I am reading a book titled The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt and started thinking about how occupational therapists promote play using movement and real-live playmates as I grew up doing in the 1950’s and 60’s. His book focuses on the harm imposed on adolescents of today who spend too much time on electronic devices. I have fond memories of playing Jacks, Pick -up-sticks, and yes, Booby Trap as well as hand clapping, jump rope and ball bouncing games while simultaneously singing a rhyme. We were totally immersed in motor planning and social play that children coming of age during the Smartphone age will never experience. So here is one of my favorites below.
Here is what Jonathan Haidt has to say about Free Play
Here is what Jonathan Haidt has to say about Free Play
quotes are from the chapter 2 summary.
“Free play is as essential for developing social skills, like conflict resolution, as it is for developing physical skills. But play-based childhoods were replaced by phone-based childhoods as children and adolescents moved their social lives and free time onto internet-connected devices.”
….and Jonathan Haidt on “social learning”
“Social learning occurs throughout childhood, but there may be a sensitive period for cultural learning that spans roughly ages 8 to 15. Lessons learned and identities formed in these years are likely to imprint, or stick, more than at other ages. These are the crucial sensitive years of puberty. Unfortunately, they are also the years in which most adolescents in developed countries get their own phones and move their social lives online…… “
https://www.vox.com/24105235/phones-kids-schools-ban-yondr-pouch-smartphones