vegpedlr
Total Posts: 1179
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iPood
Total Posts: 2360
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The trend will go on until we are capable to compensate the loss of a life of manual labor, climbing stairs, walking several miles every day, eating real food instead of boxed stuff and eating WAY less.
So, basically, we are all doomed. Because no matter how hard you hit the gym even on a daily basis, you can't make up for the remaining 23 hours of inactivity of modern life.
Food for thought: during World War II, the average body measurements of the over six million male inductees into the U.S. Army was found to be 5 feet, 8 inches tall and 144 pounds in weight, on average an inch taller and eight pounds heavier than his Great War counterpart.
"I think we often spend too much time focusing on max fitness
and not nearly enough on maintaining our minimums.
It seems we need to think sustainable rather than obtainable.
Meaning whatever we do today, we can do it again tomorrow.
Never taking so much from ourselves that we can't."
Dan Martin |
Edited by iPood on 07-15-20 01:37 PM. Reason for edit: No reason given.
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Jordan D
Total Posts: 771
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Curious that they don't mention the word "obesity" once in that entire article.
As someone born on the border between Gen X and Y, it's with both disgust and pity that I report my generation, the millennials, are on track to be the most obese in human history, the most stressed, and already feature vastly higher cancer rates than baby boomers.
People like to complain about baby boomers these days. I do not. That is foolish and disrespectful. But it's fair to say that previous generations made some mistakes, and that we millennials are repeating them, and perhaps even making them worse, considering how Gen Z/teenage suicide rates have doubled in the last decade, and that rates of obesity among 6-11 year olds have nearly tripled since the 80s, and among teenagers, more than quadrupled.
Thus, it amazes me that educated Westerners trust "expert advice" on how to raise children, when a macroscopic view reveals that, as a society, we might be doing the worst job of it in human history. But hey, poverty rates are at an all-time low and everyone can afford Pop-Tarts and Netflix!
(Apologies to all non-Americans for the US-focused citations.)
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Justin Jordan
Total Posts: 854
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07-15-20 01:36 PM - Post#900318
Well, that's one theory.
Or it's because of what the Boomers collectively did that caused things to suck for Gen Z.
But in any case millennials are unlikely to reverse Gen X's course, because the stuff that causes this - mostly the industrialization of food, but with a side helping of living in a high stress environment, is probably going to continue for a bit and millennials are adults to just about middle age already.
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JDII
Total Posts: 7319
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07-15-20 02:05 PM - Post#900319
My 2 cents, not really worth that much to be honest, but here it is. Boomers (me, born at the end of the Baby Boom) were raised differently I think. We played outside constantly, we ran around all summer and winter, rarely inside watching tv, and if we did we had 3 channels. We didn't have computers or video games, or iphones or iPads, etc. We just had outside, always active. Our parents didn't give us rides to school or sports practice, or most places that I can remember, we walked (Yes it was up hill both ways, in snow up to our hips). So I think that may have transferred in life as we got older.
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davidcc
Total Posts: 56
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07-15-20 02:20 PM - Post#900320
Boomers (me, born at the end of the Baby Boom) were raised differently I think. We played outside constantly, we ran around all summer and winter, rarely inside watching tv, and if we did we had 3 channels. We didn't have computers or video games, or iphones or iPads, etc. We just had outside, always active. Our parents didn't give us rides to school or sports practice, or most places that I can remember, we walked (Yes it was up hill both ways, in snow up to our hips).
You just very accurately described my childhood. Except for the three TV channels. We were lucky. We had a UHF converter with which we could pick up one additional, very fuzzy channel.
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Jordan D
Total Posts: 771
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07-15-20 02:48 PM - Post#900321
My 2 cents, not really worth that much to be honest, but here it is. Boomers (me, born at the end of the Baby Boom) were raised differently I think. We played outside constantly, we ran around all summer and winter, rarely inside watching tv, and if we did we had 3 channels. We didn't have computers or video games, or iphones or iPads, etc. We just had outside, always active. Our parents didn't give us rides to school or sports practice, or most places that I can remember, we walked (Yes it was up hill both ways, in snow up to our hips). So I think that may have transferred in life as we got older.
My childhood was the same in the early 80s. And yet, our generations have chosen to raise our children differently than our parents raised us, believing it is better to do so, that every new product, convenience, and technology is a benefit which will make children's lives safer and better. This was and is the slippery slope down which most Western people still hurtle today.
Humans are really, really bad at predicting, visualizing, and caring about long-term consequences. The natural impulse seems to be not even to try. But to make future generations healthier, it seems we need one eye on the future, and one on the past, and enough people who care enough to stop and think about what they're doing to their own, and their children's bodies.
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JDII
Total Posts: 7319
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07-15-20 03:22 PM - Post#900322
Boomers (me, born at the end of the Baby Boom) were raised differently I think. We played outside constantly, we ran around all summer and winter, rarely inside watching tv, and if we did we had 3 channels. We didn't have computers or video games, or iphones or iPads, etc. We just had outside, always active. Our parents didn't give us rides to school or sports practice, or most places that I can remember, we walked (Yes it was up hill both ways, in snow up to our hips).
You just very accurately described my childhood. Except for the three TV channels. We were lucky. We had a UHF converter with which we could pick up one additional, very fuzzy channel.
LOL, To be honest we had the 3 networks, PBS and since we lived across Lake Superior from Canada we got the CBC...So 5 I guess :)
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Neander
Total Posts: 7755
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Will Millennials continue or reverse the trend?
I'll go out on a limb here and say
some will, some won't.
Stats and generalizations seem to be par for the course nowadays, for what that's worth.
Being fit and taking a little care of yourself is an individual choice, no?
No matter when you happen to have been born.
Sure! We all know boomers who are in horrific shape, and we all know some who are in great shape.
We all know millenials who are in horrific shape, and we all know some who are in great shape.
And that's relative to each individual's natural gifts. But do we really still have to mention that?
There's nothing magical about any of it, I figure. You do stuff, keep active, eat close to sane most of the time, and if you have a reasonable genetic structure you'll do just fine for a time.
The kid thing, the deal there about kids being more active back in the day compared to now. I don't know about that, really. For part of the time I was a little kid NOBODY had a TV set. Then, one family got one, then another, etc.
I still remember some kids before TV who weren't active much at all. Readin' comics, lying around playing with little toys and stuff. Again, some kids were active, some weren't.
Just like now. I see some little kids around where I live and they're on the go all summer long. And there's some who never seem to poke their head out the door.
Why worry about stats when you have your own life to live. I never have seen the point in that. But I'm pretty stupid. I say get your own house in order as you want it, and stop worrying about every other house on the planet.
I mean, really, you can't predict the future, but you sure can make the best of each 24.
Life's too short to worry about longevity.
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Edited by Neander on 07-15-20 10:06 PM. Reason for edit: No reason given.
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read the bread book
Total Posts: 92
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07-16-20 01:44 AM - Post#900334
not to be untoward, but baby boomers also grew up during the most unprecedented period of economic growth in human history which given the damage to the earth is not repeatable. by contrast 'millenials' are hit with a 'once in a lifetime' crisis basically every 3-5 years. we make less money than our parents despite being better educated, have less job security, and work more hours.
obviously there are 'chosen' lifestyle factors that matter here too (that's why I'm here in this lovely forum!), but seems odd to fixate on the little personal choices at the expense of seeing the bigger picture here...
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Neander
Total Posts: 7755
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Not to be a pain in the neck, but I believe that it's the little personal choices that create the big picture. All I can do is make my own choices in how I respond to what I am presented with in life day by day. So, these minor choices made over a lifetime make a major difference.
It would be nice to be part of a group, a culture, an organized unit or any of that, but I just can't seem to sign up still.
Maybe one day I'll wake up, be "woke" as the clowns in the delusional circus say, but till then I'm pretty sure I'll be very damn proud to happily stand alone on my own merits and choices.
You're right. This IS one of the few forums where we respect one another and have the ability to get along right nicely!
Life's too short to worry about longevity.
