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Dixie Dillon Lane's avatar

It's wonderful to be considering how we can support a healthy childhood from lots of different angles! I have some hesitations with some of these approaches, though.

I’m sympathetic with the author’s call for more “dumbphone” type tech to be developed, but I would like to see use of such phones grow among adults rather than kids (who I think ought not to have a phone at all). Since there are no more payphones, perhaps “free-ranging” children should have a dumbphone that can call a parent/911 with them when they go out (at least one phone in the group of kids), but they don’t need a Swiss army knife phone — adding on other things will take away from their problem-solving, independence, and ability to hone their mental skills (maps? they don’t need maps — they need to learn to orient themselves!).

But more to the point, I don’t much care for the idea of tech-free clubs and other businesses as a solution. This makes a tech-free childhood a privilege linked to economic wealth and compartmentalizes it into certain parent-provided places. (Something like the Let Grow play groups after school seem to be of a different character, because all children can attend, it is not for-profit and it can bleed into and out of school rather than being heavily compartmentalized.)

And groups like the Boy Scouts…well, their decline is not due to a lack of efforts to re-invigorate them. Many former Scouting families no longer trust the Boy Scouts due to their embrace of particular political and sexual trends, and the Boy Scouts lost their distinctiveness when they began to admit girls.

I am unhappy with the idea of a free childhood needing to be formalized via wealth/business/adult-run organizations. I think local infrastructure like streets that are safe for pedestrians, parks and shops within walking distance of/in neighborhoods, etc. are what is needed most (along with kids and adults eschewing smartphones). A free childhood is not one that is organized and implemented for profit by adults. It is one in which parents do what they can to prepare a friendly environment and then make mental and schedule space to allow children to explore freely.

I fear that a childhood spent with a slightly-less-smart-but-still-pretty-smart-phone in clubs that kids’ parents pay for them to enter and to which their parents drive them would not be a “brought-back childhood.” It would be “now go to this thing and do your 'free childhood' time that your parents have paid for” instead of all of childhood being about forming and growing.

Thoughts?

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Roman S Shapoval's avatar

Organizing summer camps is one of the best initiatives I've ever been a part of.

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