The decline of play | Peter Gray | TEDxNavesink

Summary

This talk explores the biological and evolutionary significance of play in young mammals, particularly its role in developing physical, social, and emotional skills crucial for survival. The speaker highlights the decline of free play in children over the past 60 years and its correlation with increased mental health issues, suggesting a need to prioritize play and create safe spaces for it, to counteract the negative impacts on children's well-being and development.

Takeaways

• 🧬 Play is an evolutionary necessity, with young mammals of all species engaging in it to develop physical, social, and emotional skills crucial for survival.
• 🐾 Play deprivation in animals leads to social and emotional issues, such as an inability to adapt to new environments or respond appropriately to social cues.
• 🧠 Large-brained mammals, including humans, play more due to the complexity of skills they need to learn, which is particularly evident in children's extensive play compared to other young mammals.
• 🌏 A study of hunter-gatherer cultures found that children were allowed to play freely from dawn to dusk, fostering bright, happy, cooperative, and resilient individuals.
• ⏳ There has been a significant decline in children's freedom and opportunity to play over the last 50 to 60 years, impacting their development and well-being.
• 📚 The increased emphasis on formal education and a 'schoolish' view of child development have contributed to the reduction of children's playtime.
• 🚫 Fears propagated by media and experts have limited children's outdoor play, leading to a self-generating cycle of decreased play opportunities and safety.
• 📉 The decline in play correlates with an increase in mental disorders in childhood, including depression and anxiety, and a rise in suicide rates among young people.
• 🔄 The sense of control over their lives has diminished among young people, which is linked to higher rates of anxiety and depression.
• 🤷‍♂️ There has been a rise in narcissism and a decline in empathy among young people, possibly due to reduced opportunities for unstructured social interaction.
• 🎨 Creativity among children has also declined, which can be linked to the reduction in play, a natural environment for creative thinking and innovation.

Q & A

What is the primary focus of the researcher's study on play?

The researcher's primary focus is on studying play from a biological and evolutionary perspective, specifically looking at the reasons why play emerged in the course of natural selection and its evolutionary function.

Why is play important for young mammals?

Play is important for young mammals because it helps them develop fit bodies, practice physical skills crucial for their survival, and learn social and emotional skills such as cooperation and managing fear, which are essential for social animals.

What are the consequences of depriving young animals of play during their growth?

Depriving young animals of play leads to them becoming socially and emotionally crippled. They overreact with fear in novel environments, fail to adapt or explore, and cannot respond appropriately to social signals from other animals.

Why do mammals with larger brains and more to learn play more?

Mammals with larger brains and more to learn play more because they require more opportunities to develop the complex skills and behaviors necessary for their survival and social integration.

How do hunter-gatherer cultures view children's play?

Hunter-gatherer cultures view children's play as essential for learning the skills needed for adulthood, allowing children to play and explore freely without adult guidance from dawn to dusk.

What has been the trend in children's freedom and opportunity to play over the last 50 to 60 years?

Over the last 50 to 60 years, there has been a continuous erosion in children's freedom and opportunity to play due to increased school workloads, a 'schoolish' view of child development, and the spread of irrational fears about children's safety.

How has the increase in school workloads affected children's playtime?

The increase in school workloads has reduced the time children have available for free play. This includes longer school years, extended school days, and the introduction of homework even for elementary school children.

What is the 'schoolish' view of child development mentioned in the script?

The 'schoolish' view of child development is the belief that children learn best from adults and that their self-directed activities with other children are a waste of time, which should be replaced with more structured, adult-guided learning.

What evidence is there to suggest a correlation between the decline in play and mental health issues in children?

There is a well-documented increase in mental disorders in childhood, such as major depression and anxiety disorders, that correlates with the decline in play since the 1950s. This increase is continuous, gradual, and roughly linear over the years.

How has the decline in play affected children's sense of control over their lives?

The decline in play has led to a continuous decline in children's and young adults' sense that they have control over their own lives, as measured by the internal-external locus of control scale, making them more susceptible to anxiety and depression.

What are some of the proposed solutions to increase play opportunities for children?

