Thursday, June 21, 2018

Where Have All the Children Gone? | Intellectual Takeout

Where Have All the Children Gone? | Intellectual Takeout:
"It’s summer vacation, but you might not know it from the absence of children on streets and sidewalks, in parks and public spaces.
Just as afternoons and weekends during the school year are more void of children than ever before, so too is summertime.
Where are all of these young ones?
See the source imageIncreasingly, they are contained in structured, adult-led, often indoor activities where they are told what to do, what to think, and how to act.
Those play-filled afternoons with the neighborhood kids we remember from childhood? 
Gone. 
Those long summer days outside with friends, roaming in woods or water?
A quaint memory.
Today, for many children, nearly every waking hour of their day is orchestrated by someone else.
Free, unstructured, unsupervised childhood play in our public spaces is an artifact of a by-gone era.
...Quiet neighborhoods aren’t the only consequence of this trend away from natural childhood play. Mounting evidence reveals a rise in childhood mental health issues as children’s play declines..."

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