Kid-Approved
Friday, August 8, 2025
Kid-Approved
Recent findings from a Harris survey of 500 kids aged 8 to 12 years: They would rather not be parked on digital devices, but would prefer instead to play with their peers for fun, and without adult supervision.
The story was from a shared article in The Atlantic—shared (“gifted”) by the company’s CEO via TwiX. It contained this surprising bit of information:
This digital technology has given kids access to virtual worlds, where they’re allowed to roam far more freely than in the real one. About 75 percent of kids ages 9 to 12 regularly play the online game Roblox, where they can interact with friends and even strangers. But most of the children in our survey said that they aren’t allowed to be out in public at all without an adult. Fewer than half of the 8- and 9-year-olds have gone down a grocery-store aisle alone; more than a quarter aren’t allowed to play unsupervised even in their own front yard.
Yet these are exactly the kinds of freedoms that kids told us they long for. We asked them to pick their favorite way to spend time with friends: unstructured play, such as shooting hoops and exploring their neighborhood; participating in activities organized by adults, such as playing Little League and doing ballet; or socializing online. There was a clear winner.
The clear winner was unsupervised, free play by 45 percent, over in-person supervised activity (30 percent) and online activity (25 percent).
I was under the impression from recent reporting that kids had come to prefer digital devices over non-virtual interaction. But apparently not—if offered the choice. Modern parenting, too, appears to be at fault for being too cautious and too involved.
The rest of the article is worth reading, and contains information on current initiatives organized around the country to liberate children from the shackles of helicopter parents and trends in digital devices. Worthy undertakings, it would seem to me.
I was left wondering how many factors are behind adults’ coming to depend on devices: the need to occupy kids with hypnotic screens as a way to pacify them? the demographic pyramid containing fewer kids than in the past? peer pressure for child achievement? overblown fearfulness on parents who are now older, i.e., having kids later in life than prior generations?…stop me when you’ve heard something new…
Thoughts? Is this much ado about not much, or is there a real potential for our society to recover some bits of childhood from such plagues and scourges?
Update: Kayaking is cancelled due to flooding. We'll get a refund. We'll look in the Columbia tourism magazine and choose a different activity.
There's a donkey nearby. I just heard an outburst of hee-haw.
Morning, all, from rural SC. According to my husband, the weather obsessive, Congaree is experiencing high water from the rain we had upstream the past several days. Whether this will belay our kayak trip, nobody knows.
If it does, there are other options. We're only 30 minutes from downtown Columbia. Going to a museum with no children would be nice.
The rental house is comfortable. One can always nap.