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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

#41

Post by MattGaiser »

deanmoriarty wrote: post #22

Wow, this is so sad. I grew up in Europe in the 90s with parents who pretty much let me do whatever I wanted as long as I was a well-behaved child/teenager and getting reasonable school grades. At 6 years old I was literally biking by the river or wandering in the woods with my friends after school for hours on end. Every day was an exciting adventure without any adult supervision, just random groups of 2-10 kids who…

> This did not prevent me from going to a great university in my country, get my master in Computer Engineering, have a curriculum good enough to immigrate to the US, and working at several tech companies including FAANG, making high 6 figures now.

The key question is more, could you do that today and would you sacrifice that to give your kids that childhood? Would your grades and lack of extracurriculars have earned you admission in this year's cohort? Is that path still really available?

I am 9 years out from the university admissions game, so still pretty young, but some time has passed. I would not be a competitive applicant today for many of the same programs I was admitted to back then.

High school was by far the most stressful time of my life and the fun part is, it would have had to have had more pressure to be where I am today.

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

#42

Post by alexpetralia »

legitster wrote: post #38

As a parent of a young kid, I am rarely worried about him. He knows how to watch for traffic. He knows how to find his way home from a friends'. He knows enough about what is dangerous to do. It's the police and CPS that I am afraid of. The ubiquity of smartphones has made tattling and "calling someone" so easy. And it's almost never from other parents! The parents are more worried about "what people will think" than…

(deleted - posted under the wrong comment)

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

#43

Post by afavour »

ccleve wrote: post #19
atonse wrote: post #2

We have really made it a point to have our kid play freely as much as possible and minimize scheduled activities (piano lessons etc.) the problem is that most of his friends are in a million classes so even if he’s free, they often aren’t. That’s been the big challenge. So then there are these magical days where they all don’t have any activities and those invariably happen to be the days ALL kids look forward to. Cu…

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 blame other parents

Ah, the mantra of our parental lives!

These classes kids go to aren’t always some kind of arduous, academic overachiever factory. My kid goes to a Spanish immersion after school program once a week and she loves it. She’s made a ton of friends there. We’re not shoving her through the door.

Don’t get me wrong, some parents do go over the top with it, no doubt. But a lot of these activities are genuinely enriching.

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

#44

Post by lolinder »

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…

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 random trial and error.

Parents generally have a strong instinct to try to make things easier for their kids than they were for themselves growing up. We know the food is hot, so we blow on the kid's food or let it cool before giving it to them. 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". We know X, Y, or Z, so we sit down with them and explain it to them.

I don't think that these explanations and rules have no place (I don't want a child learning what heat is by falling onto a wood-burning stove!), but we need to recognize that it's a strictly inferior way of learning something when compared to experience. And as you point out, unstructured play is where kids get that experience in a low-stakes environment.

Play serves a valuable purpose, but as soon as parents get involved to try to assist the purpose evaporates.

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

#45

Post by afavour »

alexpetralia wrote: post #42
legitster wrote: post #38

As a parent of a young kid, I am rarely worried about him. He knows how to watch for traffic. He knows how to find his way home from a friends'. He knows enough about what is dangerous to do. It's the police and CPS that I am afraid of. The ubiquity of smartphones has made tattling and "calling someone" so easy. And it's almost never from other parents! The parents are more worried about "what people will think" than…

(deleted - posted under the wrong comment)

Agreed. Also in NYC and while I do trust my kid with road safety I’ve witnessed so many drivers blowing through a red light, speeding, parking in the middle of a crosswalk and pulling all kinds of dangerous manoeuvers that the streets don’t actually feel particularly safe. There’s just zero enforcement out there.

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

#46

Post by pj_mukh »

fallingknife wrote: post #31
caesil wrote: post #18

I wonder if this doesn't have a lot to do with cars. In surrendering utterly to the preeminence of streets, we have essentially taken our open, free world and overlain it with an immense grid of electric fences -- thick lines all over the map that, if children wander across them, might easily lead to their deaths. So "hold hands everywhere" and "don't let your children run free outside" become the norms. The only saf…

No. It's paranoia. Cars have been around for a long time.

Is it paranoia? If it wasn’t for guns, cars would be the number killer of kids under 16. Note: This includes kids IN cars being ferried around from activity to activity.

Granted the numbers are lower now than before but that’s because of various safety and traffic calming efforts. Seems like we should push harder on that front, so parents can feel safe encouraging their kids to just pop over to their friends place on their own.

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

#47

Post by shard »

awesomeMilou wrote: post #14
evrimoztamur wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes it sound like the adult pains of holding friendships alive as you grow older. Everybody is busy with their lives and coordinating even with your closest friends leads to 'agenda conflicts' that push your time together weeks or months ahead. It's sad to see that this is happening to kids (who are often pushed into scheduled extracurriculars for better academic opportunities) too.

> (who are often pushed into scheduled extracurriculars for better academic opportunities) too. Gotta say though, this seems to be purely a thing in the english speaking cultures. Apart from sport and maybe an instrument, extracurriculars aren't a thing in most european countries. Extracurriculars are so peculiar that our ministry of education deems it necessary to make it a mandatory point for teachers to discuss wh…

> this seems to be purely a thing in the english speaking cultures

This is a major thing in many East Asian cultures as well, China/Taiwan/Japan/Korea. Korea had to pass a law saying that private academies have to close at 10pm, so that kids aren't studying past midnight, but some academies still stay open secretly as the parents are demanding the extra hours. It's a vicious circle: kids compete for the few spots in top universities so they can get into the best companies, average qualifications rise, so next generation have to compete even harder for the same few spots.

This is carried over to the US as well. Asians compete for the few spots in top universities, as they are held to higher standards already, and this just keep ratcheting up the average standard for Asians each generation.

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

#48

Post by Waterluvian »

lolinder wrote: post #44
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…

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…

The way I explain this is, "my job is not to protect my kids from harm, it's to protect them from irreparable harm."

I've had this instinct whenever my kids are on the jungle gym to say, "slow down!" "That's too high!" etc. but I usually catch myself and think, "if they fall is it a cry or a hospital visit?"

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

#49

Post by jzawodn »

atonse wrote: post #17
fnimick wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but are you maximizing his college admissions chances via skills in carefully selected activities in order to stand out? (mostly joking, but this is how a lot of people approach scheduling these days)

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…

I wish I could upvote more than once.

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

#50

Post by anon291 »

doubled112 wrote: post #11
fnimick wrote: post #3

Meanwhile I know people who look at analytics and numbers to decide what sports and activities their child (who is still in elementary school!) should be doing in order to maximize college admissions chances. It's madness. Don't play violin (even if you like it) because there are too many people doing that, you have to do something unique. Don't play basketball, it's too common and therefore too hard to stand out, yo…

As a dad of two, this timeline sucks. Even children need to be optimized for maximum success (so profit) now? Must have missed that memo.

> Even children need to be optimized for maximum success (so profit) now? Must have missed that memo.

Well ... no they don't and this is the problem. 'Regular' people for some reason feel the need to replicate what 'they' do. Why do you see 'them' do this and then think 'my children need what they are doing with theirs'.

Look.. the data are unequivocal. Most people are unhappy. If you are not unhappy with your life, you are the outlier and the exception. Thus... don't try to do what others are doing, since most likely they're unhappy. Just enjoy yourself.

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