Childhood and media

Have online worlds become the last free places for children?

Around 1950, when the developmental psychologist Peter Gray was five years old, his family moved to a new town. He didn’t know any of the kids in the neighbourhood, so his mother told him to go door to door and ask if any children lived in each house. He took her advice and, within a few minutes, had found a girl named Ruby Lou, who soon taught him how to ride a bicycle and climb trees. ‘During that first summer,’ Gray recalls in his book Free to Learn (2013), ‘Ruby Lou and I played together almost every day, often all day.’ Their adventures took them all across town, often far from the watchful eyes of adults. ….[READ]