LONDON — The Snapchat generation doesn’t seem to love the outdoors — at least not as much as doing other things. The average child between 6 and 16 years old spends only an hour a day outside, playing video games over twice as long, a new study finds.
Researchers at Decathlon, a sports retailer in the United Kingdom, recently surveyed more than 2,000 British parents and children, hoping to learn more about the recreational attitudes of society’s youngest generation. The researchers’ findings shed light on a number of phenomena.
Today’s children and teens, the survey found, prefer a whole host of activities over playing in the mud. These activities include gaming, watching TV, surfing the web, and listening to music. Believe it or not, some adolescents even preferred doing homework (10 percent) and completing chores (three percent) over enjoying the wilderness.
“With games such as ‘Fortnite’ taking over the lives of many young children, they would prefer to stay indoors than kick a football around with friends or wander through the woods,” says Chris Allen, a department manager at Decathlon, in a statement.
More shockers: four in ten British adolescents have never gone camping, nearly half have never built a den or fort, and more than half have never climbed a tree. Many who had tried these rites of passage couldn’t stop thinking about their devices.
“Today’s generation of children have more things than ever before to encourage them to stay inside – and it seems these gadgets are keeping them from enjoying the great outdoors,” says Allen. “We want to encourage parents and their children to head outside and enjoy a real-life family adventure!”
Parents, for their part, seem concerned. Over two-thirds worry that their children spend too little time outdoors, and nearly four in ten struggle so much to get their kids to leave the house that they actually have to force them to do so.
Three-fifths of parents blamed games like Fortnite for their child’s indoor tendencies, while three-fourths said they spent more time outside when they were the same age.
It’s not for a lack of effort: only a third of kids said they were even open to visiting a local park or garden.
Attitudes shift with maturity, so the jury is still out on whether kids will one day change their tune. Still, the early returns aren’t pretty.
Decathlon hired British market research firm OnePoll to conduct its survey earlier this year.
Yup, that’s what makes it average. And, gay men swallow sperm.
Wow! When I was a kid in the late fifties, and sixties, I and my friends spent more like seventy hours a week outside. Mom had to call us home for dinner;)
There is no way this is true.It doesnt take 7 hours a week to walk to the car to go to the mall.
Today’s children are allergic to sunlight.
And it’s the parents fault. All they’re raising is a bunch of flabby, out of touch, non-communicative kids. They’ll never know how to have a real relationship unless it has a keypad or controls.
Does that make my kids far above average?
There’s a lot of reasons for this… We parents are just as bad about living on our phones. It’s kind of a “do as I say and not as I do” phenomenon… Helicopter parenting is still the norm. Most parents are too scared to let their kids wander the streets and “come home when the street lights go on.” And with all the stories out there about CPS getting calls from nosy neighbors every time they see an unaccompanied kid, it’s little wonder we keep them inside and on their screens. And when those of us who are lucky enough to work from home send our kids outside to play, no one else is there. My solutions: Get your PlayStations/Xboxes/whatever out of the house. Stop using devises as babysitters. Set real and enforceable limits. Find other families in your neighborhood who feel the same way as you do so there are actually other children outside when we send them out to play. Stop over-scheduling with adult run activities so kids have time for unstructured play. AND we adults need put down our screens too. Or else just accept that this is the new norm and be done with it.
Take away kids’ devices. My six year old son lost his friend that lives across the street because his friend now has an iPad. The friend no longer comes over to our house. When my son goes over to his house he just wants to play on his iPad.
Its not as safe today for kids to be out side…
thank the left…!
Sad.
As a child from the1950’s we played outside during the warm months all day and into the evenings. In the winter, we went sledding if we had snow. I was commenting to a family member that I NEVER see children playing outside anymore. Of course, we didn’t have TV channels other than 4, 5, 7 and 9 and my mother was a stay-at-home mother and no way would she have allowed us to sit inside watching TV unless it was winter and really cold. During the afternoon, mostly just boring soap operas we on and we didn’t watch those. We play board games outside and tag games, dress-up, with dolls, put on plays for the kids in the neighborhood as well as going to the local swimming pool. We had such a blast as kids that I feel for the ones today are missing out of such great socialization and fun activity.
I can’t imagine how out of shape the kids today are just do to inactivity. I even see adults out walking their dog with their nose stuck in a smartphone. People don’t even walk and enjoy the scenery or looking at people.
Every night as a kid was a struggle get me inside.
Mine play past sundown and we live in an alaskan rainforest.
There’s your childhood obesity cause. Not food but the fact parents can’t let there kids outside because the criminal justice system is broken. If we hung molester, rapist and murderers when convicted these things would not happen and parents could feel safer about allowing their children to be children
It is a logical conclusion that many of today’s children have a vitamin D deficiency that their parents are completely unaware of and their doctors too unless lab work has been done.
One of the reasons I moved out in the country and dropped cable…..build a hug deck on the back of the house….. spend many evenings out there now……. my children enjoy it with plenty of room to play….. parents need to spend the time with their kids or they’ll gravitate to whatever gives them attention…… like “friends” online