Proposed solutions include recognizing the problem, developing neighborhood networks, establishing safe places for children to play such as adventure playgrounds, opening up school gymnasiums for free play, and standing up against the continuous demand for more schooling.

Outlines

00:00

🧬 Evolutionary Significance of Play

The speaker, a researcher in the field of play from a biological and evolutionary perspective, discusses the importance of play in the development of young mammals, including humans. Play is identified as a crucial activity for physical and social skills, risk-taking, and emotional regulation. The speaker highlights the negative impacts of play deprivation on animals and suggests that similar effects can be observed in human children, emphasizing the importance of play for learning and social development in various cultures, including hunter-gatherer societies.

05:02

📚 The Changing Landscape of Childhood Play

This paragraph delves into the historical context of play, contrasting the freedom children had in the 1950s to play outdoors without adult supervision to the structured and supervised activities that dominate children's lives today. The speaker discusses the shift in societal attitudes towards play, the increased emphasis on formal education, and the spread of fears that limit children's opportunities for independent play. The paragraph also touches on the consequences of this shift, including a rise in mental health issues among children and a decrease in their sense of autonomy.

10:03

📉 The Decline of Play and Its Consequences

The speaker presents evidence of a decline in play and its correlation with an increase in mental health disorders, anxiety, depression, and suicide rates among young people. There is also a noted decrease in children's sense of control over their lives and a rise in narcissism coupled with a decline in empathy. The paragraph suggests that the lack of play may be a contributing factor to these negative trends, as play is a natural environment for children to develop problem-solving skills, resilience, and creativity.

15:05

🌟 Solutions to Revitalize Play in Children's Lives

In the concluding paragraph, the speaker calls for a recognition of the problem of declining play and the need for action. Suggestions include developing a sense of community and neighborhood networks, creating safe spaces for children to play, and advocating for less emphasis on formal schooling. The speaker encourages the audience to support the reintroduction of play in children's lives, emphasizing that it is a solvable issue and that children do not need more school but rather more opportunities for free and self-directed play.

Keywords

💡Play

Play is a fundamental activity for young mammals, including humans, where they engage in activities for enjoyment and practice rather than for direct survival needs. In the video, play is highlighted as a crucial part of development, aiding in physical, social, and emotional growth. It is exemplified by how animals practice skills and social behaviors that are vital for their survival.

💡Biological Evolutionary Perspective

This term refers to the study of how biological traits and behaviors have evolved over time through natural selection. The video speaker, a researcher, uses this perspective to explore the origins and purpose of play in the animal kingdom and its significance in the evolutionary process.

💡Natural Selection

Natural selection is the process by which organisms better adapted to their environment tend to survive and produce more offspring. The script discusses play as a result of natural selection, suggesting it provides survival advantages such as risk assessment and social skills development.

💡Social Skills

Social skills are the abilities to interact effectively with others. The video emphasizes that play is a medium for young animals to learn cooperation, proximity tolerance, and social cues, which are essential for group-living species.

💡Risk-Taking

Risk-taking in the context of the video refers to the behavior of young animals learning to assess and manage danger during play. This behavior is vital as it helps them to experience fear in a controlled environment and prepares them for real-life emergencies.

💡Play-Deprived

Play-deprived animals are those that have been denied the opportunity to engage in play during their developmental stages. The script describes how such deprivation leads to social and emotional impairments, affecting their ability to react appropriately to new environments and social interactions.

💡Hunter-Gatherer Cultures

Hunter-gatherer cultures are traditional societies that rely on hunting, fishing, and foraging for subsistence. The video references a study of such cultures where children are observed to have abundant freedom to play, which is believed to contribute to their development of skills necessary for adulthood.

💡Mental Disorders

Mental disorders are psychological conditions that affect thinking, mood, and behavior. The script correlates the decline in play with an increase in mental disorders among children, suggesting a link between free play and mental health.

💡Anxiety and Depression

Anxiety and depression are common mental health issues characterized by feelings of worry, fear, and sadness. The video discusses the rise in these conditions among children and posits that the reduction in play opportunities may be a contributing factor.

