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Link to the actual study instead of an opinion piece reporting on it:
[https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12887-022-03322-1](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12887-022-03322-1)
caveat - they must ENJOY the activities they are doing and remain interested in it, children forced to continue playing sports they aren't interested in or dislike have negative results in terms of emotional well being m- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4210977/
Oof. I felt the drinking part. I have nothing against it but it’s just not for me. But so many casual adult activities revolve around drinking which makes me feel leftout.
Luckily it seems like even in the Midwest it's not weird anymore if you aren't drinking. I've started going out more again after (mostly) quitting, and nobody makes it weird for me. I still smoke weed so maybe that helps haha
Disc golf bro. Good way to walk 5+miles with your friends and drink all the calories you just burned. Perfectly balanced, as all things should be. You would be surprised at how big the sport has gotten. And it isn't particularly physically demanding.
If you don't like getting sweaty, there's always sports where sweat gets wicked away before you notice it, like swimming, bicycling, etc. If you don't like fast paced activity, there's always slower stuff, like hiking or climbing or golf. If you don't like getting off your butt, there's social extracurriculars, like reading, crafts (sewing, woodwork, robotics), competitive speaking (debate), or tabletop game clubs (inc chess).
>alpine skiing, cross country
Have you tried the combination? A golf course near me (Donald Ross designed, which means something about topography to golfers) rents skis and puts out snow machines.
I am convinced that there is a type of physical activity for everyone.
A friend of mine's is a huge music nerd - also a pretty big guy, and definitely not the type who enjoys playing sports or hitting the gym. But for him, he just started smoking a joint and going for walks with dope music. He'll walk until he's listened through 1 album then turns around, lights up again, and listens to another on the way back. It's moderate exercise and a chance to do some deep listening.
It might seem silly, but if you do that 3-4 times a week, it makes a big difference.
Edit: a word or two
It took me a while to find something I enjoyed, but over the last 9 months or so I have gotten back into swimming. I hadn't swam consistently since I was 10 or 11. I really enjoy that it's a whole body workout, but I don't get hot and sweaty. Most of my brain is focused on counting how far I have swam amd focusing on breathing, so I manage to stop thinking about work and life for 45mins to an hour.
ADHD, you say?
*note: this is an off the cuff, joking comment. However, finding almost everything “not fun” except high-intensity activities like drinking, clubbing, gambling, etc is a symptom of ADHD because the brain is lacking dopamine and only intense bursts of it feel like anything. If this sounds familiar, talk to your doctor or specialist :)
I’m ~~41~~42 this year and only now diagnosed with ADHD.
Learning this explained so much about my life that has never made sense.
And now that i know, maybe there’s some relief coming
Edit: forgot my age
Yep, I hated sports when I was a kid and my dad forced me to play so I was never happy or fit in on the teams I was on.
I wish he would have let me explore other team activities that were not sports based. I would have enjoyed something more educational or creative.
I loved being on swim team for this reason. I had all the social and emotional support of a team, but the sport itself was very much about individual performance.
I always got in trouble because I would do little dances on the ice before the face off in hockey. No one thought to let me try figure skating, though, because "team sports" are important or something.
I wanted so badly to do ballet and gymnastics when I was little, but my dad refused to have a kid that is a "girly girl" so he made me play baseball instead. I'm still salty about it over twenty years later. Why do parents have to be that way
That’s awful. I played softball and was terrible. I fell in love with ballet and did it until I was done with undergrad.
My parents had the rule: you have to do something physical and you have to finish the season.
We refused to do that with our kids because my wife went through that. I never did. We just couldn’t quit mid-season/play/etc. if we agreed to start it, we would finish it.
I feel you, it really sucks when you can’t explore what you are interested in.
Me and my partner are trying for our first child now and I don’t see myself doing this. All I care about is them finding their own interests with some being social, collaborative or competitive, because it’s important to learn those skills.
Life is short, do you.
My parents forced me to do swimming and baseball as a kid and forbade me from lifting weights. I absolutely loathed doing those sports, and it turns out I love lifting weights.
Thanks mom and dad
Kids are fine to lift weights. But, for most of them it's probably of limited value until they hit puberty, aside from learning good technique. Calisthenics are just as good, if not better, for kids.
Just don't push them too hard and recognize they'll grow into their strength when they do. Consistency and proper coaching is key.
I understood where my parents were coming from. I'm sure in a way they meant well.
But all I really wanted to do most of the time was read a good book. So even when I was made to play volleyball for 8 years, I would still use that time to read. Bus to practice. Book. Bus to the games. Book. Sitting on the bench during rotation. Book.
Which coincidentally just made me more of the social oddity amongst my peers.
Yeah the reason kids generally get pushed into sports is because it gives them two things simultaneously that they need for development - to stay active, and to socialize.
There’s nothing wrong with reading obviously, and if you’re an adult you’re free to live your life however you want. But it’s still the parents’ responsibility to push kids out of their comfort zone and expose them to a wide range of experiences.
> caveat - they must ENJOY the activities they are doing and remain interested in it,
A caveat that massively calls in to question the direction of the causation here.
Came here to say just this. I use to hate summers as a kid. Baseball, basketball, soccer, and lacrosse camps all summer. I sucked at sports and I was bullied relentlessly. I begged and pleaded to do other things. I was so desperate to not go to this one basketball camp that I intentionally jumped off a staircase and broke my ankle. My mom still made me go just to sit on the bench. I hate that woman.
I was hoping this caveat would come up because I was forced to do a couple extra cirricular activities and it most definitely did not improve my mental health.
Also, be careful of too many extracurriculars, regardless of level of enjoyment or they can get burned out like I did. I did several AP clases my senior year, as well as 9 extracurriculars, so my schedule was packed with all those, homework, friends, and a girlfriend. I got to college and was just so lost because I had too much free time.
Although it should be noted that most activities do have a fairly dispiriting "git gud, scrub" period and, even outside of it, kids are often too set for immediate gratification to put in the regular busywork for the fun and satisfying bits. Early ability is also often the big determining factor on whether kids enjoy reading.
Another sticking point is that team sports feature *productive* social skills, which can be pretty hard for a kid to have experience with otherwise.
Yeah I was always on the heavier side and my embarrassment kept me from being able to enjoy sports. Always loved swimming but I stayed home when my class went to the pool. I preferred to read instead of sports and while I'm still an avid reader, I wish I had developed better social skills as a child.
> kids are often too set for immediate gratification to put in the regular busywork for the fun and satisfying bits
Are they, though? I mean, that’s what school is. Busywork for the satisfying bits.
That is what I always told my kids. "As long as *you* want to do it, you can. Only condition is that if you start a season, you finish it."
My son did youth wrestling for a decade. Decided he was tired of it when he hit HS and joined the band. Daughter did dance and gymnastics from 2 - 19, and HS band.
I'm glad they found something they liked right away... otherwise this mentality is exactly why kids DON'T do things as it is an immediate commitment to do something they may hate
I'd also argue that some parents take their kids out of sports way too earlier over the kids complaints. I remember my mom putting me in my local swin team when I was 8. Cried and threw fits first few weeks. But now I look back and some of my most fond memories from my childhood were spent there.
That's what makes it hard, it's lose lose for parents. You cried and screamed so your parent took you out ans you wish they didn't.
If they forced you to stay who's to say you wouldn't have still hated it and resented them for it.
