Play deprivation is a major cause of the teen mental health crisis • Hacker News Board

Re: Play deprivation is a major cause of the teen mental health crisis

#171

Post by awesomeMilou » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 7:51 PM UTC

mantas wrote: post #67

grey413 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things like this are actually some of the main reasons I'm moving my family to Europe. In Europe, my kid can be her own person with her own schedule and her own environment to explore on her own terms. In america, she'd be isolated and dependent.

Unfortunately it’s getting worse here. In my youth few kids had scheduled activities. 20 years later, many kids are on a rather tight schedule.

Doesn't make a difference for college admission, and it likely will not for a long time. It's mostly grades that decide who get's into college and bologna affirms that you have a free choice on where to attend. It does make sense to prepare your child for college in such a way that it is able to live self sufficiently and teach discipline in learning, but no university gives a crap on what debate club you ran in high school.

Re: Play deprivation is a major cause of the teen mental health crisis

#172

Post by kajaktum » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 7:52 PM UTC

seszett wrote: post #143

kajaktum wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever this kind of opinion props up I wonder how far would you let your child to "fail"? Clearly we need our children to stumble and fail in a low-stake environment before they actually experience them later on in life. This naturally involves taking some risk. I remember being able to walk freely around the village pretty much without any supervision, I did get hurt a lot either from running into walls or getting…

> modern society can't seem to tolerate even a single dead children You mean parents can't seem to tolerate even a single dead child. And that's true, especially when most parents only ever have one or two children. Obviously they don't want them to die. To parents, their children aren't an abstract idea or a number that they can rationalize away.

> You mean parents can't seem to tolerate even a single dead child. And that's true, especially when most parents only ever have one or two children.

If every parents react the same way then that is effectively the whole society no? Imagine the reaction of a modern day town if a child had broke their neck from the playground, what would the reaction? I wouldn't put demolishing the playground outside of the realm of possibility.

> Obviously they don't want them to die. To parents, their children aren't an abstract idea or a number that they can rationalize away.

Yea and this is why this is quite interesting to think about for me. In a way, perhaps it is better that failures to happen in small numbers many times, instead of 1 big societal level failure that only need to happen once. I think part of the problem is that people have access to global news today. Even 1 children choking on some candy or whatever from the other side of the globe would mean that every children would be stripped of this experience.

Re: Play deprivation is a major cause of the teen mental health crisis

#173

Post by ccleve » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 7:52 PM UTC

supportengineer wrote: post #126

ccleve wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came here to post exactly this. It is appalling that we live in a neighborhood where everyone can walk, there are plenty of kids that my son knows within a mile, he's 14 and more than old enough to be out on his own, but every one of his friends is in a math class, or French school, or out of town on vacation, constantly. He goes to the park and there is no one there. So he stays home and watches anime. The only wa…

I'm at the age where I'm seeing the endgame of this, our cohort of kids & friends are applying to college. They did all these after-school activities, tutors, sports, etc. They were over programmed over achievers. And guess what, even with their 4.5 GPAs and impressive resumes, they aren't getting into the colleges they want (University of California). So what was the point of all that?

Agreed. We're at a point where if you want to get into a top college, you have to be interesting. You must have done something unusual, ambitious, creative, or anything beyond sports or band or violin and a bunch of AP courses.

Guess what? Kids who have never had time to play are ones who have never had time to develop cool interests.

Jack Nicholson said it best (repeatedly): All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

Re: Play deprivation is a major cause of the teen mental health crisis

#174

Post by rafaelero » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 7:52 PM UTC

Why talk specifically about children when the uprising on mental health issues has been seen across the board, from kids to adults and elders? It doesn't seem like a smart stratification if you want to find the correct cause.

Also, multiple twin studies show how parenting have negligible effects over life outcomes, so I am pretty skeptical of this theory.

Re: Play deprivation is a major cause of the teen mental health crisis

#175

Post by NegativeLatency » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 7:52 PM UTC

throwaway-243 wrote: post #128

alexpetralia wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Routinely in New York City at least, you can kill someone using a motor vehicle almost with complete impunity. The driver who led to Sammy's Law (which still hasn't passed) only received a 180 day license suspension a year and a half after the accident, even though he sped past a stopped vehicle on the righthand side (the vehicle had stopped for the child). Death by car is often considered acceptable. There is really…

7,485 pedestrians were killed by cars in the whole of the US in 2021. this is a great example of where whataboutism is not a logical fallacy. i mean what is your solution? ban all driving? sure, but give me a proper public transport network that can supply the suburbs and rural areas. fix urban cost of living while you're at it.