💡Narcissism and Empathy

Narcissism refers to an excessive interest in oneself, while empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. The script notes a rise in narcissism and a decline in empathy among young people, which may be related to the decrease in play and social interaction.

💡Creativity

Creativity is the use of imagination or original ideas to produce something new. The video points out a decline in creative thinking among children, which is linked to the reduction of play, as play is inherently a creative and innovative activity.

Highlights

Play is crucial for the development of young mammals, including humans, as it helps them develop physical, social, and emotional skills.

Laboratory experiments have shown that play-deprived animals are socially and emotionally crippled, unable to adapt to new environments or social cues.

Play is essential for the survival of animals with large brains and complex social structures, such as humans.

Hunter-gatherer cultures allow children to play freely, leading to well-adjusted, cooperative, and resilient individuals.

There has been a significant decline in children's freedom and opportunity to play over the last 50 to 60 years.

Increased school workload and a 'schoolish' view of child development have contributed to the decline of play.

Irrational fears propagated by media and experts have limited children's outdoor play, affecting their development.

The decline in play has coincided with an increase in mental disorders, anxiety, depression, and suicide rates among children.

Children's sense of control over their lives has diminished over the decades, leading to increased anxiety and depression.

There is a rise in narcissism and a decline in empathy among young people, possibly linked to the reduction in play.

Creativity among schoolchildren has been on a gradual decline since the mid-1980s, potentially due to less play.

Play is a natural mechanism for children to learn control, problem-solving, and empathy, essential for mental health.

The speaker calls for a societal shift towards valuing play and reducing the emphasis on formal schooling.

Community involvement and the creation of safe play spaces are suggested as solutions to increase play opportunities.

The speaker emphasizes the need for bravery to resist the pressure for more schooling and to advocate for play.

The conclusion calls for collective action to bring play back to children's lives for their overall well-being.

Transcripts

Transcriber: Ilze Garda Reviewer: Mile Živković

Good afternoon.

I am a researcher who studies play

from a biological, evolutionary perspective.

I'm interested in the reasons

why play came about in the course of natural selection,

I'm interested in the evolutionary function of play.

So I am going to start with animals.

Young mammals of essentially all species play.

In play, they develop fit bodies,

they practice physical skills

that are crucial to their survival,

and they also practice social and emotional skills.

By playing together,

they learn to cooperate with one another,

they learn to be in close vicinity with one another

without losing their tempers

— it's very important for social animals to develop.

In risky play, they learn to take risks

to experience fear without loosing their heads

— a lesson that can save their lives

in the course of a real emergency.

Researchers have conducted laboratory experiments

in which they had deprived young animals

— usually this is done with rats, but sometimes with monkeys —

of the opportunity to play as they're growing up.

They've developed ways of doing this

without depriving them of other social experiences;

at least with rats, they develop ways of doing this.

The result is that when these young animals develop,

they are socially and emotionally crippled.

When you place one of these play-deprived animals

in a somewhat novel, somewhat frightening environment,

they overreact with fear:

they freeze in the corner,

they don't adapt to —

they don't explore the environment as a normal animal would.

If you place one of these play-deprived animals

with an unfamiliar peer,

they alternately freeze in fear

and lash out with inappropriate, ineffective aggression;

they don't learn to respond

to the social signals of the other animal.

It is not surprising that those mammals

that have the largest brains and that have the most to learn,

are the ones that we find play the most.

And given that, it should be no surprise at all

that human children, when they are free to do so,

play far, far more than do the young of any other mammals.

A few years ago,

one of my graduate students and I conducted a survey of anthropologists

who had observed hunter-gatherer cultures

in various isolated parts of the world.

We asked them questions about children and play

in the cultures that they observed.

Every single one of these 10 different anthropologists

who had studied hunter-gatherer cultures on three different continents,

told us that the children in the cultures that they had studied,

including the young teenagers,

were free to play and explore on their own, without adult guidance,

all day long, from dawn to dusk,

essentially every day.

The adults in these cultures, when asked, say,

"We have to let them play, because that's how they learn the skills

that they need to acquire to grow into adulthood."

