Modern childhood in America is different. Children spend most of their time in structured activities: School, sports, and mountains of homework. No time for biking around the neighborhood.  Until now. School is out. What will children do with all of that time? Bounce a ball? Take a walk around the block? Are there any benefits for children that spend time in these unstructured activities?

Written and reported by Emily Sarah Sumner, PhD

REFERENCES

Barker, Jane E., Andrei D. Semenov, Laura Michaelson, Lindsay S. Provan, Hannah R. Snyder, and Yuko Munakata. "Less-structured time in children's daily lives predicts self-directed executive functioning." Frontiers in psychology 5 (2014): 593.

Gray, Peter. Free to learn: Why unleashing the instinct to play will make our children happier, more self-reliant, and better students for life. Basic Books, 2013.

Twenge, Jean M., A. Bell Cooper, Thomas E. Joiner, Mary E. Duffy, and Sarah G. Binau. "Age, period, and cohort trends in mood disorder indicators and suicide-related outcomes in a nationally representative dataset, 2005–2017." Journal of Abnormal Psychology (2019).

Thomas, Ashley, P. Stanford, and Barbara Sarnecka. "No child left alone: Moral judgments about parents affect estimates of risk to children." Collabra: Psychology 2, no. 1 (2016).

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/27/health/children-mental-health-quarantine-coronavirus-wellness/index.html

http://letgrow.org/

https://bigthink.com