The play gap: Children are losing
the joy and creativity
Opinion
In contrast, Americans recently witnessed another kind of play — the Super Bowl, in which grown men who are paid millions of dollars played football. Certainly, this is the most serious of games — but is it also “play”? In an ever-expanded and reinterpreted definition of play, pro sports is hardly recognizable as play in its truest sense — spontaneous, voluntary and joyful. Are we even talking about the same thing? This context confusion undermines play’s essential value in our lives. As a society, we should make the same investment and commitment that we devote to commercialized sports to the art of play. Why? Because today play is endangered.
We are all experts in play.
Everyone who has survived childhood understands that play is nature’s way of continuing human development outside the womb. “Free play” is its purest form — purposeless, serendipitous, allowing us to expand emotionally, physically, socially into our true selves, and defining how we live collectively. Play is one of the most serious activities of human experience.
And yet our current definitions of play are conflated with the addictive pull of technology, consumerism and over-parenting. A play gap forms between the freedom to discover and socialize that children need and the more tightly managed units of time and ubiquitous media that society now encourages. Our children are left exposed, fragile and unprepared for a complicated adult world. Play researcher Peter Gray of Boston College notes that “there is a correlation between the decline in free play and the increase in depression, anxiety and narcissism. Children feel they have no control over their own lives.” This absence of free play is creating a public health crisis for our children.
As a photographer, I play mostly with my camera. Over the past six years, I’ve photographed children’s play in 14 countries, chronicling how it is informed by culture and traditions. Play is so familiar that we recognize it when we see it anywhere in the world. A photo of a child doing back flips into the water or finding balance on a bicycle is actually our play story, too. In the uncertain world of today, the universality of play is a stark reminder of our shared human need for peace and freedom. When we see it, we not only identify with it — we long for it.
And play is not just for children.
D.W. Winnicott, a pioneering expert in child development, noted that all of human culture is derived from play. From birth, we develop a psychic “potential space” between our inner world and the outer reality, and this is where play happens: when your pillow fort becomes a kingdom, or when you become so lost in music that you forget time and space. Humans are, in fact, uniquely designed neurologically to play for our entire lives.
We should consider where play sits in our public lives, both as an extravagant spectator sport and, more quietly, in our private lives. Play has long been valued; it is protected by the United Nations as a universal human right, prescribed as necessary by the American Academy of Pediatrics, and identified by a growing body of social science as essential for a functioning democracy.
Play is also free.
Look with me through a wider lens to see within, and beyond, the challenges of our time toward a more hopeful and resilient way to live and play together in our shared world. Amid our daily rigors of productivity and stress, consider making space to let go of time and drop into the creative reward that playfulness allows.
Nancy Richards Farese is a San Francisco photographer, the founder of CatchLight.io and the author of the forthcoming book “Potential Space: A Serious Look at Child’s Play.” She was recently a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy.
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