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

jonathanhaidt.substack.com

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

#311

Post by uoaei »

SomewhatLikely wrote: post #246
watwut wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The busy sidewalk thing is about innocent passersbys not having to deal with rowdy kids bumping into them or otherwise bothering them. And actually, kids that are told to watch it actually overall do take more care about that sort of stuff then if parents just let them do whatever.

My young kids would be totally unaware if they were bumping into others, or causing them to stop abruptly, or otherwise interfering with others. Of course if those strangers yelled at them or provided some less harsh form of feedback it might register with them, but I find most people don't say anything so it's on me to let my kids know the effects they're behavior is having.

Sure, it's important to give them feedback. That's a different thing from merely thinking for them, however. A (brief) conversation about the effects they may have on others and the feelings they expect others to have would go a long way toward engendering more pro-social considerations.

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

#312

Post by JKCalhoun »

feoren wrote: post #63
dgb23 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boredom can be a great breeding ground for creativity.

This is absolutely true, but the problem is that we are oversaturated with time-wasters that prevent that kind of deep, creativity-breeding boredom. There's always another phone game, another show, more social media -- and these things were specially designed to hold your attention and prevent you from being "good bored". South Park nailed it with their discussion about how the problem with doing pot as a kid is that…

Road trips. I remember those wonderful long boring trips before our girls had phones.

Oh, and even after, gee, sorry, not charging phones when on the road.

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

#313

Post by OO000oo »

SoftTalker wrote: post #220
red-iron-pine wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah the AI is coming for your highfalutin desk job, but the carpenters will be making decent money for a while yet. basic woodworking skills are things that they can start picking up in HS shop classes; I spent summers working in a furniture factory framing chairs as a kid. got a neighbour who does asphalt paving -- just driveways. Dude is booked solid through the Fall and into December, and does alright. Not Palo A…

Yeah I know a guy who started as an entry-level drywaller in high school (truly one of the shittiest jobs in construction) and he now owns one of the larger drywall contractors in the area, he makes way more money than I do in software. Has more hassles than I do though, drywall company employees tend to come with a lot of headaches.

Yeah everyone can just be a business owner. That'll work out just great.

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

#314

Post by uoaei »

scruple wrote: post #268
uoaei wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Witnessed this kind of thing today. Doting father of three boys on vacation. They're all ditzing around on busy sidewalks and the father barks "Control yourselves!" It occurred to me at that moment that this kind of hovering and scolding teaches children to externalize the responsibility of understanding their environment and their place within it . They will literally never learn the lessons this father wants to imp…

I'll offer a perspective. I'm a father of 3 young kids (4 year old twins, 20 month old). I often find myself in situations where I also need my children to stop whatever they're currently doing and pay attention to me. You mention this happened on a sidewalk. Cars drive next to sidewalks. The American culture of cars is the number one cause of anxiety in my life as a parent to young children. I do not want to feel th…

I didn't mean to make it seem like I was challenging the parent's decision to involve themselves in the behaviors of their kids. I'm speaking more to the curt, evidently anxious outburst rather than a more even-handed and considerate approach.

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

#315

Post by genocidicbunny »

sharadov wrote: post #233
ccleve wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

Why this burning desire to go to a top college? I know enough of those who went to these so-called top tier colleges, meanwhile I took my time getting through an average college, but nonetheless exploring interests, making eclectic friends. Most people around me were treating life like a sprint - My young self even back then knew it was a marathon. I am not saying be aimless but don't drive yourself crazy at this alt…

Because the kids now, and their parents, have mostly gone through an education system that constantly hammers you on how you need to get into the top college, you must go to college, you should be taking as many AP classes as possible to get into a top college. They've had 30 or so years to be propagandized into believing it.

There was also definitely a strong undercurrent of first-generation immigrants to the US pushing their kids hard, because they had no reason to distrust the message that if you want to succeed in the US, you need to go to a top college so you can get a good job.

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

#316

Post by Two4 »

dror wrote: post #310
duckmysick wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been wondering: how do we teach kids about addiction (substances, gambling, phone/internet) and its consequences? Theoretical explanation is not effective. Letting them experience it first hand might be too destructive, because of the nature of the addiction. Can any parent chime in what worked and what didn't?

- Lead by example. Be responsible about your own use and be honest about it. - Help them engage in constructive risk taking behavior. Sports are a common example, and there's plenty of research showing that they reduce harmful behavior. Teens, specifically males explore risky behavior. They have these new magnificent bodies and they want to test their limits. - Be present, available and engaged with them. Some of the…

While your comment addresses the most common factors contributing to addiction, it doesn't really answer the question of how to let children experience the consequences of addiction in a way that's low stakes and not irreversible.

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

#317

Post by hilbert42 »

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.

"...especially when most parents only ever have one or two children."

That I believe is part of it. My parents were children before WWII and both came from large families—there were seven siblings on each side. On the other hand my generation had typically two kids.

It would be ludicrous to suggest that my grandparents didn't love their kids or care as much about them given their numbers but the fact is—put brutally—there was considerable solace in having 'spares'.

Today, it is very easy to forget that prewar many more kids per capita never reached adulthood. Most people alive today have never known a time without penicillin or the pre-polio-vaccine days. People in those days were much more fatalistic about life and the lives of their kids as life back then was considerably more 'fragile'. Today, we expect our kids to reach adulthood and outlive us, back then most hoped that would happen but they were more circumspect about it. When a kid died of course parents would be terribly upset but when it happened they always knew there was more chance of it happening than just a remote possability.

I noticed this fatalism in my grandparents, especially my grandmother, she came from a big family and she had a big family and in both cases some kids died before reaching adulthood.

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

#318

Post by genocidicbunny »

qooiii2 wrote: post #161
myth_drannon wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this culture of parents scheduling play dates drives me insane. And even if you try to schedule, everyone is so busy. Kids have karate and 30 minutes later baseball and that's after school. It so much different from our childhood and we struggle to integrate into it.

It's tough but doable. You have to get on people's calendars a week or two out whenever you can, and if you're lucky, it eventually turns into easy, low-stress, open-ended playdates. Meeting other parents is a huge effort, though! It's basically dating all over again. If your kids ride the school bus, that's a big help because you automatically meet nearby parents who are home in the afternoon. Otherwise, you have to…

I think the parent is not so much complaining that it's doable, more that the concept of play dates as a thing at all is what's infuriating. I agree with this as well.

When I was young, my parents knew the parents of maybe one or two of my friends, and that was only largely because they knew each other from somewhere else. We didn't need to have our parents organize and sync up their schedules to go play together. We'd just go and meet up. If no one was around outside, might go up and knock on the door of a few friends see if they wanted to do something. But ultimately, we had largely free reign to ourselves.

Now, at a later age, I also really wouldn't want to have to get to know the parents of my kids' friends either. Meet once or twice to get to see them face-to-face, maybe get some basic contact info just in case, but for the most part, I don't really want my kids' social relationships to be based on how well I can get along with other parents (with a few small exceptions.)

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

#319

Post by genocidicbunny »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #132
jeremyjh wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah dude why don't you take your 14 year-old to the park to play with their mom or just launch a startup to solve this problem.

It's actually a great opportunity to teach your kid to code so they can learn to solve their own problems by learning to launch their own startups.

Teaching your kid to code is not even close to replacing social interaction with their peers. (In case your comment wasn't sarcasm)
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