For quite some time now the theme around American youth sports has been go as hard as you can, as long as you can, and hopefully your efforts will lead to a college athletic scholarship. Granted, many families still approach youth sports with that mentality, but with the mental health issues we see kids experiencing these days we might want to expand the utility of youth sports to help in other important ways. Specifically, I am referring to how playing sports, in addition to all the physical and emotional perks, can also be used to simply get kids outside and off screens! If you haven’t noticed, kids turn to screens (i.e. phones, gaming systems, etc) at just about every opportunity, often resulting in isolation, lethargy, depression, and over-eating. Many of these issues can be mitigated by getting kids involved in sports, not to make it to the pros, but to instead have a regular schedule that requires active participation. Talk about a great way to actively improve mental health!
Screens are the go-to
We are living in a very changing time period right now, where kids more regularly find joy in video gaming than they do playing games for real, in the real world. Screens are convenient, omnipresent, and even serve as a way for kids to “connect,” albeit virtually. And if you haven’t noticed, give a kid just a few minutes of autonomy and you will soon see his his or her head buried down looking at a screen. In fact, with so many exciting choices at any given moment (i.e. Tik Tok, YouTube, video games, etc) many kids lose all sense of time, and as a result spend hours upon hours vegging out on brain-rot videos, scrolling away, or shooting virtual guns on video games. Do you think these kinds of daily experiences are good for kids, or do you think it would be better for kids to do many of the same physical activities that you did as a kid?
The “screen takeover” has happened slowly over time, and many of the parents I talk to reveal that they really did not see screens as a problem until they looked more closely and realized how much of each day their kids passively sit in front of screens, as opposed to actually doing things in life. But here we are, and there are no indicators showing promise that kids will soon change course, and get back to engaging in the real world. Fortunately, there are solutions to getting kids more involved in real-life experiences, including the most active option of them all: youth sports.
Kids live a very different way of life compared to just a generation ago, though many parents cannot tell you exactly how this happened as the shift in the ways kids spend their time has been changing slowly over time. When I talk to parents at my office about these changes, they are often quite surprised when they stop and think how often their kids turn to their phones, tablets, or gaming devices. Parents also show increasingly more concern around the long-term effects of staring at screens, and are saddened thinking about, in hindsight, the missed opportunities where kids could have been involved in more active endeavors.
Youth sports can help!
Today, perhaps more than any time previous, is a great time to explore all the youth sport options available to your child. Why allow more time to pass where your child sits passively in front of his or her phone when there are real-life things your child can do? Being on a sports team, at minimum, requires that your child be physically present at a field or sports venue, serving as a healthy choice over screens on the most basic level. But that’s not all! When your child is on a team, he or she will also:
- Move their bodies! Enjoy the benefits of exercise. When it comes to improved mental health, there are not many better activities than physical exercise, and physical movement is “baked in” to the youth sport experience.
- Interact with other friends. Increasingly more kids today spend chunks of their day in isolation with their technology, but sports prompt kids to meet in the same space, communicate, and even resolve conflicts — all fantastic life experiences!
- Learn how to work together as a team. Teams problem-solve all the time, and this is yet another great skill kids develop when part of a sports team.
- Feel a sense of pride and accomplishment. There are not many life experiences more enriching than being recognized by teammates for making a big play, or fulfilling an important team role. When kids feel good about themselves, they are less likely to experience depression, or turn to unhealthy coping methods to deal with their stress.
- Learn skills that can be used in school, career, and life. Kids learn athletic transferable skills from playing sports, and these include learning how to focus, work with teammates, set goals, and bounce back from adversity.
Final thoughts
Sure, many parents today still hope that their kid’s youth sport experience may lead to future college and professional sport opportunities, but we are seeing a much greater value to youth sports in this moment that centers around something more simple — healthy human development. If you want to protect your kids against depression, anxiety, and other mental health concerns, youth sports participation might be one of the better choices to make. Don’t wait another day, check out the programs and leagues available in your neighborhood and evaluate what options make the most sense for your son or daughter!
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