Children Now Spend Less Time Outdoors than Prisoners

One of the saddest aspects of our high-tech world, is how it has turned many of us into depressed shut-ins. As time goes on we’re spending more and more of our lives looking at screens, rather than interacting with other human beings or going outside. This is especially problematic for children who, unlike adults, have never lived in a world without computers, smartphones, and the internet. Many of them don’t even know how to interact with other human beings, and they don’t know the joys of playing in the outdoors.

The situation is so bad that some kids spend less time outside than prisoners. According to a recent survey of parents in the UK, about a third of children play outside less than 30 minutes a day, and about a fifth of them don’t go outside at all on a typical day. That’s less than the minimum outdoor time that the UN recommends for prisoners, which is one hour.

So what would a prisoner say to that? The organization that fielded that study asked several inmates what they thought of all these kids sitting inside all day. Here’s what they had to say: