When Peter Gray remarried and became a stepfather to two small children in the early aughts, he made a discovery that surprised him. Most children were no longer allowed to play outdoors on their own.
The Boston College evolutionary biologist soon noticed other changes that highlighted just how much childhood had transformed since his first son, Scott, graduated from high school in the late 1980s. Once they entered elementary school, his stepchildren spent more time in the classroom and on homework at younger ages. Their after-school hours were overscheduled with adult-supervised sports and activities.
Even before smartphones ushered in the age of the modern “screenager,” it seemed to him, unstructured play time — a staple of most childhoods since the dawn of humanity — had almost completely disappeared.