Run along and play
The Herald (and others) are reporting the Milo State of Play survey, which says kids don’t play enough. In fact, the Herald says
The report outlines how a lack of play can deprive children of an activity crucial to healthy brain development.
Actually, it doesn’t. The report states that play is important to social development, and uses the phrase ‘prefrontal cortex’, but that’s all. Perfectly reasonable, since that’s not what the survey was about. The survey (once you find the actual report than backs up the YouTube animation) used interviews of three samples: children, parents, grandparents to ask about activities and attitudes. These were sampled in a nicely representative way, though from an online survey panel, so they may be more technologically aware and active than Kiwis as a whole.
According to the YouTube video, 96% of the participants agreed that active play was essential for development, and about half (52%) of the parents, but less than half the children (40%) or grandparents (31%), said children should have more playtime outside than they currently do. That’s not really the impression that the story gives.
Some of the detailed findings are interesting:
More than half (56%) of parents think children enjoy playing games from their parents’ childhood. Where in fact, 96% of children state they do enjoy playing games from their parents’ youth.
and most children said they would like to spend more time playing with their parents.
The basic message of spending more time playing and having more unstructured time is one that has been promoted before, and seems sensible, but the report doesn’t really provide any more evidence for it than we had previously.
As a final note, the Herald story leads with
New Zealand children risk weight and brain development issues as a new study shows nearly half of Kiwi kids are not playing every day.
Is it just me that finds it ironic to get warnings like this from a survey sponsored by a multinational founded on selling chocolate and baby formula ?
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »
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13 years ago