Lockdown, technology and parental fear: our children are missing so much by not playing outside
When I compare my own childhood in the Seventies to that of my children’s, aged 14, 13 and 11, the differences are remarkable. My single-digit years were spent playing out until we were called in for dinner. My parents, although caring and attentive, did not monitor my every move. Like every other generation until the Noughties, I didn’t have a phone – nor any other screen of my own, to lure me into a rabbit hole of inactivity.
While my children play team sports, their relationship with the front door isn’t marked by the constant revolution that I recall from my childhood, and their activity has just about always had a watchful eye on it.
They’re not alone. New research has revealed the majority of children are not allowed to play outside, unsupervised, until around the age of 11 – two whole years later than their parents’ generation. Although children average around three hours of play per day, only half of this tends to take place outside.
The findings of the British Children’s Play Survey, in which more than 1,900 parents of children aged five to 11 were asked about their children’s play habits, show what Dr Tim Gill, the author of Urban Playground, has called “a gradual, creeping lockdown over at least a generation”.
Then, of course, throw in the pandemic: restrictions of the past year have sharply highlighted the extent to which so many of our children have become conditioned to time inside. As Robin, mother of Jacob (8) and Lily (10) says, while schools were closed: “I found myself begging my children to get off their phones and screens but not being able to present them with alternatives. I was working and not able to spare the time to take them to the park, and they were completely unprepared – and unwilling – to go on their own.”
The Catch-22, of course, being that she wasn’t keen on letting them. As parenting expert Dee Newman acknowledges: “Safety is the number one concern of most parents; many have said that their hearts jump when their little ones let go of their hands while out and about. Letting them out to play, understandably, takes things to an entirely different level.”
As a parent, I assume that, thanks to technology, my generation is more exposed to worst-case scenario information than our own parents were. I suspect that our lives also become increasingly structured, with timetabled activities equating to ‘good’ parenting, and untrammelled freedom associated with neglect.
Yet what makes the delay in allowing children to venture outside unsupervised even more tragic – as several parents I spoke to acknowledge – is that by the time today’s parents feel comfortable with the idea, ‘play’ has more or less disappeared from the equation. With a childhood spent resorting to – and, furthermore, being actively encouraged to resort to – technology, how much less likely will today’s children be to climb, run and wrestle when the parental safeguards are off?
“In some cases, children will end up being conditioned to smart devices,” agrees Newman. “Then, by the time they are allowed out to play unsupervised, they have a lack of understanding about how to interact with other children; how to participate in group activities and – in some cases – less of an understanding about their own actions, decisions and how to manage risks.”
Robin assumed that the gaps in her children’s experience were being dealt with at school and in extra-curricular activities. “I never stopped to think that such interactions are supervised, subject to form-filling and really quite far from the wild and innocent freedom of my childhood,” she says. “It’s really only since lockdown that I am increasingly seeing the extent to which my desire to keep them safe has resulted in perhaps stunting other parts of their development.”
What’s the answer? When I stop to think about it, it seems extraordinary to me that my children – trackable and contactable, thanks to smartphones, in a way that I never was – should be so mollycoddled. And after a year of lockdowns, it’s become increasingly apparent that confidence and social interaction are more vital than straight As.
What can children do, when?
Children over five can technically travel unaccompanied on London buses and trams
Most train operators won’t allow children under the age of 12 to travel without someone aged 16 or over
Some airlines offer unaccompanied minor services for children aged 5-14, but most require young flyers to be accompanied by someone 16-plus
Children under eight must be accompanied by a parent or guardian at the cinema
Legally, there is no minimum age from which children can walk to and from school on their own, but many councils suggest eight years old is a good time to start.
