
All Work and No Play: Why Kids Are More Anxious, Depressed (2011) - montrose
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/10/all-work-and-no-play-why-your-kids-are-more-anxious-depressed/246422/?single_page=true
======
binarnosp
One month ago I started removing the constraints on my 8 years old daughter's
outside activity. I just gave a wristwatch with the alarm set before dinner
time and told her "when the alarm goes off then come home". I'm against her
having a phone.

When she comes home and she tells us what she and her friends did (I don't
ask, she just wants to share) it is hilarious and I usually think "It was
better if I didn't know this and that". But then I think about the 8 years old
version of me "bombing" the toy soldiers together with a friend of mine by
spraying alcohol on them and by setting everything on fire, and I relax...

~~~
dbatten
My company is in the process of launching a screen-free, non-phone LTE device
(think unlimited range walkie-talkie with extra features) intended to let kids
stay safe while having more freedom. I'm genuinely curious - how would you
feel about something like that?

The site: [https://relaygo.com/](https://relaygo.com/)

~~~
mieseratte
Snark: It's nice for the helicopter parent who also doesn't want their kids
exposed to a phone, so it'll probably sell just fine.

I suppose because I'm not a parent, I don't have that built in level of worry
/ paranoia, though I "fondly" remember how fearful my own mother was, but I
don't get it. Isn't the point of letting your kid venture out to help them
establish and explore freedom and boundaries?

You tell your child not to stay out past the street lights, not venture past
certain landmarks, and then let them roam. If they comply, great! If not, they
learn actions have consequences.

If I were a kid, I'd make sure to conveniently forget / power off / not charge
/ lose that thing as much as possible.

~~~
s_kilk
> If they comply, great! If not, they learn actions have consequences.

Or they die, which kinda sucks.

Look, I'm generally in favour of kids wandering about the place like I did
when I was a kid, but even back then we had a tragically high number of kids
getting themselves crushed under farm equipment, falling from heights and
landing hard, getting exposed to hazardous materials, or drowning in pits full
of animal shit.

It's simply disingenuous to act as if the worst that can happen is a wee
scrape and a lesson learned.

~~~
eropple
That "tragically high" number was still a rounding error, though, in the
United States.

I do wonder if it is a particularly American thing to take the wild exception
as the norm like this.

~~~
s_kilk
Ireland, actually. I'd be curious to see the stats, but suffice to say enough
families were losing children that there were major changes to farm safety
regulation.

~~~
cfadvan
Ireland here as well, and that had a lot to do with poverty and families
needing their kids to work at a young age. The same was true in the US before
child labor laws. I think a general “ambient” risk and a culture of,having
your 9 year old work on the farm or in a mill are fundamentally separate
issues.

------
slx26
It's important to let kids be bored and ignored from time to time, so they
actually have the space to think for themselves and realize how many
opportunities they have out there and how fun it is to explore them.

Of course, every kid is a different universe, but in general I feel we are
missing quite a bit of that.

~~~
sykh
I wonder if lack of spontaneity is part of the blame. It seems to me that
there is too much structured time for kids. Particularly in suburbia. When I
lived in a suburb I rarely saw kids out playing in a park without an adult
hovering over them. Never saw kids playing in the street or wandering the
neighborhood.

~~~
Bartweiss
> _Particularly in suburbia. When I lived in a suburb I rarely saw kids out
> playing in a park without an adult hovering over them._

A significant part of this, I think, is a design failure instead of a
parenting one. Suburbs are bad at almost everything they do, except creating
neighborhoods with big houses, grassy yards, and decent schools. In
particular, they're poison for both children's play and parents' peace of
mind.

As for kids - empty lawns, identical houses, and artificial boundaries don't
support energy or imagination. There's nothing to look at, nowhere to go, and
not much to do. when I was a kid the only suburban house where we played
outside was one where the neighbors had given permission for us to play games
across 3+ yards. Meanwhile at more rural houses, there were trees to climb,
places to hide, and forests to explore. And in mixed density condos and
apartments, there were sidewalks along the roads, shops to look into, town
parks with soccer fields to play on.