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Edited by Neander on 07-16-20 02:18 AM. Reason for edit: No reason given.
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vegpedlr
Total Posts: 1179
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07-16-20 09:27 AM - Post#900352
Re: activity levels, I once saw am interesting statistic on how many kids walk or ride a bike to school over the years. Steady decline, made obvious when you’re near a school at start or end of the day.
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ohiojosh
Total Posts: 47
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07-16-20 10:33 AM - Post#900361
Having 4 kids myself, this is to me a safety issue. I just do not like the idea of my kids riding their bikes or walking alone to school. It would be interesting to see how rates of death/serious injury of children have progressed based on these items throughout the years.
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Jordan D
Total Posts: 771
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07-16-20 10:55 AM - Post#900363
Having 4 kids myself, this is to me a safety issue. I just do not like the idea of my kids riding their bikes or walking alone to school. It would be interesting to see how rates of death/serious injury of children have progressed based on these items throughout the years.
You should read The Coddling of the American Mind by Jonathan Haidt. It does a very thorough job of illustrating how a parental culture of fear (safetyism) grew out of the 1980s, how rates of death/serious injury have not decreased (most happen in the home), and how this is substantially responsible for a great deal of Gen Z’s mental health issues and delayed emotional development. You trade scrapes and bruises for 22-year old adolescents on antidepressants. It’s a terrifying book.
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Sean S
Total Posts: 44
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07-16-20 11:49 AM - Post#900368
I have noticed a big difference in the number of kids outdoors playing in general now compared to when I grew up in the 1980's. I'm shocked at the number of kids who essentially never go outside all summer.
A couple of years ago when my youngest was in kindergarten they asked them to draw a picture of what they did over the summer. My son drew a picture of himself playing in the creek behind his granny's house when we visited there. Over half of the kids in the class drew pictures of themselves in front of a TV.
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RupertC
Total Posts: 1479
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07-16-20 01:11 PM - Post#900372
A lot of us who grew up pre-computers could keep ourselves amused for hours with a big stick. When kids have access to the world's information at the end of their thumbs, sticks seem much less interesting...
| Check out my critical-thinking blog at sharpenyouraxe.substack.com |
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BChase
Total Posts: 854
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It's going to get worse with cellphones, video games and pandemic lockdowns.
I played baseball and hoop all summer, pickup football in the fall and street hockey in the winter every day.
Now on the plus side, back then 50% of people smoked and that number has significantly dropped.
Unfortunately, people drink just as much. I hate the mommy/wine culture. My wife is right in the midst of it.
Edited by BChase on 07-16-20 01:23 PM. Reason for edit: No reason given.
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Neander
Total Posts: 7755
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safetyism
Hahaha . . . pity the kids. No worries, though. The smart ones find ways to run circles around their parents' plans.
Life's too short to worry about longevity.
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Craig1971
Total Posts: 250
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07-16-20 02:59 PM - Post#900378
A lot of us who grew up pre-computers could keep ourselves amused for hours with a big stick. When kids have access to the world's information at the end of their thumbs, sticks seem much less interesting...
Despite all the stuff they've got my top are never happier than playing with sticks. Still want stuff with screens as well though 
| Thanks to everyone who makes this forum so useful and such a good place to be. |
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Craig1971
Total Posts: 250
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safetyism
Hahaha . . . pity the kids. No worries, though. The smart ones find ways to run circles around their parents' plans.
Too right they do. 
| Thanks to everyone who makes this forum so useful and such a good place to be. |
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Chris Rice
Total Posts: 702
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07-16-20 03:13 PM - Post#900380
Kids will play with whatever is available - limit screen time and see what happens. The biggest thing I see today that I didn't when I was a kid (50s and 60s) are that there are so many more organized sports (that have longer seasons now) - we "played" a lot more unstructured games than than now.
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Old Miler
Total Posts: 1744
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07-16-20 04:12 PM - Post#900382
Anyone remember Poohsticks?
(this is NOT a reference to the Gut Biome thread BTW - Google it, totally safe for work)
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ohiojosh
Total Posts: 47
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07-16-20 05:18 PM - Post#900383
Having 4 kids myself, this is to me a safety issue. I just do not like the idea of my kids riding their bikes or walking alone to school. It would be interesting to see how rates of death/serious injury of children have progressed based on these items throughout the years.
You should read The Coddling of the American Mind by Jonathan Haidt. It does a very thorough job of illustrating how a parental culture of fear (safetyism) grew out of the 1980s, how rates of death/serious injury have not decreased (most happen in the home), and how this is substantially responsible for a great deal of Gen Z’s mental health issues and delayed emotional development. You trade scrapes and bruises for 22-year old adolescents on antidepressants. It’s a terrifying book.
There is a big difference between a "parental culture of fear" and not letting your kids ride their bikes alone 5 miles down busy roads with no sidewalks. My kids have suffered enough bumps, bruises, scrapes, injuries, ER visits, surgeries, heart attack-inducing moments, etc for me to know the difference.
I also do not buy that good, vigilant parenting leads to mental health issues down the road. Only in extreme situations would that have any impact. Immense peer pressure to fit in, a fixation on appearance/looking a certain way, drug and alcohol abuse, pressure to keep up with the Jones', marital or other relationship struggles, trying to juggle too many stressors at once, are far more impactful than your mom driving you to school.
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davidcc
Total Posts: 56
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A lot of us who grew up pre-computers could keep ourselves amused for hours with a big stick.
For me and my sisters it was the box our new refrigerator came in. In the three days it took us to destroy it we had the most fun of that whole summer. To this day, at family get-togethers we will occasionally exchange memories of the refrigerator box.
Edited by davidcc on 07-16-20 10:23 PM. Reason for edit: No reason given.
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Neander
Total Posts: 7755
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the box our new refrigerator came in
Absolutely! There was an appliance store a few blocks away from home and we'd drag one back every so often and make up all kinds of stuff to play with it. In the winter we'd rip one into big sheets of cardboard and use those for toboggans.
I remember when my own kids were small. If they came back home after a day of playing in the summer and weren't dirty enough I'd tell 'em they failed. Hahaha . . . it's good for ya.
Life's too short to worry about longevity.
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Justin Jordan
Total Posts: 854
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07-16-20 11:03 PM - Post#900395
I would bet cash money that Ogg the caveman and looked at the next generation or two of cave kids and complained they were soft because they didn't run from sabretooths the way they did in his day.
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iPood
Total Posts: 2360
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I would bet cash money that Ogg the caveman and looked at the next generation or two of cave kids and complained they were soft because they didn't run from sabretooths the way they did in his day.
Thing is, Ogg's kids and grandkids quite probably had a healthier life than him.
These days, a steady decline of younger generations' health is pretty much a reality.
So there must exist an inflection point somewhere.
The less we move on a daily basis, the worst the decline. That much is crystal clear.
Taking a look at the Blue Zones confirms that: people that live in places with abnormally longer lifespans don't play sports. But they are pretty active on a regular basis (they walk everywhere, tend to their vegetable gardens and do all kinds of manual labor) and eat real food in small amounts.
Not everything new is necessarily better.
Not everything wrong is past generations' fault.
"I think we often spend too much time focusing on max fitness
and not nearly enough on maintaining our minimums.
It seems we need to think sustainable rather than obtainable.
Meaning whatever we do today, we can do it again tomorrow.
Never taking so much from ourselves that we can't."
Dan Martin |
Edited by iPood on 07-17-20 06:40 AM. Reason for edit: No reason given.
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Matt_T
Total Posts: 379
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My 2 penneth -
Activity/schmactivity - any trip to a park, swimming pool or kids sports club here in the UK (under normal circumstances) will show you an abundance of very active kids - a good chunk (pun intended) of whom will be little porkers.
The segregation of sports here in the UK is a big part of the spiral of decline. You want to play football? You can have one free taster then you have to sign up for a school term. Do more than three sessions of judo and you have to have a licence for a year. Rugby same. Don't even get me started on taekwondo and that other McDojo nonsense. I get that competing with all the aforementioned distractions makes it extremely hard to run junior sports these days (especially team sports) but don't these various bodies realise that it's about literacy across the physical curriculum not specialising at that age? All it does is shrink their talent pool ten years down the road.
