Is there any feeling on earth quite like that of a child on the first day of thesummer holidays? The giddying sense of freedom and potential, after hours spent gazing longingly at browning grass and cloudless skies through classroom windows. At the beginning of the summer holidays, your gauzy days stretch out before you like chewing gum, waiting to be filled with adventure. If you were anything like me, most of them will have been spent outside; your life a procession of doing words: running, climbing, building (and wrecking), swimming, playing and paddling.
The doing words of today’s children are somewhat different. There’s gaming, and sitting, and eating. Indeed, a report has found that children’s lazy summer holidays are responsible for wiping out children’s fitness levels. The study of 400 children in 14 schools found that fitness levels improved over the course of the academic year, only to be undone by the long summer holidays spent hunched over gadgets. In terms of physical activity, the bare minimum for children should be 60 minutes a day. This report indicates that children are failing to achieve even that.
Much of this can be blamed on the technology that was simply unavailable before now. As a society, we specialise in timewasting; another report released todayfound that we are now spending 25 hours a week on the internet, and most of that will be indoors. Many children I meet seem to have their time rigidly planned out in activity blocks – school, after-school activities, homework, bed – so slumping in front of a screen must seem like cosy respite in comparison. But you wonder if they’ll ever know the exquisite boredom of an empty summer day, where you’re booted out in the morning after your friends come to call, to return only at dusk when it’s time for tea? For the full article click here
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