As for parents - suburbs are honestly one of the worse environments I can
think of to turn kids loose into, after serious wilderness and dense cities.
Many suburbs have no sidewalks and most have wide roads with long distances to
travel and lots of vision-hiding curves; perfect conditions for kids to get
hit by cars, whether they're walking, biking, or playing street games. There
are enough people and cars around to worry about someone with ill-intent,
unlike a rural setting, but not enough to trust in bystanders or authority
figures like an urban or mixed-density setting. There are neighbors to get mad
at your kids, but if you want someone watching them it falls entirely on you.
And there's so little to _do_ that it raises fears of vandalism, bullying, or
any other badness you might get from idle hands. For a younger kid, the sheer
uniformity of suburbs can raise questions about finding their way home.

There are almost no redeeming features to suburbs, but I regularly hear "at
least it's a good place to raise a family". I don't think it's true; suburbs
are superficially clean and inviting, but they lack the stuff that makes
unstructured life healthy and inviting for kids.

~~~
secabeen
I think the question needs to be "how universal is the suburban space"? I've
lived in multiple suburban areas, and the kid fun spaces were always the wild
spaces at the edges of the suburban areas. If the houses are interspersed with
somewhat-wild spaces, it works okay. If it's 100% homes, that's the curse.

------
vertexFarm
Shame I can't find it but I saw a study where a sociologist was monitoring a
single town for decades and recording how far children would wander by
themselves during the day. In the seventies it was around ten miles, with
single-digit aged children wandering through the woods and into town and even
doing errands for the family.

Around 2010 I think it had declined to about 200 yards max. It's really
extremely sad. I wouldn't want to be a kid now. I wouldn't want to have those
memories of childhood. It's part of several reasons I don't think it would be
ethical for me to reproduce at this time.

People's fear is a sliding scale, and a child's safety is one of those things
that the human psyche gives infinite value. That really screws up your ability
to manage risk. People are even more afraid now, even though the causes of
early death are the lowest they've ever been and we've marched ourselves into
a joyless panopticon where nobody really decides their own destiny from an
early age.

These kids are going to absolutely hate us.

~~~
whatshisface
> _These kids are going to absolutely hate us._

The decline has been going on constantly, over many generations. If the trend
continues as it has, these kids will think we were too lenient and restrict
the movement of their own children even further.

~~~
toomanybeersies
Parents have been investigated for allowing their children to play in the back
yard: [https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/manitoba-cfs-will-not-erase-
fi...](https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/manitoba-cfs-will-not-erase-file-of-
mother-who-lets-kids-play-in-backyard-1.2871900)

~~~
gowld
So? They were investigated become someone filed a complaint about small
children alone, and the investigator found that the parent was home
supervising the children and there was no problem. The rest of the article is
FUD about CFS's refusal to expunge case files.

~~~
slavik81
That's a 'near-miss'. Something that shouldn't happen does happen, and you
come closer to disaster than you were ever comfortable with. At that point,
all it would take is a grouchy case worker to throw their entire family into
disarray for months or years.

Two years ago, an Ontario foster family had their children taken away solely
for refusing to lie about the existence of the Easter Bunny[1]. The parents
were planning on celebrating the holiday with the children, but when the
Children's Aid Society of Hamilton discovered the parents were unwilling to
lie if asked, they had the children immediately removed from the home. The
caseworkers treated learning the truth about the Easter Bunny as if it were a
serious immediate danger to the safety of the children. If that sounds
ridiculous, it's because it is.

The foster parents won a lawsuit over the matter in March of this year, but
it's kind of too late to make things right. The lives of both the children and
the parents have been permanently changed by the bad decisions by case
workers.

If I was that Manitoba parent, I'd be angry and scared too. Nothing happened
this time, but if she continues letting her kids play in the backyard, she's
rolling the dice again. All that needs to happen is for her same neighbour to
make another complaint, and to get an unreasonable caseworker. Superficially,
it might even seem reasonable, "children removed from home of woman after
repeated complaints of neglect" is not a headline that sounds concerning.

[1]: [http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/easter-bunny-
edmonton...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/easter-bunny-edmonton-
ontario-foster-children-hamilton-1.4569813)

~~~
Ma8ee
> Two years ago, an Ontario foster family had their children taken away solely
> for refusing to lie about the existence of the Easter Bunny.

And people all over the world read about the case and started to worry that
something similar might happen to them, even though it was one single case on
another continent (from where I am) two years ago. Maybe we should treat it as
the freak incident it was.

------
coatmatter
Since the introduction of all-age mandatory bicycle helmet laws in Australia
back on the early 90s, cycle participation rates in relation to population has
been in consistent decline (all while pedestrian safety and driver safety -
but not cycle safety - at the same time has improved).

Bike racks at schools used to be filled - that is no longer the case. By
comparison, this is what it looks like in Netherlands:
[https://youtu.be/8NUgB_xkIvU](https://youtu.be/8NUgB_xkIvU)

~~~
49bc
Is it really required bike helmets to blame here? I find that hard to believe.
Is there any research on that topic?

~~~
nerdponx
It's required in New York as well, but I can't imagine that is seriously
deterring people from riding bikes.

~~~
gpm
I live in Toronto and bike to my university on a daily basis. If helmets were
mandatory here I wouldn't, and if I wasn't I probably wouldn't even own a
bike. I also bike recreationally to nice parks and stuff - stuff I wouldn't be
doing since I wouldn't have purchased a good bike in the first place.

I've tried to explain why below, but the real point is just "from personal
experience I can't image it isn't detering people from riding bikes".

The main reason a helmet is such a problem is just convenience. A bike, like a
car, I can just lock up wherever I go. The helmet I would have to carry around
with me all day. That makes whole day just slightly more inconvenient, and
it's honestly just not worth it to me.

The second is that wearing a helmet makes me feel substantially less safe.
There are two direct reasons that I can articulate for this, but I'm not sure
they fully explain the effect. There are also statistics that support me,
showing that wearing a helmet is correlated with a increase in collisions.

The first reason is wearing a helmet substantialy impedes my hearing. This is
probably a bit foreign to people who are use to driving, but hearing is
incredibly useful for knowing when a car/truck/bus/etc is coming up behind me.
A helmet increases wind noises to the point where the signal is much less
useful, I'm not confident I will always hear a car in time to react with one
on, and I'm worse at pinpointing the location. Incidentally I find the lack of
sound when driving fairly disturbing and scary, since I'm so used to being
able to use it.

The second is that the extra weight on my head seems to make looking around
take more psychological effort, so I end up doing it best, so I end up having
less awarness of cars around me. This is a rather surprising (to me) effect,
but I'm certain it's real. Of course it's not the end of the world because I
do still make substantial effort to look around, it's just epsilon less often
which makes me epsilon less safe.

~~~
akhilcacharya
What’s wrong with just putting the helmet with the bike when you lock it up?

~~~
jaggederest
You will shortly no longer have a helmet. Locking it to the frame is difficult
in direct proportion to how effective locking it up would be.

~~~
maxbrunsfeld
I’ve locked a helmet up with my bike all my life, in several different cities;
It’s a complete non issue to me. What is the concern; that someone will use a
blade to cut the helmet strap so that they can steal your broken helmet? It’s
effortless to leave your helmet attached to your bike.

Edit - I’m not saying I support laws enforcing helmets for adults; I just
don’t think that helmet theft is a big concern.

~~~
pmoriarty
This really depends on which city you're in and where in the city you leave
your bike+helmet.

I've had the ultra-cheap lights on my bike stolen. I've seen plenty of other
bikes stripped of everything except the frame itself.

This is why I always take my helmet (and my lights) with me, lock my bike and
the front wheel with a good lock, and chain lock my seat down for good
measure. Haven't had anything stolen since -- even in some sketchy areas.

~~~
zimpenfish
> This really depends on which city you're in and where in the city you leave
> your bike+helmet.

London, famous for rampant bike theft, and I've never had a locked up helmet
stolen. Lights, I take with me; I'm not mad.

------
pmoriarty
The earlier discussion of this article mentions Legos as a good toy for free-
form play. I'd like to add another: plasticine clay.

It's even more free-form than Legos, as it's not limited to any kind of pre-
made shapes. It never hardens, and can be endlessly re-shaped in to new forms.
It's a great way to get kids exercising their own imaginations.

~~~
oceanman888
Nice, where can I get plasticine clay avengers characters for my kids?

edit: The point I am trying to make is that kids don't want the toy that are
good for them. They want "cool" stuff. And the market are really good at
making new crap.