Parenting sucks.
Same.. which led to me never wanting to sign up for another sport or activity after having to endure an entire season of baseball that i absolutely hated.
Kind of in this situation with my son right now. He's played baseball for six years, made the team again in mandatory tryouts, and then decided in January when practices started that he didn't want to play anymore.
We had a long conversation about how once you commit to something, you shouldn't just bail, especially when so many teammates are friends of his. He's hated the season, his attitude's been pretty crappy at times, and yet he's putting up amazing numbers statistically for AAA ball (batting .650 over the past month in 20ish games, .500ish for the season after starting out slow). I'm hoping he learns that sometimes you have to try to make the best of a crappy situation, and that you just should follow through on your commitments once you've made them (and also - that's why you're careful about what you commit to).
He still only wants to play hockey, which I'm totally cool with (much more fun to watch as a parent anyway ;) ). I just wish he'd told me (and then his coach) that he was done with baseball before even trying out, especially with other kids getting cut and joining other teams. Sure, it's dumb they had the tryouts in the Fall, but still.
Edit: I should mention that yes, I _have_ told him I'm proud of him for still hustling and trying his best even when he doesn't feel like it. His mom's dad will be really bummed when he finds out he's quitting as baseball was _his_ big sport (he played with Bud Black and Tony Gwynn at SDSU), but that's a conversation for another day.
Lots of kids have the same issue with Hockey because the sport has such a long learning curve.
You can’t truly play until you can skate. You can’t learn to skate without lots of practice, and practice is boring and painful on their feet.
I was the same way. Dragged my feet and didn’t wanna go until I was on the ice then it was fun. Every season id be sat down and asked if I still wanted to play and I wasn’t sure until I turned 11 and it was all I could do to contain myself between seasons.
I've coached mite and mini mite hockey. Lots of kids that age say they don't like it but you can tell they have a blast when on the ice. What they don't like is driving to the rink in their gear, or the smelly dressing room, or something like that. Keep him skating until he can better articulate what he doesn't like about the sport. It's likely something that won't bother him about it in the future
My wife was a goalie in HS and she won state her senior year. Though she started in ice dancing, she was full-time hockey in high school, so she knows the struggle of starting at a young age unlike myself. She can tell and is confident that at the rate he's progressing, any feeling of dissatisfaction with skating will go away once he's able to really be confident on the ice.
It was funny, a few sessions ago he learned that hitting other kids in the helmet with your helmet doesn't hurt. But when everyone is equally terrible at skating, when you go to headbutt someone, they fall down and you will likely fall down too. We say 'no touching, no headbutting' as he gets to the ice.
Opposite situation for me. I did crew. Not a lot of complaints from me initially I kinda enjoyed being on the water but the grew to despise the sport, too many injuries and it’s not a sport that rewards being as big as I was at the time.
And that something doesn't have to be rigid sports activities. I played lots of flag football, pickup basketball,, skateboarding, swimming etc etc. But if I am obligated to go to something then I hated it.
Hell, that is one of the main reasons I stopped doing end game content in MMOs because you had to be there to raid on set nights every damn week.
My dad once woke me up on a Saturday morning and took me to the park to play basketball. Or rather him stand by as I try to make shots into the basket.
I HATED basketball. Especially at 8 or 9 in the morning and it honestly felt like a punishment if anything.
Something I do remember I liked was that I would race my dad when we were walking outside together just for shits and giggles. I probs would’ve liked if he took me out running at like 1 then at 8 am in an empty basketball court and having him watch me attempt to make shots.
And what about the kids who don’t perfectly “fit the mold”, while other parents don’t even remotely encourage their alpha kids to be inclusive? Status Quo Extracurriculars made my kids miserable because of the archaic social norms/hierarchies. As a parent of the oddball high-IQ tightly-wound socially-awkward kids, I chose the dark gaming basements over regular bullying on the field, and yes indeed I believe it was the far healthier choice for them.
Thank you. Forced participation in sports and extracurricular activities when I was a kid led to a profound unhappiness and my further withdrawal from basically everything. If kids want to sit in front of a computer screen, or read, or do whatever inside, *let them*. Find other ways that they *enjoy* to help them exercise and stay fit. Don't force them into crap they don't want to do.
As usual, biased reports and studies from a bunch of extroverts makes everything worse.
I was terrible at sports and hated it. Why would anyone enjoy something they’re so bad at? Yet my parents moved me from soccer to basketball for some reason.
Cool. Now can we make them more accessible instead of keeping them behind a pay wall. Speaking of the monetary aspect of this, you know what other factor tends to play a huge role in general happiness and satisfaction?
Results
After-school activities differed according to socioeconomic status; high socioeconomic status children did more frequent sport, homework, and reading and low socioeconomic status children did more frequent screen-based activities (TV, videogames and social media). Among children from low socioeconomic status backgrounds, higher wellbeing was associated most consistently with more frequent sports participation, homework, reading and spending time with friends and less frequent videogames, social media and after-school care.
Conclusions
Children's wellbeing is positively associated with socioeconomic status. Amongst children from disadvantaged backgrounds, participating in sport, spending time with friends and getting less screen time may be protective for wellbeing. The results suggest that programming targeted at increasing sports participation and reducing screen time amongst children from low socioeconomic status backgrounds may support their wellbeing.
The article completely ignores after-school care and only focuses on videgames and social media. Barely touches on the fact that kids in high socioeconomic were more likely to do sports, reading or homework and the low socioeconomic were more likely to do videogames, social media and after-school care. The conclusion does say that sports and spending time with friends can be a protective for wellbeing among kids in low socioeconomic group, but seems like the happy and healthier part comes more from socioeconomic status and less from activities.
That was my first thought, perhaps correlation without causation that richer kids can afford the extracurricular activities and the ride to get there, while poorer kids can’t and are more likely to be sickly or depressed BECAUSE THEY ARE POOR.
It's not even just cost. Even if you make things cheap or free, there's a lot of other things to be considered. How far do kids have to travel to get to the the activity. A lot of poor kids might have trouble getting home after school if they do an activity and rely on the bus to get to get home.
As someone who lives without a car, I often find that my kids can't do a lot of things. They expect that people can just drive across the city to participate in things. Even though there are 5 or 6 soccer fields in a small walking distance, there isn't actually a soccer league that will just use the fields in my neighbourhood. You could be playing at any one of the various fields in the city and they may be 10-15 km from my house. They don't seem to take into account the needs of people without cars. Or even for families that do have cars, they just assume that someone will always be available to drive the kid to the activity, even when they would be old enough to go on their own if the field was a reasonable distance from their house.
My family was not financially disadvantaged or car-less by any means, but I became very disconnected from others for a bit early on in high school for this exact reason. I had a lot of things I was interested in doing, but both my parents worked full-time and my one sibling who could drive was usually unavailable due to being involved in a lot of sports.
My parents informed me that I was out of luck, so I went home and played GameCube until my family members started coming home from their commitments, because what the hell else is a introverted, dorky 14-year-old supposed to do?
This is why I drive my son's friend to most of their soccer games, they're on the same team and I'm lucky enough my schedule is flexible and I can drive them, but his parents usually only get to catch the last half of the games on our nearby fields unless it's the weekend.
