decline or incline in play, where's the extensive evidence that of play's claimed decline? https://dynamicland.org/ https://dynamicland.org/
- claudiulodro 8y ago
  I dunno. Playing with toys is an important way to build and practice fine-motor skills, and that won't happen by touching a screen all day.
  - playplay 8y ago
    nobody touches a screen, know anything at all about computing technology? or any other forms of tech from medicine to ecology? guess not no wonder why you dunno

m0zg 8y ago

I wonder how much of this is really the "good old days" effect. I recall reading about research fairly recently that suggests we forget the bad things first, and that is why there's nostalgia for the "good old days". I mean it is true that kids go outside a lot less these days, especially American kids. We're immigrants, and we often go to a nearby lake in the summer. Easily 80% of families there are Latino and Russian. I wonder where native-born American parents take their kids, if anywhere. But I also wonder whether it's such a big deal. From what I can _factually_ remember from my own childhood, my "time outside" was rather haphazard and I got into all sorts of trouble (including starting smoking at the tender young age of 8 - this lasted for a few weeks until my parents found out). I very much doubt this was significantly better for me than staying at home.

bagacrap 8y ago
It's definitely incredibly easy to forget boredom. As you experience boredom, time slows to a crawl, but you don't remember much later since memories are discrete events. I would wager that a lot of outside time is actually quite boring but romanticized in hindsight. And yes, much of my (memorable) unsupervised outside time was spent jumping off roofs and shooting things with BBs. Kind of like video games except with a decent chance of physical injury. But then again who cares what I did and why do I use my personal experiences as a standard for others?

nloladze 8y ago

This honestly scares me so much. I have a 14 year old brother. I've tried very hard to make him workout, join a soccer team and try to draw in his free time. But there are no kids running around outside, they don't ask each other to hang out. They don't do anything.

daxfohl 8y ago

Is there a corresponding decline in the quality of adult playtime? Is the always connected 24/7 on call lifestyle of parents the root cause? I have to imagine there is some hypocrisy in living that lifestyle and expecting your kids to do otherwise. What about taking electronics away from the parents first?

charliebrownau 8y ago

Are Mothers and Parents held accountable for this decline Silly me , never hold parents accountable. I know lets blame * guns * video games * porn

praptak 8y ago

Urban planning contributes to this problem. It makes no sense to let the kids roam outside when you cannot get anywhere without a car.

tapanjk 8y ago

This is not to undermine what the article says, but I think I am lucky that my kids have access to a nice environment that allows playtime the way we think it should be. I live in a condo in Bangalore, and one thing that is very common in condos here is that kids play in the common areas and elders also meet every evening starting 5PM(ish), until sundown. This is the only reason why I have declined job opportunities elsewhere that may have given me better financial rewards, but would have taken away the above from my family (kids and ageing parents).

deepakhj 8y ago

I had both experiences of a forest and urban area. I lived in western MA backed by woods up until 4th grade. Then I moved to the San Fernando valley. I think starting around age 6-7, I walked/biked everywhere, usually to a friends house, or a park/woods to play. I also went to a magnet public school for middle/high school. It seems in as if everyone sends their kids to private school in San Francisco now which seems crazy to me. Did schools get that bad in the past 20 years?

ibhosszu 8y ago

Thanks!