RIP Free Play

Bored in the 90s, for me, is of course as vivid as is a VHS filter app. If I ever ran out of 4x double AA batteries for my Gameboy, I’d then resort to setting up outside on the porch for my neighbor friends to put on a super jank magic show. Something semi-dangerous that I learned in a library book, involving food coloring and a glass of watered down clorox, to then having it accidentally stain my cargo jeans with dalmatian spots. Being 90s bored also looks like a random time around Easter, playing as an effective accomplice to my friend trying to heist a couple bags of Easter eggs over the fenced off park, minutes before the organizers let off the whistle to let kids have at it. And then there were summer sleepovers at my friend’s backyard pool making up super random games, like who can skip the kick board the farthest across, only to see one clock straight into his little brother’s mouth. His dad was pissed.

Lots of trouble to get in and out of. Many successful childhood days.

The below paraphrases from Jonathan Haidt’s – “The Anxious Generation”


Free Play Began its decline the 1980s and accelerated decline in the 1990s.

What would it be to live on mars? The metaphor for a Gen X “phone-based” childhood (phone as any screen: TV, computer, tablet.) 2010-15, A time when free play becomes somewhat obliterated. The first in the book opens up with the thought exercise of a newly born generation waking up to suddenly seeing an entire populace addicted to staring into glowing rectangles eerily.

Our primal, planet-changing trait was the ability to learn from each other. Evolution lengthened our childhood to make this learning possible. The 3 strong motivations to make learning easy and likely: Free Play, Attunement & Social Learning

  • Free play: low risk mistakes. Activity for its own sake. Unsupervised by adults. Learn to tolerate and handle their emotions.
  • Attunement: Synchronized movement and emotion with others. Timing, Eye-contact & body language.
  • Social Learning: Birds of a feather. Copying people and learning to copy the right people. Not just parents but skilled people in the community.

In contrast, young people moving their relationships online, become disembodied (not using physical bodily/facial cues) asynchronous and sometimes disposable. Small mistakes can bring big costs, and the content can live forever for the public, meeting with intense criticism by multiple people without underlying bond.

The addictive design of ‘phone based play’ reduces the time available for face-to-face play in the real world. These devices are experience blockers. Reducing the experiences humans evolved for and must have an abundance of to become socially functioning adults. It’s as if we gave infants iPads loaded with movies about walking, so engrossing that the kids never put the effort into practicing walking.