29. The Importance of a Play-Based Childhood.

Photo: c/o sweetcaptcha.com

The critical importance of a play-based childhood.

Kids need a play-based childhood and to learn from adults by experience. They need to do this interactively, every day, every way, and face to face.

We all experienced this sort of childhood prior to 1990, but during the nineties; cell phones, the internet, and social media reared their serpentine heads to tempt, beguile, and then devour our way of life; a life of learning, with and from, each other by observation and in person; not via a screen.  A way that has worked for humankind through the history of our species.

Kids might learn to cook, to knit, to mend the broken gate, or fix a car, by watching a parent do it.  Parents might learn to use their laptop more expeditiously, by watching their children.

It still works for monkeys and apes, for elephants and whales, and for all species who learn from each other and from their elders.

But now, our young people are in trouble.  Their mental health in serious decline. They don’t get to play with each other in person, or to interact face to face with anyone.  And while our young people suffer most, it’s not only that they cause the problem for themselves, but we do also.  It is all of us who look at our phones, rather than into each other’s eyes, as we interact. We need ‘in- person’ face-to-face chats, undistracted by the conversations threatening to interrupt via text.

The Spanish Inquisition could not match the torture we inflict on each other by the persist and ongoing use of these devil devices.

If we have learnt anything from children raised this millennium, then we should be able to see that a phone-based childhood doesn’t work.  It doesn’t work for any of them, and this is more so for pubescent girls. Their mental health declines and the negative statistics rise dramatically; all around the world, wherever cell phones are the way of life now.

Continuous partial attention - spending five hours on social media, and another four online every day is destroying the mental health of our young people and doing most harm through puberty.

If you think about the enjoyment and fun we had with other children when we were young.  If you take out the time, we spent being active, playing games, playing bull-rush, making huts, knitting, simply hanging out, cycling around together, reading a book, engaging with others in a face-to-face conversation; then we are talking about the nine hours a child now spends on a cell phone/ iPad daily.

Nowadays kids do not even walk to school together and if they do hang out at the mall, they are online with 50 others simultaneously.

All children are engaged in continuous partial attention to whomsoever they are with, or even if by themselves.  They do not have an in-depth conversation with other people, ever.  Rather they are online with 50 others, where they are worried about the acceptance of every text they send. 

Every single text is a cause of anxiety. What if my response is not quite right, not acceptable, not cool, not okay???  How do I make it appropriate for all the others online too?

This is a much bigger problem for girls, as they are all ultra-focussed on self.  On their face, their image, how they look to others, their dress, adolescent pimples, their piercings, makeup, … And it is part of the reason they worry about their sex/sexuality and wonder if texting about transitioning might give them the attention they desire, or if in fact, it has become a real issue for him/her/…

We must get over our own anxieties to let our kids experience a little tension while trying something new, and then by succeeding feel good about themselves and grow a little.

Over-protective parenting is failing them.  We are over-protective in real life, but under-protective in online life. We think nothing bad can happen online, yet bigger, more invasive and pervasive threats lie online than anywhere else.

Adults have lost trust in each other.  When I was ten and cycling around Christchurch, I could call in at any house and ask for help if needed, ask to phone my mother … and this was okay. Or I could stop a stranger in the street to ask directions and feel no fear in doing this. 

Now we don’t trust each other, when statistics show that real life threats are no greater now than they were twenty years ago. Whereas virtual/online life is not. Its where the paedophiles troll.

Cell phones are distractive and addictive.  Social media more so.  

We need to redevelop trust in each other, and work together, collectively, to turn around this cell phone-based childhood. Only collective action will work, as if one pair of parents take the phone off their child, that child is isolated from his/her friends; but if groups of people in their own community, do it, it will not be the case.  They will end up looking for each other in person, as they should. They might even have an in-depth conversation, without fearing what a third, fourth and fifth person might be thinking of them.

Schools need to ban phones from school altogether, not just in the classroom. Parents, we need to agree, no cell phones or iPads for children until age 14, no social media access until age 16.

Kids need free play in the real world. They need to learn how to catch a bus to town, by themselves, to meet another friend in person, and wander around the mall together. They don’t need a lift in your car.

Kids don’t need phones at school, the parent can ring the school office if they need to contact their child, just like they used to three decades ago. 

Let’s go back for a future.

Give our children the life and upbringing they need.  One of play and learning from adults. One where teenagers can get enough sleep each night, without worrying about the online bullying, or having to text someone at midnight, or having the impact of the screen’s ‘bluelight’ keeping them awake for hours after use.

Adults, you too must put your phone away while kids are around. Use eye contact, talk face to face, have meals around the tea table again, and turn the TV off.  

For one last time, go online, watch and listen to Jonathan Haidt on TED talks are smart phones ruining childhood?  Then put your phone away. Get a home line.  Destroy the device of our kids' destruction.

https://www.iheart.com/podcast/56-ted-talks-daily-31053986/episode/ted-talks-daily-book-club-are-smartphones-ruining-childhooh-jonathan-haidt-216331581/?cmp=android_share&sc=android_social_share&pr=false