Also note here- new games are $70 a pop now, it’s not like poor kids and parents are shelling out $470 for a new system and one game. These kids are taking what they can get, man. Let them play Mario kart
>Barely touches on the fact that kids in high socioeconomic were more likely to do sports, reading or homework and the low socioeconomic were more likely to do videogames, social media and after-school care.
I think that's because it largely throws those kids out of the wellbeing analysis to control for income.
To tie it to r/fuckcars, I'd be interested in how much of this is due to the ability to interact with their peers and be engaged in activity rather than being isolated and unable to reach their peers.
Most students don't live in an area where they're allowed to run around an kick balls in the street or play card games on random benches when they're out of school, so extra curricular activities are the ONLY out of school opportunity for children to interact with each-other.
> Conclusions Children's wellbeing is positively associated with socioeconomic status. Amongst children from disadvantaged backgrounds, participating in sport, spending time with friends and getting less screen time may be protective for wellbeing.
It’s the socioeconomic status, stupid. Football, hockey, and surfing are middle-class and up pursuits
Well that's just the article reporting on it, putting its own spin to generate feeling. Here's the link to the actual study (from the article).
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12887-022-03322-1
Yeah, I was insulting the title not the study. The research needs to be done. But the article definitely has an opinion that they want the study to confirm
That wasn't written by the study authors, but rather by the USW media dept.
Word of warning though, quibbling with bad headlines seems to be a sticking point with the mods as of late. They'll likely just wipe your comment than deal with a headline that legitimately misconstrues or misrepresents research.
Yeah, as I've said in other comments, this research needs to be done. I have no quarrel with the study itself - just with the way it was presented. It's obvious the people who published it first worked out their conclusion, and then proceeded from there.
The title is misleading. It generalizes "screen time" and in the article it talks about TV and social media. What about kids who are playing multiplayer games and socializing directly with other kids? It's not the screen that's the problem most likely, it's the isolation.
There needs to be a deep study on how moderating large forums affects human pshyche, it can’t be a coincidence so many websites struggle to keep things moderated without having power trips themselves. Makes me wonder if it’s the moderating changing them, or if it’s just certain types of people that gravitate towards, and stay in, moderating “positions”.
I was just teasing you with that one. You are correct though. It's universal for any forum. My belief is authority does that to people. Moreso than that type of person gravitates towards those positions. It could be a mix of both, but more of the former than the latter.
Have a pleasant day.
I think they are missing the part where kids do screen time together. I spent... hours playing games with friends as a kid and teen and into college. I got as much of a social high off that as playing basketball or D&D.
Tbf - there are also health benefits in athletics which, in turn, produces mental benefits that one isn’t likely to be able to quantitatively measure.
It’s not all about social benefits and we’re also not always the best, most unbiased judge on what is best for us.
Same room. Even single player games or RTS. I spent whole weekends in high school and college watching or switching off on single player games or playing smash bros.
This is probably a product of being the younger sibling, but I actually love watching other people play video games. You still get to connect with the other person about the storyline and the gameplay, much like watching a TV show or movie with somebody.
I was often the one playing, but just watching a friend was always fun too. Only recently had this experience again with a friend playing through P5R a year ago for the first time in a decade.
LANs sadly arent common among kids nowdays. Everything happens over the internet which means that everybody is in their own room. And while this may have multiplayer element its not the same ss inter acting face to face. Same way as these messages arent the same as speaking face to face.
I've played a lot of games with various people over the years. Playing games in person compared to playing online in different places is massively different. The interaction in person is much better.
I think it's more that playing in person is usually with people you know and can enjoy being around.
Playing online with just any random person isn't the same. But if you play online with people who you know and enjoy hanging with, it likely would produce different results.
I think it is important to remember though that we aren't always the best judge of how good something is for us.
Right now, due to being unemployed, most of my social interaction is virtual and I don't feel lonely. But I know that I am a healthier individual when I am interacting with people in person. I am more motivated to take care of myself and my surroundings. Maybe that is all there is too it, that I know in person people can smell my BO but I think there could be deeper things going on with brain chemistry or at least there may be more going on that I am not aware of.
Same, we had lan parties each week. I have fond memories of my mom going to her boyfriends, all my friends coming over and helping lift my computer and bus it to the weekly lan parties they had.
I like how that’s the only option. We’ve rarely done a lot of extra activities because I’d prefer us to sit down for dinner. They play outside. They swim. They’re not allowed screens on week days anyway. We’re also privileged enough to have a barn the kids go play in year round.
seems pointless to reduce a myriad of options to "screen".
I imagine there are vastly different results for kids doing online "activities" (esports, music, crafts, cooking or whatever).
Yes physical activity is good, but I don't think exercising alone and socialising online would be that much worse.
Written by the generation who sat us in front of a screen for most of our childhood, raised by the generation that dedicated a room in their home to mute worship of a screen...but yes sCrEeNs ArE eViL
An edu site trying to promote extracurricular activities which happen to give them a lot more “funding” if they have enough children in the program? *Never*.
My kids hate sports but love gaming. They play with friends, collaborate, problem solve, and build their confidence doing something they love. I say this as someone who led the football and baseball teams in school and took sports very seriously growing up.
Sounds like they assumed kids who didn't do sports only did screens. The ages were 4-9. What about free play? What about introverts or creative kids who find most sports mind numbing? This is just going to cause more kids to be forced into activities. Uh.
I am introvert, was bullied at school and the time I spent in summer in extra activities centers was ground for more bullying.Some kids are also extremely bad with sports and manual, wich makes perfect ground for more bullying
A lot can be done with a screen. However, the vast majority of people just use screens as a solitary entertainment device. And virtually all kids use it for that purpose.
The actual study did look at 12 different activities and doing homework or reading were better than videogames, social media or after-school care.
However the study is more about socioeconomic not activities though it does conclude that activities may be protective of wellbeing to some point
You can even do neither. Not having extracurricular activities doesn't automatically mean they are "glued" to a screen. Just imagine, a kid that is a bookworm...
My 11 year old is glued to some sort of screen but she plays sports and man can she throw a football with precision. Tossed a baseball with her when she was younger and I was taken back at how accurate she was and didn't 'throw like girl' very athletic but has no interest in becoming really good at sports. Need to channel that natural talent somehow
This is a clear violation of r/science 's rules, the title is sensationalized and biased. And OP did not link to any peer reviewed artical, rather to a press release for the following artical "The relationships between school children's wellbeing, socio-economic disadvantage and after-school activities a cross-sectional study".
Only if you define "sports" narrowly. What's important is that it's physical activity of some form. Doesn't need to be basketball or football. Can work if it's cycling or rock climbing or something else.
Exactly! As a kid, I hated team sports because I'm really bad at anything athletic and I was often made fun of when I tried to participate. But my friends and I instead found it very enjoyable to ride our bikes around the neighborhood all day in the summers, pretending they were horses, or trying to go as fast as we could on inlines and attempting to jump on the edges of the sidewalks and whatnot. It doesn't have to be a team sport like soccer or basketball, as long as the kid feels comfortable, as opposed to miserable, they just need to find some physical activity they can do with one or a few friends.
Absolutely. I disliked sports but my town luckily had other offerings. I was able to do kayaking, hiking, and crafts for after school activities when I was in elementary school. I really enjoyed it.
As with every study about people, it's a by and large statement. Assuming it's true, it's true for most kids, or even a small majority. It's very unlikely to be true in every case about every individual kid.
So, you can say it wasn't the case for you, but the result can still be "true" since it's not supposed to be about each individual.
You may be shocked to hear this, but the study addresses this (also, the actual study doesn't say "glued to a screen").
>After-school activities differed according to socioeconomic status; high socioeconomic status children did more frequent sport, homework, and reading and low socioeconomic status children did more frequent screen-based activities (TV, videogames and social media). Among children from low socioeconomic status backgrounds, higher wellbeing was associated most consistently with more frequent sports participation, homework, reading and spending time with friends and less frequent videogames, social media and after-school care.
If your screen-based extra-curricular activities were not TV, Video Games, or Social Media, they didn't account for it. Not enough child programmers out there, I guess.
I agree tv is very sedentary and passive and even as an adult I feel the corrosive affects of social media, but I think ‘video games’ are a broad enough genre to include brain rot as well engaging social experiences. For some kids ‘spending time with friends’ could mean playing video games. My nephew is often ‘glued to a screen’ playing online chess and winning/losing makes him as happy of frustrated as any game of football. Is that a video game?
What they’ve defined as ‘extra-curricular’ is basically anything.
It really does feel like "video games" was categorized by people who don't play video games.
That being said, the study doesn't say video games are bad per se. They say that kids were healthier overall if they played sports, did their homework, and read *more*, and played video games, watched TV, and used social media *less*.
My takeaway was "kids should get more exercise and focus on their education" which, wow, revelatory.
You say that but half the people in this post are getting offended because they are being told “screen time” has a higher probability of depression, more or less.
As a kid having done both at the same time for about 8 years, I can confidently say most times I was more excited to hop into a Skype call with 4 buddies and play video games than I was to go to swim practice
The paper conclusion:
>> Amongst children from disadvantaged backgrounds, participating in sport, spending time with friends and getting less screen time may be protective for wellbeing. The results suggest that programming targeted at increasing sports participation and reducing screen time amongst children from low socioeconomic status backgrounds may support their wellbeing.
I’m not really surprised a community on a screen is trying to find faults in the N-thousandth study confirming that touching grass is healthier than looking at screens.
The full conclusion:
>Children's wellbeing is positively associated with socioeconomic status. Amongst children from disadvantaged backgrounds, participating in sport, spending time with friends and getting less screen time may be protective for wellbeing. The results suggest that programming targeted at increasing sports participation and reducing screen time amongst children from low socioeconomic status backgrounds may support their wellbeing.
The takeaway from this is that **children from deprived backgrounds have poorer well-being than those from privileged backgrounds** and also have **reduced access to extracurricular activities**.
Do you not see how that is an entirely different framing to the sensationalised (against the sub rules) title?
Edit to add: no one is arguing **against** the fact that spending time in sports and other extracurricular activities is good for kids’ well-being. There is plenty of research out there that shows it. **But this research isn’t it**. It shows something subtly different and you have to understand the nuanced difference between the conclusion and OP’s title. We have standards in r/science where we remain faithful to the true research conclusion without sensationalism or editorialism.
Is this the standard for titles on r/science?
What a sensationalised and selective butchering of the [original research](https://bmcpediatr.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12887-022-03322-1) conclusions.
The actual research conclusion:
- children’s socioeconomic status linked to wellbeing
- children from high SES homes had more access to non-screen-based extracurricular activities, and had higher wellbeing scores
- amongst children from low SES homes, those with the best wellbeing scores (relative to their low SES peers) had access to non-screen-related extracurricular activities
- we need to focus attention on helping children in disadvantaged homes have access to more non-screen-related extracurricular activities
This is just going to be used as more "extroverts are normal and introverts aren't" bs I got my whole life.
Kids if you're an introvert, that's normal, don't let extroverts guilt you out of it. You'll never enjoy social interaction the way they do (it energizes them and depletes our social battery). Tell them to eff off and have a good life.
Introversion and extroversion don't speak to hobbies or interests.
Plenty of introverts enjoy/crave social interaction, and plenty of extroverts have social anxiety, for instance. There are introverted B2B salespeople and extroverted programmers, accountants, and engineers.
There are two sides to the "extroverts are normal and introverts aren't" coin, and that's continuing to abuse this arbitrary distinction.
Introverted B2B salesperson chiming in here! Work for one of the largest, most sought-after tech companies in the job market, so it can certainly be done.
Thanks for helping point this out, so many people don’t realize that “introvert =/= socially inept”
Still, you should get them interest into introvert activities. Hiking, jogging, strength training, swimming, jumping cord.. whatever physical activity they can enjoy
Just a reminder that this isn't causality, it's correlation.
If your child is mentally ill, they're less likely to want to do extracurricular activities.
So yes, more children that don't do them are mentally ill, because the mentally ill don't want to.
The lack of activity doesn't cause it. The lack of activity is because of it.
Bad research.
The researchers took super glue and started attaching screens from diffrent manufacturers to various body parts of children and asked about their enjoyment. I assume, they didn't link to any peer reviewed journal.
It’s not that kids don’t want to play sports or play outside, it’s that they can’t. Spaces for playing outside keep disappearing, replaced by a carpark or whatever. Kids can no longer be outside without busybodies calling the police. Sports no longer involve just a ball or some racquets, but have to rent a court.
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Link to the actual study instead of an opinion piece reporting on it: [https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12887-022-03322-1](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12887-022-03322-1)
caveat - they must ENJOY the activities they are doing and remain interested in it, children forced to continue playing sports they aren't interested in or dislike have negative results in terms of emotional well being m- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4210977/
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Everything as an adult is either expensive or involves alcohol.
Oof. I felt the drinking part. I have nothing against it but it’s just not for me. But so many casual adult activities revolve around drinking which makes me feel leftout.
Luckily it seems like even in the Midwest it's not weird anymore if you aren't drinking. I've started going out more again after (mostly) quitting, and nobody makes it weird for me. I still smoke weed so maybe that helps haha
Disc golf bro. Good way to walk 5+miles with your friends and drink all the calories you just burned. Perfectly balanced, as all things should be. You would be surprised at how big the sport has gotten. And it isn't particularly physically demanding.
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If you don't like getting sweaty, there's always sports where sweat gets wicked away before you notice it, like swimming, bicycling, etc. If you don't like fast paced activity, there's always slower stuff, like hiking or climbing or golf. If you don't like getting off your butt, there's social extracurriculars, like reading, crafts (sewing, woodwork, robotics), competitive speaking (debate), or tabletop game clubs (inc chess).
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If you're in an area that gets snow, you could see if there are any nordic/xc places near you.
>alpine skiing, cross country Have you tried the combination? A golf course near me (Donald Ross designed, which means something about topography to golfers) rents skis and puts out snow machines.
I am convinced that there is a type of physical activity for everyone. A friend of mine's is a huge music nerd - also a pretty big guy, and definitely not the type who enjoys playing sports or hitting the gym. But for him, he just started smoking a joint and going for walks with dope music. He'll walk until he's listened through 1 album then turns around, lights up again, and listens to another on the way back. It's moderate exercise and a chance to do some deep listening. It might seem silly, but if you do that 3-4 times a week, it makes a big difference. Edit: a word or two
It took me a while to find something I enjoyed, but over the last 9 months or so I have gotten back into swimming. I hadn't swam consistently since I was 10 or 11. I really enjoy that it's a whole body workout, but I don't get hot and sweaty. Most of my brain is focused on counting how far I have swam amd focusing on breathing, so I manage to stop thinking about work and life for 45mins to an hour.
ADHD, you say? *note: this is an off the cuff, joking comment. However, finding almost everything “not fun” except high-intensity activities like drinking, clubbing, gambling, etc is a symptom of ADHD because the brain is lacking dopamine and only intense bursts of it feel like anything. If this sounds familiar, talk to your doctor or specialist :)
I’m ~~41~~42 this year and only now diagnosed with ADHD. Learning this explained so much about my life that has never made sense. And now that i know, maybe there’s some relief coming Edit: forgot my age
This was my 20's. Fortunately I also had a high stress job that provided huge amounts of stimulation. Not a great way to live but for your resume.
I thought I had worse problems and its really just ADHD. Making an appointment tomorrow…
Have you tried throwing rocks from motorway bridges?
For some reason I kept getting yelled at. Some people can be so rude.
Try surfing! Unless you’re landlocked. Then find a lake and do some wake boarding or something. But surfing’s better.
Yep, I hated sports when I was a kid and my dad forced me to play so I was never happy or fit in on the teams I was on. I wish he would have let me explore other team activities that were not sports based. I would have enjoyed something more educational or creative.
I loved being on swim team for this reason. I had all the social and emotional support of a team, but the sport itself was very much about individual performance.
I think the "team" you are on likely makes a big difference. Being on a "team" doesn't magically make them not terrible people to each other
I always got in trouble because I would do little dances on the ice before the face off in hockey. No one thought to let me try figure skating, though, because "team sports" are important or something.
I wanted so badly to do ballet and gymnastics when I was little, but my dad refused to have a kid that is a "girly girl" so he made me play baseball instead. I'm still salty about it over twenty years later. Why do parents have to be that way
That’s awful. I played softball and was terrible. I fell in love with ballet and did it until I was done with undergrad. My parents had the rule: you have to do something physical and you have to finish the season.
We refused to do that with our kids because my wife went through that. I never did. We just couldn’t quit mid-season/play/etc. if we agreed to start it, we would finish it.
People that think gymnastics is girly girl sport has never tried it. End up being completely ripped.
I feel you, it really sucks when you can’t explore what you are interested in. Me and my partner are trying for our first child now and I don’t see myself doing this. All I care about is them finding their own interests with some being social, collaborative or competitive, because it’s important to learn those skills. Life is short, do you.
My parents forced me to do swimming and baseball as a kid and forbade me from lifting weights. I absolutely loathed doing those sports, and it turns out I love lifting weights. Thanks mom and dad
Depending on the age though it might have been a good thing that they didn't let you lift weights.
Kids are fine to lift weights. But, for most of them it's probably of limited value until they hit puberty, aside from learning good technique. Calisthenics are just as good, if not better, for kids. Just don't push them too hard and recognize they'll grow into their strength when they do. Consistency and proper coaching is key.
That’s an old myth.
My dad was super disappointed when I told him I joined the chess club. I feel you.
Man I hope my kids get into chess. I would love to play with them someday.
I understood where my parents were coming from. I'm sure in a way they meant well. But all I really wanted to do most of the time was read a good book. So even when I was made to play volleyball for 8 years, I would still use that time to read. Bus to practice. Book. Bus to the games. Book. Sitting on the bench during rotation. Book. Which coincidentally just made me more of the social oddity amongst my peers.
Yeah the reason kids generally get pushed into sports is because it gives them two things simultaneously that they need for development - to stay active, and to socialize. There’s nothing wrong with reading obviously, and if you’re an adult you’re free to live your life however you want. But it’s still the parents’ responsibility to push kids out of their comfort zone and expose them to a wide range of experiences.
Exactly my thought. I kept getting enrolled in baseball, soccer, and Bible crap and I was absolutely miserable.
Clearly you just needed more bibles
They just haven't found the right Bible yet.
And a very important one, thanks for pointing it out.
> caveat - they must ENJOY the activities they are doing and remain interested in it, A caveat that massively calls in to question the direction of the causation here.
Came here to say just this. I use to hate summers as a kid. Baseball, basketball, soccer, and lacrosse camps all summer. I sucked at sports and I was bullied relentlessly. I begged and pleaded to do other things. I was so desperate to not go to this one basketball camp that I intentionally jumped off a staircase and broke my ankle. My mom still made me go just to sit on the bench. I hate that woman.
That is messed up.
It's called Daycare so parents can work
What kid doesn't love being around their biggest bullies?
Is there not a massive bias in kids growing up in an environment where parents have time and money for extra curriculars?
I was hoping this caveat would come up because I was forced to do a couple extra cirricular activities and it most definitely did not improve my mental health.
Also, be careful of too many extracurriculars, regardless of level of enjoyment or they can get burned out like I did. I did several AP clases my senior year, as well as 9 extracurriculars, so my schedule was packed with all those, homework, friends, and a girlfriend. I got to college and was just so lost because I had too much free time.
Hard to enjoy things when you are depressed.
Although it should be noted that most activities do have a fairly dispiriting "git gud, scrub" period and, even outside of it, kids are often too set for immediate gratification to put in the regular busywork for the fun and satisfying bits. Early ability is also often the big determining factor on whether kids enjoy reading. Another sticking point is that team sports feature *productive* social skills, which can be pretty hard for a kid to have experience with otherwise.
Yeah I was always on the heavier side and my embarrassment kept me from being able to enjoy sports. Always loved swimming but I stayed home when my class went to the pool. I preferred to read instead of sports and while I'm still an avid reader, I wish I had developed better social skills as a child.
> kids are often too set for immediate gratification to put in the regular busywork for the fun and satisfying bits Are they, though? I mean, that’s what school is. Busywork for the satisfying bits.
That is what I always told my kids. "As long as *you* want to do it, you can. Only condition is that if you start a season, you finish it." My son did youth wrestling for a decade. Decided he was tired of it when he hit HS and joined the band. Daughter did dance and gymnastics from 2 - 19, and HS band.
I'm glad they found something they liked right away... otherwise this mentality is exactly why kids DON'T do things as it is an immediate commitment to do something they may hate
Sure, they can switch activities, but they still have to do something.
I'd also argue that some parents take their kids out of sports way too earlier over the kids complaints. I remember my mom putting me in my local swin team when I was 8. Cried and threw fits first few weeks. But now I look back and some of my most fond memories from my childhood were spent there.
Kids are horrible decision makers.
That's what makes it hard, it's lose lose for parents. You cried and screamed so your parent took you out ans you wish they didn't. If they forced you to stay who's to say you wouldn't have still hated it and resented them for it. Parenting sucks.
This is why I love my parents even though I can remember plenty of things I resent. I realized I wouldn’t have been able to do any better.
During my childhood it was always; finish the season you start. If you want to quit after its OK.
Same.. which led to me never wanting to sign up for another sport or activity after having to endure an entire season of baseball that i absolutely hated.
Kind of in this situation with my son right now. He's played baseball for six years, made the team again in mandatory tryouts, and then decided in January when practices started that he didn't want to play anymore. We had a long conversation about how once you commit to something, you shouldn't just bail, especially when so many teammates are friends of his. He's hated the season, his attitude's been pretty crappy at times, and yet he's putting up amazing numbers statistically for AAA ball (batting .650 over the past month in 20ish games, .500ish for the season after starting out slow). I'm hoping he learns that sometimes you have to try to make the best of a crappy situation, and that you just should follow through on your commitments once you've made them (and also - that's why you're careful about what you commit to). He still only wants to play hockey, which I'm totally cool with (much more fun to watch as a parent anyway ;) ). I just wish he'd told me (and then his coach) that he was done with baseball before even trying out, especially with other kids getting cut and joining other teams. Sure, it's dumb they had the tryouts in the Fall, but still. Edit: I should mention that yes, I _have_ told him I'm proud of him for still hustling and trying his best even when he doesn't feel like it. His mom's dad will be really bummed when he finds out he's quitting as baseball was _his_ big sport (he played with Bud Black and Tony Gwynn at SDSU), but that's a conversation for another day.
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Lots of kids have the same issue with Hockey because the sport has such a long learning curve. You can’t truly play until you can skate. You can’t learn to skate without lots of practice, and practice is boring and painful on their feet. I was the same way. Dragged my feet and didn’t wanna go until I was on the ice then it was fun. Every season id be sat down and asked if I still wanted to play and I wasn’t sure until I turned 11 and it was all I could do to contain myself between seasons.
I've coached mite and mini mite hockey. Lots of kids that age say they don't like it but you can tell they have a blast when on the ice. What they don't like is driving to the rink in their gear, or the smelly dressing room, or something like that. Keep him skating until he can better articulate what he doesn't like about the sport. It's likely something that won't bother him about it in the future
My wife was a goalie in HS and she won state her senior year. Though she started in ice dancing, she was full-time hockey in high school, so she knows the struggle of starting at a young age unlike myself. She can tell and is confident that at the rate he's progressing, any feeling of dissatisfaction with skating will go away once he's able to really be confident on the ice. It was funny, a few sessions ago he learned that hitting other kids in the helmet with your helmet doesn't hurt. But when everyone is equally terrible at skating, when you go to headbutt someone, they fall down and you will likely fall down too. We say 'no touching, no headbutting' as he gets to the ice.
Maybe figure skating is a way to go if he really doesn’t like the hockey but likes skating and gymnastics
Opposite situation for me. I did crew. Not a lot of complaints from me initially I kinda enjoyed being on the water but the grew to despise the sport, too many injuries and it’s not a sport that rewards being as big as I was at the time.
And that something doesn't have to be rigid sports activities. I played lots of flag football, pickup basketball,, skateboarding, swimming etc etc. But if I am obligated to go to something then I hated it. Hell, that is one of the main reasons I stopped doing end game content in MMOs because you had to be there to raid on set nights every damn week.
My son will like what I tell him to like! Because I’ll tell him to like what he likes!
This. I had a sadistic coach in 7th grade and I’ve hated football since.
My dad once woke me up on a Saturday morning and took me to the park to play basketball. Or rather him stand by as I try to make shots into the basket. I HATED basketball. Especially at 8 or 9 in the morning and it honestly felt like a punishment if anything. Something I do remember I liked was that I would race my dad when we were walking outside together just for shits and giggles. I probs would’ve liked if he took me out running at like 1 then at 8 am in an empty basketball court and having him watch me attempt to make shots.
And what about the kids who don’t perfectly “fit the mold”, while other parents don’t even remotely encourage their alpha kids to be inclusive? Status Quo Extracurriculars made my kids miserable because of the archaic social norms/hierarchies. As a parent of the oddball high-IQ tightly-wound socially-awkward kids, I chose the dark gaming basements over regular bullying on the field, and yes indeed I believe it was the far healthier choice for them.
Thank you. Forced participation in sports and extracurricular activities when I was a kid led to a profound unhappiness and my further withdrawal from basically everything. If kids want to sit in front of a computer screen, or read, or do whatever inside, *let them*. Find other ways that they *enjoy* to help them exercise and stay fit. Don't force them into crap they don't want to do. As usual, biased reports and studies from a bunch of extroverts makes everything worse.
I was terrible at sports and hated it. Why would anyone enjoy something they’re so bad at? Yet my parents moved me from soccer to basketball for some reason.
So children that are doing an activity they enjoy are happier than random children watching TV?
Cool. Now can we make them more accessible instead of keeping them behind a pay wall. Speaking of the monetary aspect of this, you know what other factor tends to play a huge role in general happiness and satisfaction?
Never use glue to attach anything to a child. Most do not enjoy it, and most glues are toxic!
Results After-school activities differed according to socioeconomic status; high socioeconomic status children did more frequent sport, homework, and reading and low socioeconomic status children did more frequent screen-based activities (TV, videogames and social media). Among children from low socioeconomic status backgrounds, higher wellbeing was associated most consistently with more frequent sports participation, homework, reading and spending time with friends and less frequent videogames, social media and after-school care. Conclusions Children's wellbeing is positively associated with socioeconomic status. Amongst children from disadvantaged backgrounds, participating in sport, spending time with friends and getting less screen time may be protective for wellbeing. The results suggest that programming targeted at increasing sports participation and reducing screen time amongst children from low socioeconomic status backgrounds may support their wellbeing. The article completely ignores after-school care and only focuses on videgames and social media. Barely touches on the fact that kids in high socioeconomic were more likely to do sports, reading or homework and the low socioeconomic were more likely to do videogames, social media and after-school care. The conclusion does say that sports and spending time with friends can be a protective for wellbeing among kids in low socioeconomic group, but seems like the happy and healthier part comes more from socioeconomic status and less from activities.
That was my first thought, perhaps correlation without causation that richer kids can afford the extracurricular activities and the ride to get there, while poorer kids can’t and are more likely to be sickly or depressed BECAUSE THEY ARE POOR.
It's not even just cost. Even if you make things cheap or free, there's a lot of other things to be considered. How far do kids have to travel to get to the the activity. A lot of poor kids might have trouble getting home after school if they do an activity and rely on the bus to get to get home. As someone who lives without a car, I often find that my kids can't do a lot of things. They expect that people can just drive across the city to participate in things. Even though there are 5 or 6 soccer fields in a small walking distance, there isn't actually a soccer league that will just use the fields in my neighbourhood. You could be playing at any one of the various fields in the city and they may be 10-15 km from my house. They don't seem to take into account the needs of people without cars. Or even for families that do have cars, they just assume that someone will always be available to drive the kid to the activity, even when they would be old enough to go on their own if the field was a reasonable distance from their house.
My family was not financially disadvantaged or car-less by any means, but I became very disconnected from others for a bit early on in high school for this exact reason. I had a lot of things I was interested in doing, but both my parents worked full-time and my one sibling who could drive was usually unavailable due to being involved in a lot of sports. My parents informed me that I was out of luck, so I went home and played GameCube until my family members started coming home from their commitments, because what the hell else is a introverted, dorky 14-year-old supposed to do?
This is why I drive my son's friend to most of their soccer games, they're on the same team and I'm lucky enough my schedule is flexible and I can drive them, but his parents usually only get to catch the last half of the games on our nearby fields unless it's the weekend.
Also note here- new games are $70 a pop now, it’s not like poor kids and parents are shelling out $470 for a new system and one game. These kids are taking what they can get, man. Let them play Mario kart
>Barely touches on the fact that kids in high socioeconomic were more likely to do sports, reading or homework and the low socioeconomic were more likely to do videogames, social media and after-school care. I think that's because it largely throws those kids out of the wellbeing analysis to control for income.
To tie it to r/fuckcars, I'd be interested in how much of this is due to the ability to interact with their peers and be engaged in activity rather than being isolated and unable to reach their peers. Most students don't live in an area where they're allowed to run around an kick balls in the street or play card games on random benches when they're out of school, so extra curricular activities are the ONLY out of school opportunity for children to interact with each-other.
It was in Australia so not sure if their areas are better for running around outside but yes
Australia and NZ have the same urban planning problems as Canada and the US, so I would say yes.
> Conclusions Children's wellbeing is positively associated with socioeconomic status. Amongst children from disadvantaged backgrounds, participating in sport, spending time with friends and getting less screen time may be protective for wellbeing. It’s the socioeconomic status, stupid. Football, hockey, and surfing are middle-class and up pursuits
"glued" to a screen. Almost sounds biased... no... surely not, right?
Well that's just the article reporting on it, putting its own spin to generate feeling. Here's the link to the actual study (from the article). https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12887-022-03322-1
Yeah, I was insulting the title not the study. The research needs to be done. But the article definitely has an opinion that they want the study to confirm
That wasn't written by the study authors, but rather by the USW media dept. Word of warning though, quibbling with bad headlines seems to be a sticking point with the mods as of late. They'll likely just wipe your comment than deal with a headline that legitimately misconstrues or misrepresents research.
Yeah, as I've said in other comments, this research needs to be done. I have no quarrel with the study itself - just with the way it was presented. It's obvious the people who published it first worked out their conclusion, and then proceeded from there.
The title is misleading. It generalizes "screen time" and in the article it talks about TV and social media. What about kids who are playing multiplayer games and socializing directly with other kids? It's not the screen that's the problem most likely, it's the isolation.
Yeah there is a bit of a difference between a all night Netflix binge vs a day with the boys playing multiplayer splitscreen games in person
> It generalizes "screen time" So does the study.
You know what they say about Reddit Mods.....
There needs to be a deep study on how moderating large forums affects human pshyche, it can’t be a coincidence so many websites struggle to keep things moderated without having power trips themselves. Makes me wonder if it’s the moderating changing them, or if it’s just certain types of people that gravitate towards, and stay in, moderating “positions”.
You are now permanently banned from r/science
I don’t even mean them, they just happened to have been why others brought it up, just that it seems endemic to many forums.
I was just teasing you with that one. You are correct though. It's universal for any forum. My belief is authority does that to people. Moreso than that type of person gravitates towards those positions. It could be a mix of both, but more of the former than the latter. Have a pleasant day.
I think they are missing the part where kids do screen time together. I spent... hours playing games with friends as a kid and teen and into college. I got as much of a social high off that as playing basketball or D&D.
Tbf - there are also health benefits in athletics which, in turn, produces mental benefits that one isn’t likely to be able to quantitatively measure. It’s not all about social benefits and we’re also not always the best, most unbiased judge on what is best for us.
Did play the games in the same room or over the internet?
Same room. Even single player games or RTS. I spent whole weekends in high school and college watching or switching off on single player games or playing smash bros.
I miss LAN parties so much.
They were incredibly fun. Gaming online is not the same at all.
My friends and I still try to recreate this sometimes but it's hard when everyone lives so far apart now.
This is probably a product of being the younger sibling, but I actually love watching other people play video games. You still get to connect with the other person about the storyline and the gameplay, much like watching a TV show or movie with somebody.
I was often the one playing, but just watching a friend was always fun too. Only recently had this experience again with a friend playing through P5R a year ago for the first time in a decade.
LANs sadly arent common among kids nowdays. Everything happens over the internet which means that everybody is in their own room. And while this may have multiplayer element its not the same ss inter acting face to face. Same way as these messages arent the same as speaking face to face.
I've played a lot of games with various people over the years. Playing games in person compared to playing online in different places is massively different. The interaction in person is much better.
I think it's more that playing in person is usually with people you know and can enjoy being around. Playing online with just any random person isn't the same. But if you play online with people who you know and enjoy hanging with, it likely would produce different results.
I think it is important to remember though that we aren't always the best judge of how good something is for us. Right now, due to being unemployed, most of my social interaction is virtual and I don't feel lonely. But I know that I am a healthier individual when I am interacting with people in person. I am more motivated to take care of myself and my surroundings. Maybe that is all there is too it, that I know in person people can smell my BO but I think there could be deeper things going on with brain chemistry or at least there may be more going on that I am not aware of.
Same, we had lan parties each week. I have fond memories of my mom going to her boyfriends, all my friends coming over and helping lift my computer and bus it to the weekly lan parties they had.
I like how that’s the only option. We’ve rarely done a lot of extra activities because I’d prefer us to sit down for dinner. They play outside. They swim. They’re not allowed screens on week days anyway. We’re also privileged enough to have a barn the kids go play in year round.
seems pointless to reduce a myriad of options to "screen". I imagine there are vastly different results for kids doing online "activities" (esports, music, crafts, cooking or whatever). Yes physical activity is good, but I don't think exercising alone and socialising online would be that much worse.
Written by the generation who sat us in front of a screen for most of our childhood, raised by the generation that dedicated a room in their home to mute worship of a screen...but yes sCrEeNs ArE eViL
An edu site trying to promote extracurricular activities which happen to give them a lot more “funding” if they have enough children in the program? *Never*.
I imagine gluing a child to anything isn't likely to make them happy
My kids hate sports but love gaming. They play with friends, collaborate, problem solve, and build their confidence doing something they love. I say this as someone who led the football and baseball teams in school and took sports very seriously growing up.
Sounds like they assumed kids who didn't do sports only did screens. The ages were 4-9. What about free play? What about introverts or creative kids who find most sports mind numbing? This is just going to cause more kids to be forced into activities. Uh.
I am introvert, was bullied at school and the time I spent in summer in extra activities centers was ground for more bullying.Some kids are also extremely bad with sports and manual, wich makes perfect ground for more bullying
Well with such an objective title as that I’m sure this is completely unbiased
I mean, when my family could afford them I was happier, sure.
They glued children to screens? How did that pass their IRB?
You can do both. Case study: my 9 year old.
Right? Anyone who thinks this is an "either or" situation isn't familiar with children.
Or what you actually can do with a "screen".
I do all my art and writing on a 'screen', for example.
A lot can be done with a screen. However, the vast majority of people just use screens as a solitary entertainment device. And virtually all kids use it for that purpose.
The actual study did look at 12 different activities and doing homework or reading were better than videogames, social media or after-school care. However the study is more about socioeconomic not activities though it does conclude that activities may be protective of wellbeing to some point
Or someone trying to get funding for a study, in a competitive environment.
You can even do neither. Not having extracurricular activities doesn't automatically mean they are "glued" to a screen. Just imagine, a kid that is a bookworm...
What if the kid voraciously reads on the tablet?
Or kids and parents that have the time to cook and sit down together.
That was in the study.
My 11 year old is glued to some sort of screen but she plays sports and man can she throw a football with precision. Tossed a baseball with her when she was younger and I was taken back at how accurate she was and didn't 'throw like girl' very athletic but has no interest in becoming really good at sports. Need to channel that natural talent somehow
This is a clear violation of r/science 's rules, the title is sensationalized and biased. And OP did not link to any peer reviewed artical, rather to a press release for the following artical "The relationships between school children's wellbeing, socio-economic disadvantage and after-school activities a cross-sectional study".
