Decline in Independent Activity as a Cause of Decline in Children’s Mental Well-being: Summary of the Evidence
Photo by Tim Mossholder
An article published in the Journal of Pediatrics in September, 2023, explores the causes of rising anxiety and depression amongst American children and adolescents.
Starting from a thesis that “a primary cause of the rise in mental disorders is a decline over decades in opportunities for children and teens to play, roam, and engage in other activities independent of direct oversight and control by adults. Such independent activities may promote mental well-being through both immediate effects, as a direct source of satisfaction, and long-term effects, by building mental characteristics that provide a foundation for dealing effectively with the stresses of life.”, the research team led by Dr. Peter Gray (Boston College, USA) looked at the issue from a variety of perspectives:
· Decline in Children’s Opportunities for Independent Activity
· Decline in Children’s Mental Well-Being
· Immediate Effects of Independent Activity on Mental Well-Being
· Long-Term Effects of Independent Activity on Mental Well-Being
· The Problem from the Perspective of Self-Determination Theory (SDT)
· The Problem from an Evolutionary Perspective
In the report, they “develop the thesis by summarizing evidence for, respectively, (1) a large decline over decades in children’s opportunities for independent activity; (2) a large decline over the same decades in young people’s mental health; (3) effects of independent activity on children’s immediate happiness; and (4) effects of independent activity in building longterm psychological resilience. Then, we discuss the relation of independent activity to well-being from the perspectives of self-determination theory and evolutionary mismatch. In 2 final sections, we briefly review the evidence cited, comment on some other putative causes of declining mental health in youth, and offer some suggestions for pediatric practice.”
An analysis by M.B. Rutherford of hundreds of childrearing articles and advice columns from throughout the 20th century found that, prior to the 1960s, these “portrayed a world in which children spent much time with other children away from adults, walked or biked to school alone or with friends from as young as age 5 years, contributed meaningfully through chores to the household economy, and by age 11 or 12 years often had part-time jobs, such as babysitting and paper routes, performed without direct adult oversight.” Starting in the 1960s and accelerating from the 1980s, the perspective changed away from a focus on self-reliance and responsibility increasingly to a focus on children’s needs for supervision and protection. “Rutherford noted, as have other reviewers, that in some respects – such as freedom to choose what they wear or eat – children have gained autonomy over the decades. What has declined specifically is children’s freedom to engage in activities that involve some degree of risk and personal responsibility away from adults.”
The report also notes, “Another constraint on independent activity derives from the increased time children must spend in school and on schoolwork at home. Between 1950 and 2010, the average length of the school year in the U.S. increased by 5 weeks. Homework, which was once rare or nonexistent in elementary school, is now common even in kindergarten.”
In the same timeframe, as children’s opportunities for independent activity have declined, evidence shows that children’s mental health has deteriorated significantly. “For example, one such analysis revealed that average scores on the Children’s Manifest Anxiety Scale, for children mostly ages 9-11 years, increased by a full SD between 1956 and the late 1980s. A change this large means that roughly 85% of children by the late 1980s were more anxious than the average child in 1956. A change of roughly this same magnitude was found for depression in high school students from 1950 to 2002, as assessed by the Depression scale of the Minnesota Multiphasic Inventory-Adolescent.” By 2019, the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System survey, conducted annually by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, showed that “36.7% of high school students ages 14-18 reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness over the past year”. Even more worryingly, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data show that “the rate of suicide among children younger than age 15 years rose 3.5-fold between 1950 and 2005 and by another 2.4-fold between 2005 and 2020”.
Countering this, the report continues, “Research, as well as everyday observation, indicates that play is a direct source of children’ happiness. In one study, for example, 6- to 8-year-old children were asked to depict activities that made them happy, with the result that almost all the depicted activities were identified as play…..Similarly, a recent review of research on the effects of adding more recess time in elementary schools revealed consistent findings of improved social and emotional well-being with no loss and sometimes gain in academic performance.” The report notes that most play researchers, and children themselves, conceive play activity initiated and directed by the players themselves, not by an outside authority, that is, self-initiated and self-directed.
Observational studies, both in educational settings and in natural settings (e.g. parks) have documented the inhibiting effect of the presence of adults on children’s play. A study in Zurich in the early 1990s compared 5-year-olds living in neighbourhoods where children of that age were still allowed to play unsupervised outdoors to children on the same age in economically similar neighbourhoods, but where, because of vehicle traffic, such freedom was not available. “The main findings were that those who could play freely in neighborhoods spent, on average, twice as much time outdoors, were much more active while outdoors, had more than twice as many friends, and had better motor and social skills than those deprived of such play. The research concluded further that trips to the park with parents failed to compensate for lost neighborhood freedom because (1) parents did not have patience or time to stay long at the park, so play was constricted in time; (2) parental monitoring reduced children’s freedom to play in vigorous, challenging, risky ways; (3) there were usually no consistent play groups at parks, so opportunities for collaborative play among friends were reduced; and (4) the parks afforded fewer ways of playing than the neighborhoods because of the greater variety of playthings in neighborhoods, where children could bring out equipment from their homes.”
Looking at the long-term effects of independent activity on mental well-being, the report cites research evidence that, as well as promoting immediate mental well-being, “children’s independent activity also may help build mental capacities and attitudes that foster future well-being, such as the development of internal (a person’s tendency to believe they have control over their life and can solve problems as they arise) versus external (the tendency to believe that experiences are ruled by circumstances beyond one’s control) locus of control (LOC). Noting that many research studies, both cross-sectional and longitudinal, have shown that a low internal LOC is highly predictive of anxiety and/or depression in both children and adults. “In addition to documenting dramatically increased anxiety and depression among young people over the last 4 decades of the 20th century, studies by Twenge et al, also documented dramatically increased anxiety and depression among young people in the same period.
The report notes that several studies have examined relationships between the amount of time young children have for self-directed activities at home and psychological characteristics predictive of future well-being such as executive functioning, emotional control and social ability, and scores, 2 years later, on self-regulation. “There is also evidence that risky play, where children deliberately put themselves in moderately frightening situations (such as climbing high into a tree) helps protect against the development of phobias and reduces future anxiety by increasing the person’s confidence that they can deal effectively with emergencies.”
The rapidly growing area of research around Self-Determination Theory (SDT), pioneered by Richard Ryan an Edward Deci, argues, “To feel in charge of one’s life, one must feel free to choose one’s own paths (autonomy); feel sufficiently skilled to pursue those paths (competence); and have friends and colleagues for support, including emotional support (relatedness). The report notes, “Play and other self-directed activities are, by definition, autonomous; such activities build skills in endeavors that the children care about, so they promote competence; and such activities are a primary means by which children make friends, so they support relatedness.”
Finally, the report looks at the concept of evolutionary mismatch, the contrast between the ancestral conditions in which children’s innate tendencies and needs would have evolved and the conditions provided for children’s development today, concluding that “it is no wonder that natural selection would have created in children strong drives to become involved in the real activities of the community, to learn through direct experience, and to seek increasing levels of trust and independence as they grow, beginning in early childhood”.
The report concludes, “We are not suggesting that a decline in opportunities for independent activity is the sole cause of the decline in young people’s mental well-being over decades, only that it is a cause, possibly a major cause….Parents today are regularly subject to messages about the dangers that might befall unsupervised children and the value of high achievement in school However, they hear little of the countervailing messages that if children are to grow up well-adjusted, they need ever-increasing opportunities for independent activity, including self-directed play and meaningful contributions to family and community life, which are signs that they are trusted, responsible, and capable. They need to feel they can deal effectively with the real world, not just the world of school.”