Note that the article is from 2013, though I imagine things have only gotten worse for children since then. I think a decrease in family size and number of cousins might also be a factor.<p>I’m lucky enough to live on a street with a few families with similar age children, and it’s such a difference in enjoyment levels when all the kids are able to get together and play compared to just one or two.<p>I wonder if we’ll see a rise in popularity of co-op type groups for families with similar mindsets to get together for adult-free play.
Not children today, (2013)<p>A bunch of more recent related essays/articles and discussion about this:<p><i>Balancing Outdoor Risky Play and Injury Prevention in Childhood Development</i><p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39139540">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39139540</a><p><i>Children, left behind by suburbia, need better community design</i><p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38370203">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38370203</a><p><i>Children Need Neighborhoods Where They Can Walk and Bike</i><p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40095217">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40095217</a><p><i>What adults lost when kids stopped playing in the street</i><p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41104919">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41104919</a>
Really interesting read! It touched on parts of childhood that I hadn't spent a lot of time thinking about before. Looking back, it's clear that over the last few decades there has been a stark growth in the number of "helicopter parents" that put their kids in various after-school activities to try and shape them based on their ideals.<p>There's also been a lot of discussion on the internet about the loss of "third places" in society and I wonder how that has played a role in accelerating the loss of play in the youth of today.
when I was a kid, we'd play road hockey all day, everyday. Canadian kids literally dont do that anymore.<p>The nanny state criminalized this. The consequences? Kids just stay inside more? Less socialization? But also canada being a great at hockey has long slipped away.<p>Last time Canada won the stanley cup was 1993.<p>100% of the blame for social crisis and this play deficit is the nanny state.
i wonder how much of kids technology use today could count as 'play'?<p>there's a lot of undirected activity that wouldn't count because they're just passive consumers, but surely some of it could count as a way of exercising creative impulses and learning various social norms (even though those are online norms and not real-life norms)?
Discussed (a bit) at the time:<p><i>The Play Deficit (2013)</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9730870">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9730870</a> - June 2015 (1 comment)
We just let our kids leave. Which apparently has made them extremely popular and every parent on the block is texting my wife asking if they can come over and play. My 9 year old is known as the kid who comes up with fun games to play.<p>The five year old is in a wheelchair but her sister puts her in the buggy stroller with rollbars (made sense to buy the nice one since she’ll need it essentially indefinitely) and she’ll hang out too. She used to have some severe health problems that kept her at home but just because she can’t walk doesn’t keep her from getting out of the house for some unsupervised play. It’s not that hard, I live in one of the safest places in the entire world, it’ll be fine. It’s funny because when I lived in the really bad part of town there were even MORE kids walking around aimlessly outside than there are in the nice part of town.<p>We also aggressively restrict screen time and have a lot of board games, stuff for the kids to do, which really helps.<p>Today my daughter had a whole conflict with the neighborhood bullies after her friend called them frogheads. They yelled back, and my daughter flipped them off. I wouldn’t admit it to their parents but I’m a little proud, haha. Those kids are jerks.