WHERE DID ALL THE FUN GO?
What happened to the carefree play that used to characterize
such colorful playgrounds? After Susan Gelman’s lecture today on Children’s
play I was reminded of an article I read recently in Psychology Today (yes I read Psychology today- I’m a psychology major
and just a geek). The article is called “Turning Children’s Play into
Entertainment for Adults,” written by Peter Stromberg. This article puts the context of children's play into that of the 21st century world of technology and entertainment that we all find ourselves constantly immersed in. The article argues how children’s play, specifically sports such as Little
League Baseball, has permeated into the economic sector, becoming an enterprise
of entertainment and thus, forever altering the character of children's play. There is a
contradiction between the old-fashioned innocent image that used to define
children’s play such as games of tag and four square and the newly organized, expensive, and exploitive types of play such as sporting leagues that kids now
engage in due to adults urging.
It truly
makes you ponder why such a thing as children’s play, something created to
inherently be fun and carefree has become associated with physical injuries,
exhaustiveness, and money. Stromberg argues that it is because: “We love to be
entertained, and the result is that entrepreneurs have a financial incentive to
convert as much of life as possible into entertainment.” Entertainment is
everything in our society, and as if the multi-billion dollar industry of adult
sports wasn’t enough, society felt the need to put children in this industry
too. What may be the consequences of taking away this creative outlet for
children? If the only types of play children come to know is that of
competitive sporting and entertainment, then what will become of the carefree
innocence that society so commonly associates with childhood?
Susan Gelman
discussed the possible correlation between play and delinquency: that children
learn certain social norms and acceptable problem solving skills through play,
such that many children who aren’t given the opportunity for such play end up
in juvenile detentions and so on. While this statement is only a correlation,
thus it is not known if lack of play causes delinquency or if other factors are involved, it is still a valid concern. Take a moment and think about a world
where children are as competitive and financially driven as adults, where they
are weary of making friends due to the pressure to be better than them, where
they are excepted to be the best before they even know how to speak…. a world
where the image of a carefree child playing on a colorful playground is just
a figment of imagination. What does this world look like to you? Children's play symbolizes an epidemic that goes far deeper than the absence of colorful playgrounds: it is a critique on our society's shallow sense of life, where entertainment and money are no longer the means to an end, but the end itself.
By: Taylor Rothman
By: Taylor Rothman
I completly agree with all you had to say in the posts. It seems like care free play is not as important to kids now a days as it was when we were kids. I always remember getting all the neighborhood kids together and playing kickball at the end of the street. Or making up a new game with my sisters to play when we were bored at home. Now I look at my little cousin, who enjoys playing sports, but if he isn't in a league that his parents signed him up for he wont just go out and play a sport on his own. He would rather stay inside and play video games. Its too bad he doesn't enjoy some of the more simple things I used to enjoy growing up.
ReplyDeleteBrennan Ouellette- Team Fame
Your post really made me think about how different my little cousins childhood is compared to mine. My brothers and I used to go out after school every day and play with all of the kids on my street. It was so much fun and it really did teach me values and life lessons at a young age. Then I started to think about my cousins whose parents sign them up for sports teams and dance camps but they rarely go outside and interact with the kids on their block. Instead, they stay inside with their nanny where they play games on their individual iPads. It's just amazing to me how society has changed so drastically. At the age of 6 there is no way I would stay inside and sit on my iPad and play angry birds. I always wanted to be outside interacting with other children. I think that it's great that young kids are able to use technology at such a young age, yet I think it is going to hurt their social skills. In addition, I think not going outside to play and run around with other kids after school is going to hurt this generations children because they are not getting as much exercise as they should be. I think that parents are more paranoid about kidnappers and bullies and therefore they are keeping their kids inside because it's easier, yet it really will end up hurting them.
ReplyDelete-Shannon Funsch
I'm on board with Shannon's comment. I think one of the most important aspects of play is interacting with other children and learning social skills(I also agree that is important for a child's health). As a young child I think there was often an element of competition to free play, however I agree with your blogpost's point that play has increasingly been altered in order to be a form of entertainment for adults and an action children partake in only for competition. I think one of the most important points comes from your idea that children's play now has characteristics of an adult world. I think that play is an essential part of childhood, and that it is scary to think that these children are losing part of their childhood due to competition and technology. Children need free play in order to truly experience their childhood and they should not be rushed into experiencing only adult-like competition.
ReplyDeleteI agree with both of you! I'm also a psych major, and am currently hands-on studying the effects of play on preschool children. What I wish is that we had the money to do a longitudinal study and follow these kids as they grow up to asses their later social skills. I've found that everything is so structured...set times to play outside, snack time, no yelling, setting up playdates, etc. Like you said, what happened to those days where kids could just play outside until Mom called them in for dinner? How will our generation turn out as a result, and in contrast with our parents' generation? All things that we will find out with time.
ReplyDelete