> i mean what is your solution? ban all driving?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

Re: Play deprivation is a major cause of the teen mental health crisis

#176

Post by Waterluvian » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 7:54 PM UTC

HWR_14 wrote: post #73

lolinder wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wholeheartedly agree based on my own kids, but want to add a caution lest someone misunderstand: this testing, learning, and growing is of a kind that can only be done without adult supervision. It's not something that you can give them with a private lesson. It's not something that can be taught in a classroom. It's not something that can happen at all without adults letting the kids figure it out on their own by…

> We know the toy will break if it's repeatedly thrown down the stairs, so we impose a rule that "we don't do that in our house" For many parents, the toy is expensive enough that it warrants a rule (like the stove.)

It's all relative. For us, it's fine to watch my kid completely smash a lego set down the stairs because they're holding it like a waiter, it's another thing when it's the Nintendo 3DS (both examples from this week)

Re: Play deprivation is a major cause of the teen mental health crisis

#177

Post by AlgorithmicTime » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 7:54 PM UTC

m-ee wrote: post #124

atonse wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

haha I have been maximizing the annoyance level of my parents and others by telling my kids these things: - don’t focus on GPA, focus on actually gaining knowledge and understanding how the world works. good grades are a measure of how you understand things. they should never be the goal. I was a C student and I am more curious about things than many of my peers with fancy degrees. - forge your own path, there is alw…

Assuming you’re American you are really screwing then over by not paying for college. The FAFSA assumes a parental contribution. It’s not just other parents, but the federal government and all the colleges themselves that have the expectation that you will contribute. There’s no exemption for “I want to teach my kids financial responsibility”. If you’re high income your children will be ineligible for any financial a…

There's always the Post-9/11 GI Bill. 36 months of tuition at the most expensive in-state rate in whatever state you attend school in plus Basic Allowance for Housing equal to an E5 with dependents is quite good.

Re: Play deprivation is a major cause of the teen mental health crisis

#178

Post by Aachen » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 7:55 PM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #9

This may be obvious or well-discussed but I had an epiphany some years back when my dad, regarding my kids, said (paraphrasing), "they're not playing. 'Play' is a misleading term. They're testing the world. They're learning how things work. How gravity works. How friction holds lego together. How actions cause reactions. How friends and strangers behave when you do things. How to use language with make believe. How t…

Of course. Kids aren't supposed to play instead of working just for the heck of it, there's a real purpose to it. I thought this understanding was part of upbringing and realising what it is you've been doing

Re: Play deprivation is a major cause of the teen mental health crisis

#179

Post by evandale » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 7:55 PM UTC

bmitc wrote: post #129

bryanlarsen wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't want a child learning what heat is by falling onto a wood-burning stove! Famously, the Dusun in Borneo teach their children to respect knives by allowing them to play with them (and cut themselves) as toddlers.

It's a curious thing to only be able to teach the dangers of something by having children try out and experience the reprecussions of dangers. I think an important skill in life is to actually predict and understand danger ahead of time. As in, a knife won't just give you a bruise, it could be easily fatal if used in even the most mildly wrong way. Falling/jumping from great heights isn't something to just experiment…

Some of these dangers are relative though. A 6 foot fall for a toddler is probably not going to kill them but relative to the size of the kid it's a great height they can experiment with. A 10 foot drop for an 8 year old is a great height to them but they'll survive.

The bison example, I would think any child would be very wary of walking up to a bison. On top of that, if a child were to approach a bison I highly doubt the bison would come out with full offensive. They'd probably assume a defensive posture to scare the kid away. If the kid kept coming you should keep in mind that mammals recognize babies of other mammals. It would be pretty extraordinary for the bison to consider a human child as a threat and attack them.

The cars though, yeah. I don't even want to get into that.

Re: Play deprivation is a major cause of the teen mental health crisis

#180

Post by borski » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 7:56 PM UTC

bmitc wrote: post #129

bryanlarsen wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't want a child learning what heat is by falling onto a wood-burning stove! Famously, the Dusun in Borneo teach their children to respect knives by allowing them to play with them (and cut themselves) as toddlers.

It's a curious thing to only be able to teach the dangers of something by having children try out and experience the reprecussions of dangers. I think an important skill in life is to actually predict and understand danger ahead of time. As in, a knife won't just give you a bruise, it could be easily fatal if used in even the most mildly wrong way. Falling/jumping from great heights isn't something to just experiment…

> Falling/jumping from great heights isn't something to just experiment with and try. Running in a busy street isn't something to try just to understand the dangers.

Unless your kids are interested in and want to learn free running and parkour, at which point this is how you learn. Of course there is reason to be careful, but fear often plays a large role in that.