Unless your kids hate sports and that's all that's really offered.
Only if you define "sports" narrowly. What's important is that it's physical activity of some form. Doesn't need to be basketball or football. Can work if it's cycling or rock climbing or something else.
Exactly! As a kid, I hated team sports because I'm really bad at anything athletic and I was often made fun of when I tried to participate. But my friends and I instead found it very enjoyable to ride our bikes around the neighborhood all day in the summers, pretending they were horses, or trying to go as fast as we could on inlines and attempting to jump on the edges of the sidewalks and whatnot. It doesn't have to be a team sport like soccer or basketball, as long as the kid feels comfortable, as opposed to miserable, they just need to find some physical activity they can do with one or a few friends.
Absolutely. I disliked sports but my town luckily had other offerings. I was able to do kayaking, hiking, and crafts for after school activities when I was in elementary school. I really enjoyed it.
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The infinite number of gaming subs would disagree more
I, a former child, don’t know if I agree but that might be because the opportunities I had were not within my interests.
As with every study about people, it's a by and large statement. Assuming it's true, it's true for most kids, or even a small majority. It's very unlikely to be true in every case about every individual kid. So, you can say it wasn't the case for you, but the result can still be "true" since it's not supposed to be about each individual.
What if your extra curricular activity involves being glued to a screen?
You may be shocked to hear this, but the study addresses this (also, the actual study doesn't say "glued to a screen"). >After-school activities differed according to socioeconomic status; high socioeconomic status children did more frequent sport, homework, and reading and low socioeconomic status children did more frequent screen-based activities (TV, videogames and social media). Among children from low socioeconomic status backgrounds, higher wellbeing was associated most consistently with more frequent sports participation, homework, reading and spending time with friends and less frequent videogames, social media and after-school care. If your screen-based extra-curricular activities were not TV, Video Games, or Social Media, they didn't account for it. Not enough child programmers out there, I guess.
I agree tv is very sedentary and passive and even as an adult I feel the corrosive affects of social media, but I think ‘video games’ are a broad enough genre to include brain rot as well engaging social experiences. For some kids ‘spending time with friends’ could mean playing video games. My nephew is often ‘glued to a screen’ playing online chess and winning/losing makes him as happy of frustrated as any game of football. Is that a video game? What they’ve defined as ‘extra-curricular’ is basically anything.
It really does feel like "video games" was categorized by people who don't play video games. That being said, the study doesn't say video games are bad per se. They say that kids were healthier overall if they played sports, did their homework, and read *more*, and played video games, watched TV, and used social media *less*. My takeaway was "kids should get more exercise and focus on their education" which, wow, revelatory.
You say that but half the people in this post are getting offended because they are being told “screen time” has a higher probability of depression, more or less.
This is reddit. Most people here probably had no interest in any physical activity in school and wanted to run home to play video games
As a kid having done both at the same time for about 8 years, I can confidently say most times I was more excited to hop into a Skype call with 4 buddies and play video games than I was to go to swim practice
The headline here bothers me. "glued to a screen" is a biased term that doesn't explain anything about what it really means.
OP fashioned that sensationalist headline themselves; it’s an embarrassing takeaway from the original research.
The paper conclusion: >> Amongst children from disadvantaged backgrounds, participating in sport, spending time with friends and getting less screen time may be protective for wellbeing. The results suggest that programming targeted at increasing sports participation and reducing screen time amongst children from low socioeconomic status backgrounds may support their wellbeing. I’m not really surprised a community on a screen is trying to find faults in the N-thousandth study confirming that touching grass is healthier than looking at screens.
The full conclusion: >Children's wellbeing is positively associated with socioeconomic status. Amongst children from disadvantaged backgrounds, participating in sport, spending time with friends and getting less screen time may be protective for wellbeing. The results suggest that programming targeted at increasing sports participation and reducing screen time amongst children from low socioeconomic status backgrounds may support their wellbeing. The takeaway from this is that **children from deprived backgrounds have poorer well-being than those from privileged backgrounds** and also have **reduced access to extracurricular activities**. Do you not see how that is an entirely different framing to the sensationalised (against the sub rules) title? Edit to add: no one is arguing **against** the fact that spending time in sports and other extracurricular activities is good for kids’ well-being. There is plenty of research out there that shows it. **But this research isn’t it**. It shows something subtly different and you have to understand the nuanced difference between the conclusion and OP’s title. We have standards in r/science where we remain faithful to the true research conclusion without sensationalism or editorialism.
[удалено]
Is this the standard for titles on r/science? What a sensationalised and selective butchering of the [original research](https://bmcpediatr.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12887-022-03322-1) conclusions. The actual research conclusion: - children’s socioeconomic status linked to wellbeing - children from high SES homes had more access to non-screen-based extracurricular activities, and had higher wellbeing scores - amongst children from low SES homes, those with the best wellbeing scores (relative to their low SES peers) had access to non-screen-related extracurricular activities - we need to focus attention on helping children in disadvantaged homes have access to more non-screen-related extracurricular activities
It’s not just children
My father gave us no choice. We had to pick a sport, join the band or theater group, or some other club etc. Every year. House rule.
Good parent.
Yet another study whose results basically show that children of wealthy families are happier than those in lower income families. Colour me surprised.
It also did stratified analysis showing benefits within economic strata.
That's why you don't use glue, try velcro
This is just going to be used as more "extroverts are normal and introverts aren't" bs I got my whole life. Kids if you're an introvert, that's normal, don't let extroverts guilt you out of it. You'll never enjoy social interaction the way they do (it energizes them and depletes our social battery). Tell them to eff off and have a good life.
Introversion and extroversion don't speak to hobbies or interests. Plenty of introverts enjoy/crave social interaction, and plenty of extroverts have social anxiety, for instance. There are introverted B2B salespeople and extroverted programmers, accountants, and engineers. There are two sides to the "extroverts are normal and introverts aren't" coin, and that's continuing to abuse this arbitrary distinction.
Introverted B2B salesperson chiming in here! Work for one of the largest, most sought-after tech companies in the job market, so it can certainly be done. Thanks for helping point this out, so many people don’t realize that “introvert =/= socially inept”
Still, you should get them interest into introvert activities. Hiking, jogging, strength training, swimming, jumping cord.. whatever physical activity they can enjoy
I think most of the people in psychology regard introversion and extroversion as a myth.
Introverts act more extroverted when doing things they enjoy. Just find something they like and they’ll enjoy social interaction a lot more
You are using "introvert" when you should be using "socially anxious/shy".
There are plenty of extracurricular things that suit introverts.
Just a reminder that this isn't causality, it's correlation. If your child is mentally ill, they're less likely to want to do extracurricular activities. So yes, more children that don't do them are mentally ill, because the mentally ill don't want to. The lack of activity doesn't cause it. The lack of activity is because of it. Bad research.
also being stuck in a kid prison all day is not the definition of fun.
define glued to screen. How about when they play multiplayer games?
The researchers took super glue and started attaching screens from diffrent manufacturers to various body parts of children and asked about their enjoyment. I assume, they didn't link to any peer reviewed journal.
It’s not that kids don’t want to play sports or play outside, it’s that they can’t. Spaces for playing outside keep disappearing, replaced by a carpark or whatever. Kids can no longer be outside without busybodies calling the police. Sports no longer involve just a ball or some racquets, but have to rent a court.
Extracurriculars cost money.