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Does free play among kids lead to happier adults?

A recent article in the Journal of Pediatrics concludes that increasing mental health problems in teens and young adults have been caused by a decline in the amount of unsupervised play time they were allowed as kids.

I really want to believe this. It makes perfect sense to me that being constantly under the protection of adults leads to anxiety and worse as you grow up and are forced to live more independently. Unfortunately, this article fails to make the case at a critical juncture. Here's how it goes:

  1. Mental health has been declining for decades among children. The article presents fairly solid evidence for this.
  2. Free play has been declining for decades. Again, the evidence is solid.
  3. Free play makes kids happy. Also solid.
  4. Free play has long-term effects on mental well-being. This is the key step, and suddenly the evidence disappears:

Beyond promoting immediate mental well-being, children’s independent activity also may help build mental capacities and attitudes that foster future well-being. One way of thinking about this involves the concept of internal [good] vs external [bad] locus of control (LOC)....Many research studies, mostly cross-sectional but some longitudinal, have shown that a low internal LOC, assessed by a standard questionnaire, is highly predictive of anxiety and/or depression in both children and adults....Twenge and her colleagues also documented a dramatic decline in internal LOC among them over that same period. Logically, it seems likely that a decline in internal LOC was a mediating cause of the decline in mental well-being.

....And so, we have a cause–effect sequence that plausibly contributes to the relationship between children’s independent activity and their mental well-being: Experiences of having control ⇒ internal LOC ⇒ mental well-being.

In this final step, the wording changes dramatically. Things are "likely" or "plausible" or "logically likely." There's only one piece of research cited, a weak lab-based study showing only that children with controlling mothers have low internal LOC. There's nothing more on the crucial claim that lack of free play leads to low internal LOC.

So I'm unconvinced. I agree about the logical, plausible likelihood of all this, but that's all the more reason to be cautious about accepting weak confirming evidence. And I'm afraid that in this case the evidence is in fact pretty thin.

59 thoughts on “Does free play among kids lead to happier adults?

    1. Austin

      Right but we can’t test for this either, because absolutely nowhere in America is safe from gun violence, unless we put the schools inside airports.

      1. lawnorder

        The obvious answer is to look at children outside the USA. First, are there other countries that show the same pattern of declining mental health in children as in the US? If so, there is a standard for comparison involving children who are at low risk of gun violence in school. If not, that tells you that you should be looking for factors unique to the US as an explanation for children's declining mental health; gun violence is one such factor.

      1. chumpchaser

        Or, liberal kids are more comfortable voicing their anxiety since conservative parents love to physically assault their children.

          1. lawnorder

            It's a fact that approval or disapproval of corporal punishment correlates well with conservative/liberal orientation. It's also a fact that what a conservative sees as appropriate corrective action, a liberal sees as assault. Chumpchaser is not ignorant, but is clearly liberal.

      2. Citizen Lehew

        That because conservatives parents mentally peak at around Age 12, so it's like one big slumber party at the house all of the time.

    2. Atticus

      The vast majority of kids are not impacted in any way by threats of gun violence. Obviously not saying gun violence isn’t a problem, but statistically I doubt it moves the needle.

      1. Coby Beck

        you must mean that the vast majority of kids have not directly experienced gun violence. if not, this ignores the awareness of gun violence in schools, including school shooter drills, that is pretty universal. This is a clear and significant impact.

        1. Atticus

          I have school age kids. I’m pretty sure they and their friends rarely, if ever, think about gun violence in schools. Certainly not enough to impact their mental health.

              1. chumpchaser

                Considering that conservatives also believe in hitting their kids, the odds are high that your kids are too afraid of their parents to ever tell you the truth. About anything.

                  1. bethby30

                    I have been reading Karen Stenner’s “The Authoritarin Dynamic” which is a summary of the extensive research into the conditions that underlying authoritarianism (as distinct from conservatism).
                    One of the best predictors of whether a person is an authoritarian (determined by a variety of well-researched measurements) is their clear preference for an authoritarian parenting style as measured on a reliable test that has been used for years to distinguish between authoritarian, permissive, uninvolved and authoritative parenting. Even if the people tested were parents, just their preferred parenting style was enough to accurately predict their authoritarian tendencies on other measures.Authoritative parents have strict rule but allow a lot of freedoms within those rules.
                    They are also less punitive and more willing to adjust to the individual child.
                    Decades of research have shown that the authoritative parenting style is the most likely to lead kids to become confident, well adjusted, successful

          1. lawnorder

            "Think about it" =/= "talk about it". You can be fairly certain that your children do not talk about gun violence in your hearing very often. You don't know what they think about, or how often.

        2. Atticus

          The schools here (FL) have "lock down" drills as well as fire drills. But the kids don't spend any more time worrying about a school shooter than they do about a fire.

