November 19, 2025

Let’s Come Together to Protect Our Children’s Future

In recent decades we as a society have been conducting a play-deprivation experiment with our children… The results, I think, are in. Play deprivation is bad for children. Among other things, it promotes anxiety, depression, suicide, narcissism, and loss of creativity.
– Peter Gray

An online article by social psychologist Jon Haidt and research professor of psychology, Peter Gray discusses, as they call them, two very well-established and disturbing facts.

They explain:

“The first fact is that over the past 5 decades or more we have seen, in the United States, a continuous and overall huge decline in children’s freedom to play or engage in any activities independent of direct adult monitoring and control…

“The second undisputed fact is that over these same decades, rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide among young people have increased enormously. Using data from standard clinical questionnaires administered to school-aged children over the decades, researchers have estimated that the rates of what we now call major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder increased by roughly 5- to 8-fold during the second half of the 20th century, and other measures indicate that they have continued to increase during the first two decades of the 21st century.”

On December 5, 2025 we have an opportunity to come together as an early childhood community in support of children’s right to play. The Engaging Exchange Protecting Play Online Conference, hosted by Exchange and Nature Explore, will offer discussions and presentation from inspiring, engaging ECE professionals to equip us all with new ideas and tools for securing a brighter future for children.

The Conference is offered free of charge thanks to the generosity of our Elite sponsor, Procare, with the generous support of these additional sponsors: