For adults, most fond childhood memories likely involve playing outside with siblings or friends. However, children nowadays are spending more time than ever indoors than out. It’s a lot easier as a parent to simply hand your child an electronic device to keep them entertained than it is to encourage active play and going outside. While electronic devices have their benefits, it’s crucial for children to play outside.
Here is what you need to know about how playing outside can help child development.
Tech Isn’t The Devil – But Children Are On It Too Much
Technology certainly has its benefits. It allows people to stay connected, to learn, and to get inspiration. However, many sites are designed to suck you in so that you end up spending hours upon hours every day on your screens rather than living your life. According to Sanford Health, children only spend about 4-7 minutes in a day with unstructured play and well over 7 hours on electronic devices.
All this time on screens has consequences for child development. Some of the negative impacts of too much screen time include:
- Decreased attention spans
- Lessened ability to control impulses
- Reduced empathy
- Increased risk of gaining too much weight
- Trouble sleeping
- Mental health issues, such as anxiety and depression
- Lack of responsibility and accountability
- Decreased confidence
- Decreased creativity and imagination
- Worsened relationships
While it can be fun to play video games, watch a favorite show, or see what people are up to on social media, even adults should only spend about 2 hours a day on electronic devices for entertainment purposes. For children, screen time should be less.
The Benefits Of Playing Outside For Child Development
Remember when you and your friends would climb trees or play make-believe, turning the playground into a castle under siege or a pirate ship sailing the high seas? What about taking advantage of the local courts or the backyard court at someone’s house? Chances are, these are some of your most cherished memories.
There’s good reason for this, including how they can benefit child development. Here is what you need to know about how playing outside helps children grow into kinder, happier, more responsible people.
#1. Gross Motor Skills
This refers to whole body movement, like climbing, jumping, and bouncing, all skills utilized in playing sports outside. It includes spatial awareness, which is the ability to be mindful of the environment around you in order to avoid walking into people or objects.
When kids are inside on screens, they’re more likely than not just sitting or lying down for hours at a time. When playing outside, they’re almost constantly moving around, putting these skills to work.
#2. Language Skills
When kids play outside, they can talk freely with their peers. In their conversations, they can practice their language skills and learn how to interact socially.
While kids can learn how to interact with others online via texting and chats, it’s not the same thing as talking to people face-to-face and learning how tone and how one words things impacts how what you’re trying to say gets across.
#3. Peer Relationships
Playing outside helps kids learn how to interact with each other and the roles they prefer to assume. Perhaps one kid likes to be the leader while another would prefer to just follow along or play by themselves. If multiple kids want to be the leader, playing outside helps them learn how to take turns and handle conflict. Kids learn how to form relationships with each other and how to interact with people on an interpersonal level.
#4. Mood Regulation
This ties into peer relationships. When kids play sports outside, they need to learn how to regulate their emotions and impulses in order to have a good relationship with others. When kids are on electronic devices, this probably isn’t something that they’re learning, especially not with how vicious people on the internet can be.
Instead of learning how to regulate their moods and impulses, kids may see comments of people, adults even, saying hateful things, and assume that they can act however they see fit and say what they want without consequence.
#5. Exercise
The CDC recommends that children get at least an hour of moderate-to-intense physical activity daily. While kids can get this inside if they’re horsing around, it’s a lot easier for them to do this if they’re playing outside. Exercise has a plethora of benefits, including improved physical and mental health.
#6. Taking Risks
While it’s only natural for a parent to want to protect their children, kids need to learn how to take risks in order to develop confidence and the bravery needed in order to face risks later on in life. The lessons learned from failure are just as important as the ones learned from succeeding.
#7. Improved Attention Spans
When kids have to go outside and keep themselves entertained, they’re able to learn how to stay focused on one thing at a time. Being able to focus is an essential skill people need throughout their life, in school, in work, and to do anything well.
#8. Sunshine
With an increased focus on the dangers of unprotected sun exposure, parents may not want their children going outside. However, sunshine is essential for your physical and mental health. It helps vitamin D production, which leads to healthier bones, and boosts mood, decreasing symptoms of depression.
#9. Decreased Stress
While social media is wonderful for how it allows you to stay in touch with friends and family who live far away, it also leads to comparison and constant exposure to everything wrong with the world. Kids can become stressed from not knowing what to do and from comparing their life to others’. Playing outside decreases stress and gives kids the ability to just enjoy their life.
Make Playing Outside Easier For Your Kids
Installing a court in your backyard instantly gives your kids all sorts of fun to be had. Adults can enjoy it too, leading to an investment that pays off not just in childhood, like a playground, but throughout your family’s life.
Professional-Grade Court Surfacing Around Midway, UT
While Pickle Court Surfacing doesn’t install courts ourselves, we do provides court surfacing and resurfacing services, plus all the accessories you need to make your court fully functional. Whether you want to help your child’s development by encouraging them to play outside or you want something for friends and family to enjoy when they come over, we’re here to help you bring your dream court to life.
Contact us today to learn more about our sports purpose surfacing services.