Peter Gray

especially as the job market changes in ways that most parents don't necessarily understand and are kind of unpredictable.

And there's a lot of pressure on kids and creates a more competitive schooling environment than was present before.

Over the same decades that we have been gradually decreasing children's opportunities to play independently of adults, we have seen a continuous

rise in anxiety and depression and tragically even suicide among school aged kids.

So, of course, that correlation doesn't by itself prove a cause and effect relationship, but that's the first step for believing, well, maybe the fact that children are not playing and exploring and doing things independently

Maybe that's why they are so anxious, so depressed, so unhappy, so lacking in the resilience that we wish they would have.

Now, there's both.

theoretical reasons and empirical reasons for believing that there is this cause-effect relationship.

Can you tell me a little bit about that?

What is the evidence?

So let me begin with just the theoretical part.

Play makes children happy.

We shouldn't have to prove that, right?

I mean, play is what makes children happy.

It's also the case in other kinds of independent activities.

Children feel good.

They feel proud when they can do things by themselves.

You know, it gives you a sense of confidence and so on.

So you take that away from children and right off, they're going to be less happy.

And a famous play researcher, Brian Sutton Smith, who died a few years ago, and he used to say the opposite of play is depression.