~~~
pmoriarty
_" where can I get plasticine clay avengers characters for my kids?"_

Buying pre-made toys defeats the purpose of the clay, which is for kids to
make their own toys out of.

It's like recommending you buy your kids some paints and paint brushes only to
hear someone ask, "great, where can I buy them a painting of their favorite
character?" You don't. That's not the point. If the kids want a painting of
their favorite character, the paints and brushes empower them to paint their
own. Same with clay.

The results might not be up to the high standards of adults, but usually kids
don't care, have a lot of fun with the materials anyway, and actually learn to
be creative instead of mere consumers of someone else's creativity.

 _" kids don't want the toy that are good for them. They want "cool" stuff"_

Cool stuff that they get bored with 5 minutes after they got it. Clay gives
them an inexhaustible material that they can shape in to whatever they desire
(including the cool stuff that they make themselves), and if they're bored
with one thing they just mash it up and make something else.

I speak from personal experience -- having spent endless amounts of time
playing with clay as a kid while many of my other toys languished. Of course
it's not the ultimate toy, and kids will eventually get bored with it too and
move on to something else. But it'll always be waiting there for whatever new
thing their imagination conjures up next, instead of needing yet another trip
to the toy store.

~~~
oceanman888
Only properly educated children knows how to play with good toys.

Grew up in 90s china, clay was actually really popular because they were cost
effective to provide entertainment. On the other hand, even back then there
were tons of companies making shitty toys around popular cartoons.

Right now company are smart enough to make shitty "educational toys" as they
figured out they need to sell to the parents.

Kids are meant to be educated. Without good art and technology education, They
would just consume crappy toys like junk food.

I was lucky enough to discover the fun of dissembling and repairing
electronics for my parents. But not all children are like that.

It all comes down to how we educated young kids. Primary school teachers are
not the best educated and they are paid lowest. Better education will mean
smarter toy industry and more educated adult in the future.

But who on earth is going to pay for that?

~~~
gowld
Why the off-topic swipe at primary school teachers? Does it require
specialized advanced education to allow kids to play with clay and blocks?

~~~
letsgetphysITal
It requires specialised education to guide free play into a constructive
activity. There's a big difference between "Here's a lump of clay. Smash it
with your fist until you're bored." and "Here's a lump of clay. Let's try and
mold it into something together, like a flower, or a bowl."

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Also, depending on the child there can be a lot of learning in the "smash it
until you're bored" phase. Then you can show a technique, or help them make
something they can be proud of and help, a little, to show they can produce
artefacts they are proud of if they seek to learn and apply that learning.

There's also much therapy in smashing clay, it doesn't hurt it as I remind
every person I instruct on making pottery.

------
m23khan
Here is my observations from last 20 years:

Mississauga, CANADA: Lots of parks but almost all are empty throughout the
year even during Summer time.

Karachi, PAKISTAN: Severe lack of parks but even the ones which are there are
usually empty even during winter times.

Culprit in both cases: technology such as mobile phones, video games and TV.
And also, paranoid parents who don't let kids go out and enjoy (and are
probably too lazy to just sit quietly in the park to watch the kids).

~~~
helipad
I'm sure those are contributing factors. However, in the 90s I had video
consoles and satellite TV, but still spent a lot of time unsupervised playing
football (soccer). TV and video games were for rainy, cold days.

Part of me struggles to believe that kids don't want to play outside
unsupervised – at least once they're outside.

My suspicion is that children just aren't allowed to be out alone as much
today.

Parents would be almost seen as negligent if their children weren't supervised
within earshot. Not in all cases of course, but my guess would be the parents
have changed far quicker than children or the distractions available to them.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
>Parents would be almost seen as negligent if their children weren't
supervised within earshot.

One asshole calling CPS will put a little voice in the back of everyone's head
telling them to be slightly more restrictive with their kids.

>art of me struggles to believe that kids don't want to play outside
unsupervised – at least once they're outside.

Kid's don't want to play outside in the first place. They'd rather watch TV or
whatever. If you make them play outside they'll stop whining and do it in
fairly short order.