      2. lawnorder

        I'm of an age to remember "duck and cover" drills. No American child has ever been impacted by a nuclear bomb, but the perceived threat was there and had an impact. Only a small fraction of American children have actually been directly affected by school shootings, but they are ALL "impacted" by the threat.

        1. iamr4man

          When I was in 3rd grade there was a loud BANG!! noise outside our classroom. The teacher immediately yelled DROP and we all dove under our desks. Found out later that a janitor had accidentally dropped a large trash can outside our classroom. The teacher used the noise to do an impromptu drill. We had many drop drills but that’s the only one I clearly remember. I also remember dreaming of nuclear war.
          My daughter is the Principal of an elementary school and they periodically hold active shooter drills. I assume the student are similarly affected.

        2. bouncing_b

          I'm old enough to remember these drills. Two memories:
          1) I was suspended from HS for refusing to leave my desk, telling the teacher that our city was clearly a direct target so hiding under the desk would do no good. My mother had to go to the school and sign a paper saying that I was excused from these drills.
          2) I firmly believed that I and all my friends were likely to die in a nuclear war and would never get to be adults.

          So yes, even though I was never "impacted" by nuclear war itself, it sure did have an impact on my life.

        3. bethby30

          I agree. I am an older baby boomer and I know a lot of us had serious fears about nuclear war but not as much fear of fires, even though we had fire drills and my town schools didn’t bother with the ridiculous duck and cover drills. My best friend had frequent nightmares about being bombed.
          I think the fact that we were taught ways to respond to fires — stop, drop and roll for example — made us feel we had some ability to respond effectively in a fire. A nuclear war was completely out of our control. The Cuban missile crisis didn’t help.

  1. Keith B

    Shouldn't point 3 be reason enough to be in favor of it? "Is it better for kids to be happy or not?" is an easy enough question to answer.

  2. Austin

    “Free play has long-term effects on mental well-being.”

    How exactly are you going to test for this? It would need to be a multidecade long study following children with parents with different parenting styles, and trust all of them to self report how often their kids get to free play. Seems like the conclusive data Kevin is looking for won’t exist for a while and may never exist in as pure a form as he would like.

    1. Coby Beck

      What you describe is ideal, but you can do alot with extensive interviews or shorter term (5ish years?) experiments.

  3. Total

    Yeah, it seemed to fit into our current moral panic about anxiety way too conveniently not to have serious methodological problems.

  4. skeptonomist

    The article says "during the previous year 18.8% of US high school students seriously considered attempting suicide, 15.7% made a suicide plan, 8.9% attempted suicide one or more times, and 2.5% made a suicide attempt requiring medical treatment." This was the main thing that caused the authors to claim that there is a crisis in mental health.

    The actual suicide rate of high-school age is apparently not measured directly- the divisions are ages 5-14 and 14-24, but the yearly rate couldn't be higher than about 15 per 100k, or 0.015%. This is totally inconsistent with the claim in the article. I think Kevin called attention to this type of claim before. The fact that the authors seem unaware of the discrepancy should be a red flag.

    Of course what the article is talking about is what some high school students say, not what they actually did, assuming the data is not just made up out of thin air. The other measures of mental health cited are also dependent on people's answers, not really objective criteria.

    So the possibility must be considered that what has changed over time is the way people answer the polls, not really their mental states. Maybe it has just become more acceptable to admit to anxiety, etc. or actually it may be a fad to have certain types of mental affliction. The fact is that some people will do anything if it is a fad, that is if other people are doing it. Suicide itself has been a fad at certain times.

    1. Leo1008

      Thanks for highlighting this passage:

      “The article says ‘during the previous year 18.8% of US high school students seriously considered attempting suicide, 15.7% made a suicide plan, 8.9% attempted suicide one or more times, and 2.5% made a suicide attempt requiring medical treatment.’ This was the main thing that caused the authors to claim that there is a crisis in mental health.”

      As best as I’m aware, it’s very difficult to accurately and objectively measure what people are “seriously considering.” Perhaps it’s at least a bit easier when the question involves a straightforward decision (like who to vote for). But when the phenomenon under examination is deeply subjective, I doubt an accurate measurement is even possible. Sure, maybe there’s a certain percentage who answer a questionnaire by stating that they’ve “seriously considered” suicide, but those words will have a different meaning for each person.

      So the idea that 18.8% of US high school students are considering (or have recently considered) suicide strikes me as untrustworthy and potentially misleading. At best, such answers may indicate an unfortunate level of depression. But, if so, how can we see that trend on a historical timeline? And if we can’t, then have we really learned anything of value at all? Not to be too glib, but there have likely always been a lot of depressed teenagers …

  5. royko

    I'm unconvinced. I think kids should have more free play and it's a great thing, but I would be surprised if the effects were measurable -- partly because I think the impact isn't huge, partly because I think it's hard to measure because of so many other factors, and partly because it's hard to measure because the effects would be diverse and often subtle. But maybe! I certainly wouldn't discount the possibility.

