This shocking finding comes from Persil’s 2016 ad campaign “Dirt is Good”, which surveyed 12,000 parents worldwide about their kids’ play habits.

They found the UK is at the top with 74% of parents saying their kids get an hour or less of outdoor play daily. Compare that to 65% in the US and 56% globally. For comparison, the UN guidelines recommend prisoners get at least an hour of outdoor exercise daily.

Children’s freedom is being limited anyway you look at it.

• In 1972, 80% of British 7- and 8-year-olds went to school without an adult. In 1990, this figure dropped to 9%.

• In 1981, kids spent around 40% of their time at school, but by 1997, this increased to about 55% of their week with more time in structured environments like school or daycare.

• From 1981 to 1997, children’s homework time more than doubled, increasing by 146% from 52 minutes to 128 minutes for six- to eight-year-olds. During the pandemic, primary school kids spent even more time, around 2.5 hours daily on homework (150 minutes).

As a psychologist with over ten years of experience and a background in studying child psychology, I’ve witnessed firsthand the transformative power of play on children’s development. Yet, it’s alarming to see how today’s children are deprived of this essential aspect of their growth.

Parents pack their children’s schedules with activities like music, sports, tutoring, and homework. In Spain, where I live, kids are constantly busy with endless activities.

There’s no time to play, daydream, explore, experiment, or be creative.

What kind of people are we raising?

Lost play, lost childhood

Peter Gray, a psychology professor at Boston College, studied a troubling trend over the last 50 years in the U.S.: as children’s free playtime decreased, rates of anxiety, depression, suicide, helplessness, and narcissism increased dramatically.

He argued that the decline in play is a significant contributor to the rise in psychopathology among young people.

His 2011 study used historical accounts, psychological assessments, and modern surveys to document changes in children’s playtime and mental health, focusing on free play versus structured environments.

He found some astonishing results:

• Play time dropped by 25% from 1981 to 1997 while time at school increased by 18%, homework by 145%, and shopping with parents by 168%.

• Kids today are 5 to 8 times more likely to be diagnosed with anxiety and depression compared to 50 years ago.

• The suicide rate for children under 15 quadrupled, and for those aged 15–24, it more than doubled between 1950 and 2005.

• By 2002, the average young person was more prone to feel helpless than 80% of young people in the 1960s. The belief that they control their destiny declined significantly.

Due to less free play, we’re facing a serious mental health crisis. Kids learn to make decisions, solve problems, control themselves, follow rules, and build social bonds through play. Without it, they lack these skills, leading to more anxiety, depression, and narcissism.

We have to give kids back their playtime and, with it, their chance to grow into emotionally stable adults.

When parenting becomes a second job

This is also a big toll on parents.

They’re spending much more time with their children. They take them to sports practice, take time to read to them, and help them with their homework.

But it’s not like they got more free time to spend time with them.

They’re working harder than ever, juggling work, errands, time with friends, and raising a family.

• A study by the Pew Research Center shows that on average, fathers’ childcare time increased from 2.6 hours per week in 1965 to 7.3 hours per week in 2011. Similarly, mother’s time went from 10.6 hours per week to 13.5 hours per week.

• Today’s working mothers clock as much or even more time with their kids than stay-at-home moms did back in the ’60s and ‘70s.

It would be better if parents spent quality time with their kids, but that’s not the case. They’re focused on getting better grades. A Harvard survey of 10,000 students found that 80% believe their parents prioritize good grades over traits like compassion and kindness.

So in this setting, is there any room for unstructured play?

The lost art of childhood play

Playing as a kid means having the time and space to create your own games and let your mind wander.

It allows kids to think for themselves. There are no fixed rules, so they have to find their own limits. This fosters their imagination, curiosity, and creativity.

But now kids don’t have time to play even though it’s in our nature.

Researchers have observed crocodiles surfing waves near a beach in Australia, octopuses blowing streams of water at empty pill bottles, fish bumping a thermometer, and even a turtle batting a basketball.

Kids now can’t even exercise one of the most instinctual behaviors we have.

Not all hope is lost

When you see a place like this what do you see?

If you look at the original picture here, it seems like a junkyard but it’s actually a playground.

In 1943, A Danish landscape architect called Carl Sorensen created a junkyard playground in the Copenhagen suburb of Emdrup filling a 75,000-square-foot lot with broken-down cars, firewood, and old tires where kids could do whatever they wanted. It attracted around 200 kids daily, spreading the idea throughout Denmark and Britain and creating many of these playgrounds.

A 2015 review of 18 studies by Mariana Brussoni and her colleagues found that there’s robust evidence that unstructured, risky play is a big win for kids’ physical and mental health.

Free play boosts kids’ physical activity by up to 4.4 minutes daily, enhances social skills through frequent peer interactions, and doesn’t significantly increase serious injury risks, making it essential for their overall development and well-being.

Outdoor free play is highly beneficial, but what about playing indoors?

Agora is an unconventional but highly successful school created by Sjef Drummen in 2013. Forget about subjects, tests, homework, and rigid timetables. Instead, in this school you find a personalized learning paradise where students aged 12 to 18 follow their interests and passions through self-determined “challenges”.

These challenges can range from building a tropical fish tank to exploring the pyramids of Egypt. The idea is to let kids dive deep into topics they genuinely care about, fostering intrinsic motivation and a love for learning.

It all starts with unstructured time and free play.

Facilitators, rather than traditional teachers, guide students working in small coaching groups and help them articulate their learning goals and track their progress. They hop from one challenge to another fostering a deep sense of ownership and motivation throughout their learning journey.

It’s a radical departure from traditional education, but one that could be the blueprint for schools of the future.

We have to reclaim childhood joy (and curiosity)

We’ve built a world that’s no fun for kids.

Childhood has turned into a grueling series of structured activities and we’ve driven them away from something as natural as free play.

Agora and Emdrups show us a different path. But they’re not the only ones pushing an alternative narrative. There are many others like Summerhill School, Sudbury Valley School, and the Montessori and Waldorf school systems.

I can attest firsthand to the beneficial experience of Waldorf schools. I attended a Waldorf primary school for three years, and my vision of life radically changed there.

We didn’t have grades, and I discovered my passion for the violin, which I still play today. The encouragement from teachers, who weren’t pressured to make students achieve success in standardized testing, motivated me to go the extra mile in learning things just for the sake of it.

If only all children could experience what I had in those precious three years.

It’s high time we let children reclaim the joy, creativity, and resilience that come from simply playing. If we don’t, the world will not just be dull, it will turn into a global mental health crisis.

Let’s focus on making our kids be kids again.

If you enjoyed reading this article, consider chipping in a few bucks to support my work. It takes a ton of time and effort to research and write these pieces, and your donation would mean the world to me!

Donate here