Combine the up front whining with the little voice and you see why "go play
outside until mommy is done making dinner" is much less common.

------
JohnJamesRambo
You should see them now, 2011! Facebook and twitter is here and ready to help
with that anxiety and depression.

~~~
sudouser
experimenting with sentiments ... err Connecting People at All Costs®

~~~
asdffdsa321
Lol nice

------
ryanwaggoner
It's interesting watching the pendulum swing back so hard towards the kind of
"free range parenting" that most of us grew up with in the 70s and 80s.

Looking at the comments here, it seems everyone thinks that it's tantamount to
child abuse to not let a kid of any age roam free in any environment. Of
course, I notice that many people expressing that don't seem to have kids of
their own yet :)

I am amused by nostalgic comments about dangerous things that we all did
decades ago and how: 1) we were fine, so how dangerous could it have been? and
2) look how much safer things are today, so it's no big deal.

Many apparently have never considered that maybe things are safer today
_because_ we don't do those things, or that survivorship bias means that
asking people who never wore seatbelts as a kid about whether it was dangerous
may not be the best approach.

I grew up in the 80s and looking back now, I honestly probably roamed a little
bit more freely than was healthy. I would ride my bike around town alone for
hours when I was 6 or 7, including across major streets with heavy traffic. On
at least one occasion some stranger tried to get me to get into their car.
Now, I was taught to be careful but I doubt I had the maturity to understand
the gravity of some of these situations.

I have a 3-year-old now and I'm going to work hard to not be paranoid and to
let her explore and gain independence as she gets older, but I'm also not
interested in making a statement or pushing back against societal trends or
recreating my own childhood. I want to make sure she gets as much freedom as
possible within the boundaries of a reasonable degree of safety, and I'll just
use some common sense and balance to figure out what's best for her. Her
childhood will look different from mine, and that's perfectly OK.

~~~
commandlinefan
> don't seem to have kids of their own yet

I have two of my own, now 12 and 14. My wife was very paranoid, very
overprotective, very helicopter parent. We continue to fight about this,
because I grew up roaming outside in the 80's whereas she insists that "the
world is different than it was back then". More than anything else, I worry
about the potential health problems my kids might develop from having spent
90% of their lives indoors, sitting in front of a TV or a computer (and the
people who say, "well you should just restrict your kids screen time" are the
ones who don't have kids of their own).

------
ManlyBread
Could the points outlined in the article be the reason why Minecraft is so
popular with kids? It seems to offer freedom that is similar to what free play
does.

------
shams93
Growing up in the 80s I had to deal with so much violence and abuse that I
didn't get much play time. But I got my first writing published in an academic
journal at 14. The violance, abuse and chaos around me caused me to hyper
focus on reading and writing as an escape. I wasn't required to read 300 pages
a day but the library was the only space I found free from violence as a child
in the 80s.

~~~
TulliusCicero
That's great for you, but "I was surrounded by so much violence that I
published my first academic article as a teenager" definitely isn't the
typical case.

------
dang
Discussed at the time:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3106016](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3106016).

~~~
dasil003
Mmm, a good michaelochurch rant in there, I miss him.

~~~
molteanu
Me too, bro, me too.

~~~
mlazos
This prompted me to check out his blog. There's enough rant there for a few
lifetimes.

~~~
le-mark
I also check his blog from time to time, the quality of his rants have
declined imo. Also he tended to beat the same drum, a bit myopic.

------
Tharkun
I wonder whether the headline applies to adults as well.

~~~
dredmorbius
Yes.

I seem to recall a piece on burnout in mathematicians (academics). Decades
spent on ppotentially unsolvable problems, unbalanced reward/discouragement.

------
rdlecler1
Sure it sounds good but it was disappointing to see that none of the five
suggestions were backed up by any supporting statistics.

------
zpr
I see middle-school kids biking home from school in my suburb and when
approaching the intersection (not a very busy one, mind you), they all
dismount their bikes and walk across the street. I know that's what you're
supposed to do, but c'mon, they're kids.. When I was that age my friends and I
would race across the street without helmets flipping the bird to the crossing
guard, so it's a bit unsettling to see them all obediently get off their bikes
and single-file across the street, even when there are no crossing guards in
sight.