Some of these anthropologists told us

that the children they observed in these cultures

were among the brightest, happiest,

most cooperative, most well-adjusted, most resilient children

that they had ever observed anywhere.

From a biological evolutionary perspective

play is nature's means of ensuring

that young mammals, including young human beings,

acquire the skills that they need to acquire

to develop successfully into adulthood.

From a religious perspective, we might say

that play is God's gift that makes life on Earth worthwhile.

Now, here's the sad news,

here's really what I am here to talk about.

Over the last 50 to 60 years,

we have been gradually taking that gift away.

Over this period of time,

there has been a continuous erosion

in children's freedom and opportunity to play,

to really play, to play freely.

This has been documented in various ways

by historians and social scientists,

and I am old enough that I have seen it in the course of my lifetime.

In the 1950s, when I was a child,

we had ample opportunity to play.

We had school, but school was not the big deal that is today.

Some people might not remember,

but the school year then was five weeks shorter than it is today.

The school day was six hours long,

but at least in elementary school, two of those hours were outdoors playing,

we had half hour recess in the morning, half hour recess in the afternoon,

a full hour at lunch,

we could go wherever we wanted during that period.

We were never in the classroom

more than an hour at a time, or for four hours a day,

it just wasn't the big deal.

And homework for elementary school children

was essentially unheard of.

There was some homework for highschool students,

but much, much less than today.

Out of schools, we had chores,

some of us had part-time jobs,

but for the most part we were free to play,

for hours a day after school,

all day on weekends, all summer long.

I like to say that when I was a kid,

I had school,

and I also had a hunter-gatherer education.

At that time, you could walk through any neighbourhood in America,

almost any time the school was not in session,

and you would find kids outdoors playing,

without any adults around.

Now if you walk through most neighborhoods in the United States,

what you find, if you find kids outdoors at all,

is that they're wearing uniforms,

they are in some kind of manicured field,

they are following the directions of adult coaches,

while their parents are sitting on the sidelines

cheering their every move.

We call this play sometimes,

but it isn't by any play researchers' definition,

it's not really play.

Play, by definition, is self-controlled and self-directed,

it's the self-directed aspect of play

that gives it its educative power.

Here are some of the reasons why play has declined.

One, of course, is the increased weight of school.

But an even more important reason, as important as that one is,

I think, an even more important reason for the decline of play

has been the spread outside of the school walls

of, what I call, a schoolish view of child development.

The view that children learn best everything, from adults,

that children's own self-directed activities with other children

are wastes of time.

We don't often say it that way,

but that's the implicit understanding

that underlies so much of our policy with regard to children.

So, childhood is turned

from a time of freedom to a time of résumé building.

Another reason, of course, has to do with the spread of fears,

really, mostly irrational fears,

spread by the media, spread by experts

who are constantly warning us of the dangers out there,

if we don't watch our children every minute that they are out there.

Many people recognize the absurdity

of some of these extreme fears,

but yet, once we get them in our head, it's hard to shake them.

I know many parents who would love to let their kids play outdoors,

and they think it would be great to,

but they just can't get rid of that idea.

In addition,

there is a self-generative quality due to the decline of play.

Once there are fewer kids out there playing,

the outdoors becomes less attractive.

It also becomes less safe.

So that kid who does go outdoors,

finds nobody to play with and goes back inside.

I don't want to romanticize the 1950s,

there is a lot of ways in which we are

a much better world today than we were then,

but we are a much worse world for kids.

Over the same decades that play has been declining,

we have seen a well-documented increase

in all sorts of mental disorders in childhood.

The best evidence for this comes from

the use of standardized clinical assessment questionnaires.

Based on such assessments,

five to eight times as many children today

suffer from major depression or from a clinically significant anxiety disorder

as was true in the 1950s.

And this has been a continuous, gradual,

roughly linear increase over the years,

very well-documented.

Over the same period, we have seen among young people, from age 15 to 24,

a doubling of the suicide rate.

We have seen among children aged 15 and under,

a quadrupling of the suicide rate.

Over the same period of time,

the suicide rate for people my age has gone down considerably.

We've become a worse world for children,

not necessarily a worse world for adults,

and maybe a better world for us, older adults.

