Parents, let your kids have some fun. Kids, including myself, feel so pressured by school to constantly keep working. Workworkwork. It’s hard to take breaks or have fun with friends when homework and tests are still on our minds. I’ve had so many plans that I’ve put aside because I was too busy with school. I was too busy to have fun, to play. Workworkwork. Give your kids the chance to play when they’re young so they can carry that element of fun with them into adulthood. So, they aren’t always worried or stressed which gives them the ability to handle difficult situations.
Look into the data, play has declined in the past year causing an increase in mental disorders like anxiety and depression. In Peter Gray’s The Decline of Play, he explains that there are higher rates of anxiety and depression among the children of today compared to children in the 1940s to the 1970s. To accompany this, he also says that a study at the University of Michigan showed a “25% decrease in time spent playing” along with a “145% increase in time spent doing schoolwork at home.” There could be many reasons to this: the increase of the use of social media or even the fears many parents have of letting their children outside. Either way, the decline of play could have even more bad consequences than the excuses used against it.
And to top it all off, now the kids of our generation are anxious about school, worried and stressed about our futures and college. We use social media to disguise ourselves and we use memes to distract from our problems. Giving kids a chance to play keeps us off our phones, helps us relax, and lets us exercise outside while having fun with friends. Global School Play Day has become a popular event that allows kids to do this. Here’s one student’s opinion on the day, “This experience helped me realize that I can still be a child, and I am not too old to just play games. I think enjoying time outside without our phones can be very healthy and beneficial for the brain.” Other students who participated in the event were able to reminisce from their childhood memories and feel that same joy they felt as kids.
Years have passed since I, and many other kids, were able to reconnect to our childhood ways. This Global School Play Day made me feel like I was a kid again. I wasn’t thinking about my test next period or any of my other classes. I was just thinking about playing games and having fun with my friends. I felt carefree, like nothing else mattered except playing. It was fun and I really enjoyed it. Playing gives us that sense of joy that differs from social media. It allows us to let go of our worries and bring us back to our good old days, where our schoolwork and social lives weren’t our biggest concerns. Back to the days where we could just playplayplay.
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