    It's natural to think the things we believe are good or bad are having outsized effects on kids, but without hard data, it's easy to convince yourself there's something there when there isn't.

  6. Christof

    Yeah, this has a ring of what Colbert calls truthiness. You know. It sounds like it should be true even though there's no proof at all. And no way to test that free play made us all happy go lucky and carefree adults.

  7. dilbert dogbert

    I grew up as a free range child. Us kids, in a small town, did a lot of shit that would get you jailed in a large town.

    1. zic

      Agreed.

      Plus, as a female, that's also when most of the stuff that's not polite to talk about happened, some of it with PTSD type results.

      But I think the anxiousness many children experience now (besides fear of gun violence in school) is a different variety -- it's the hovering parents' fears that causes; the lack of encouragement to taste life with some gusto to explore the unknown. Think that this can also discourage developing habits of life-long learning.

    2. Citizen Lehew

      Same. I grew up in the 70s and early 80s... would run around all day, back home by dinner. Had a great time doing a lot of shit that would get your *parents* jailed in 2023.

      Bad news, though... a ton of my peers struggle with depression and anxiety, too. And most blame their negligent parents. Sooo, yeah.

    3. bouncing_b

      We'll, I don't know what kind of shit you were doing in your small town, but I grew up as a free range kid in Manhattan (going anywhere we wanted on the bus or subway from age 8) and I would say just the opposite.
      The reason is that out on our own in the big city we were anonymous. Just a bunch of kids like hundreds of others. No one noticed us or paid any attention.
      Maybe my view is as blinkered as yours, but I'll bet in your small town you were known to most adults and were constrained by that. We were not.

    1. Citizen Lehew

      Not sure, but there's definitely evidence that minimal adult supervision produces disrespectful a-holes and/or full-on criminals, depending on your neighborhood.

      1. lawnorder

        Can you point us to such evidence? In my observation, minimal supervision leads to capable children who become self-reliant adults.

        1. Citizen Lehew

          In my observation kids don't just spontaneously learn manners and respectful behavior. And of course every time a kid is arrested for shooting someone in the inner city, the first thing everyone says is "where were the parents?!"

          Also, school test scores seem to be highly correlated to how involved the parent are, so there's that.

  8. CAbornandbred

    The notion that there will ever be much free play among kids again is quaint. Kids never go anywhere or do anything without their phones. This is just a new reality. I think it's too bad that kids don't use their imaginations much and don't learn to settles issues among themselves.

    1. CAbornandbred

      I think humans, being social animals sort themselves into groups/teams. Working together and having backup is important to both individual and group success.

    2. Atticus

      I don’t think having a phone means you can’t engage in free time play. My son is a phone but he’ll be out in the neighborhood for half the day with friends without us hearing from him.

    3. lawnorder

      When I was a kid, I spent a good deal of my free time during the warmer months in places where cell phones don't work. Of course, I understand that's not possible for big city kids.

  9. Atticus

    Why is there such a decline in free play time? That’s certainly not the case where I live. My kids will be out playing with friends all over the neighborhood for hours on end. When they were younger and before they had phones, the mom’s would send a text to all the other neighborhood moms if they needed their kid to come home. (“If anyone has eyes on Johnny can you tell him to come home. Baseball practice in 30 minutes”.)

    1. iamr4man

      >>Why is there such a decline in free play time?<<

      Adults who grew up in the 80’s, 90’s years have fears of child abduction based on the scares of those days. Surely you remember milk carton kids. Also, more opportunity for organized sports activities. When I was young those things were far fewer and reserved for the “good” kids. Nowadays there is room for kids of every skill level. More parents send their kids to private arts lessons. More homework.

  10. rick_jones

    Does free play among kids lead to happier adults?

    To the extent they were good enough at pinball to get a free play, sure….

  11. azumbrunn

    Are you really saying that BECAUSE something is plausible we need to examine it extra critical? I'd think if you have a statistical correlation AND a plausible explanation for the correlation you are in good shape. Lung cancer is statistically correlated with smoking cigarettes. What else would you expect if you routinely fill your lungs with smoke? Common sense and statistics agree. Case proven.

    In the case here: You have weak statistics and a good solid strong common sense argument. It strengthens the probability that the hypothesis is correct even in the absence of good data--and maybe the difficulty of even get good data *where is the comparison set?"

    Personally I am happy to have grown up in the pre-helicopter-parent era.

  12. pjcamp1905

    That's the problem I have with a lot of this type of work, especially epidemiological studies. Note a correlation, construct a just-so story to "explain" it. That's why fat was bad until it wasn't, and red wine, fish oil and vitamin C were all wonderful until they weren't. This is why my dad never trusted medical research. They never could settle on what was bad.

    The problem, of course, is not in the science but the reporting thereon. You might have a problem with the conditional wording of the conclusion, but that makes perfect sense to me -- the authors are well aware that data is lacking in that step. But by the time Sanjay Gupta reports it on CNN, all the uncertainty will be massaged away.

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