We've also seen a decline

of the young people's sense

that they have control over their own lives.

There is a questionnaire called

the internal-external locus of control scale.

There is a version of this for children, as well as for adults.

It's been given since about 1960.

Ever since it's been given,

we have seen a decline, a continuous decline,

in children's, in young adults' sets

that they have control over their own lives.

They have more and more of a sense that their lives are controlled by fate,

by circumstance, by other people's decisions.

This is significant

in terms of the relationship between anxiety and depression

because one thing clinical psychologists know very well

is that not having an internal sense of control

sets you up for anxiety and depression.

More bad news;

we have also seen in fairly recent years,

due to the questionnaires that have been given out since about 1980,

a rise in narcissism in young people

and a decline in empathy.

And most recently, there have been research studies,

analyzing results of tests of creativity over the years,

which show that there has been a gradual decline

in creative thinking among children,

schoolchildren of all grades,

since about the mid-1980s.

Now, of course, as any social scientist will tell you,

correlation does not prove cause and effect.

But in this case, I think that there is good reason to believe

that the decline in play is the cause of these deleterious changes.

For one thing the correlation is very good,

especially the correlation between the decline in play

— which seems to be roughly linear beginning around 1955 on through today—

and the roughly linear increase

in anxiety and depression among young people.

It does not correlate with things

like economic cycles or wars.

Children are more depressed today

than they were during the Great Depression.

They are more anxious today than they were during the Cold War

when they were continuously being warned

of the threat of nuclear holocaust that could happen any time.

In addition, play —

everything we know about play

tells us that these are the effects we would expect

if children are deprived of play.

They are analogous to the effects we see in animals

when we take play away from animals.

Play is where children learn that they are in control of their life,

it's really the only place they are in control of their own life.

When we take that away,

we don't give them the chance to learn how to control their own life.

Play is where they learn to solve their own problems

and learn therefore that the world is not so scary after all.

Play is where they experience joy

and they learn the world is not so depressing after all.

Play is where they learn to get along with peers

and see from others' points of view,

and practice empathy, and get over narcissism.

Play is by definition creative and innovative.

Of course, if you take away play, all these things are going to go down.

And yet, the human cry that we hear everywhere

is for more school, not for more play.

And we've got to, we've really got to change that.

(Applause)

So, I'm told that it's always good to end on a positive note.

(Laughter)

I don't want to be the only depressive speaker here.

(Laughter)

So, I'm going to say: "Look, let's admit this is our fault.

We have done this to the children in this world."

Let's start by admitting that.

But then let's say, "We can do something about it."

The first thing we need to do is to recognize that it's a problem.

And once we've recognized that's a problem,

then we need to figure out how to solve that problem.

We need to have an internal sense of control

and know that we can solve this problem.

We have to begin by examining our own priorities.

What do we really want for our kids?

And how do we achieve it?

We have to get to know our neighbors, develop neighborhood networks,

because it's in neighborhoods

that children make friends and develop playmates.

By getting to know our neighbors, we can convince ourselves

that the neighbourhood, after all, is a safe place to play,

that neighbor isn't a child molester after all,

once we get to know him.

We need also to establish places for children to play,

they have kind of disappeared,

we have even taken away sidewalks.

We need to do things like open up gymnasiums,

school gymnasiums after school for free play.

We need to do things like put a supervisor in the park,

so parents will feel it's safe enough to leave their kid there to play.

A supervisor who knows how to keep things safe enough,

but not intervene or interfere.

We need to do things like close off city streets during certain hours,

so kids can once again reclaim the street as a place to play.

And we need to do things like develop adventure playgrounds

of the kind that are relatively common in Europe

and becoming once again more so.

And perhaps, most of all, we need to be brave enough

to stand up against the continuous clamor for more schooling.

(Applause)

Our children don't need more school.

They need less school.

Maybe they need better school,

but they don't need more school.

So with that I am going to conclude,

and I thank you very much for coming,

I bless you and I hope that you will all do what you can

to help bring play back to your neighborhood

and to children everywhere.

Thank you.

(Applause)