Edited by Matt_T on 07-17-20 03:55 AM. Reason for edit: No reason given.
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Browser
Total Posts: 507
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I would bet cash money that Ogg the caveman and looked at the next generation or two of cave kids and complained they were soft because they didn't run from sabretooths the way they did in his day.
Older people romanticizing their own youth and putting down the younger generations is a pastime as old as mankind.
“Our sires’ age was worse than our grandsires’. We, their sons, are more worthless than they; so in our turn we shall give the world a progeny yet more corrupt.”
Book III of Odes, Horace
circa 20 BC
"The trouble about always trying to preserve the health of the body is that it is so difficult to do without destroying the health of the mind."~GK Chesterton
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Edited by Browser on 07-17-20 09:11 AM. Reason for edit: No reason given.
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Jordan D
Total Posts: 771
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07-17-20 09:31 AM - Post#900410
For those who forgot: teenage suicide rates have doubled in the last ten years. Teenage obesity has quadrupled. No one born (in the USA) in the last sixty years is expected to live longer than their parents (on average).
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vegpedlr
Total Posts: 1179
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I hate the mommy/wine culture. My wife is right in the midst of it.
What is this? Is it a thing? Is there supposed to be an “H” in there?
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GeoffreyLevens
Total Posts: 357
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07-17-20 10:47 AM - Post#900413
Kids will play with whatever is available - limit screen time and see what happens.
Mid 1990's for time frame, single mother friend with two kids could no longer afford cable so pulled the plug on the TV. The kids howled and screamed. After about 2 weeks, less than a month for sure, they'd quit bickering and were playing together outdoors, were doing their homework without prodding, and were even helping prep meals and wash dishes.
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ohiojosh
Total Posts: 47
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07-17-20 11:28 AM - Post#900414
I am a huge believer that social media, and digital bullying is a driver of teenaged suicide rates. How do you lessen the impact of these things on your kids? Two ways.
1. You provide them a positive, honest, supportive family culture.
2. You get them involved in activities: general play, sports, outdoor stuff, reading, music, art, other activities.
Kids need a loving, supportive environment, and they need to play and read books. A culture of playing on your phone is anathema to an ideal environment.
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ohiojosh
Total Posts: 47
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I hate the mommy/wine culture. My wife is right in the midst of it.
What is this? Is it a thing? Is there supposed to be an “H” in there?
Yeah, what is this? Do you mean moms who get together and drink? I guess I am not super familiar.
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Neander
Total Posts: 7755
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Kids need a loving, supportive environment, and they need to play and read books. A culture of playing on your phone is anathema to an ideal environment
I hear ya. Man, I'm that rare fool who's never owned a cell phone.
Anyhow, i believe kids also need to know that not everyone will support them, the world is not composed of only love, they won't win at everything and sometimes they're gonna have to fight back hard on their own.
You get weeds along with the flowers out there.
No matter your age.
But YES, I believe playing, playing around outdoors especially, just fooling around creatively without adult structures and setups is extremely important to a truly growing child.
Reading, hey, I know this story, it's a pretty good thing. But forcing it puts a stain on the thing that can take decades to see through. It ain't that hard to just observe and listen to a kid and then leave books that might interest him lying around the house.
Adults seem to either treat kids like fools, or get way too serious with 'em.
Maybe we could use a little "play" in our own lives and views too.
All the seriousness, eh. Day after day, grinding away.
What, do I have to kick ya in the teeth to make ya smile?
Sometimes you feel like that.
Hey, there's billions of us.
Thinking you and your kids are oh-so-special is a delusion.
I think kids should realize that.
Adults too!
Life's too short to worry about longevity.
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Edited by Neander on 07-17-20 12:57 PM. Reason for edit: No reason given.
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Justin Jordan
Total Posts: 854
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I would bet cash money that Ogg the caveman and looked at the next generation or two of cave kids and complained they were soft because they didn't run from sabretooths the way they did in his day.
The less we move on a daily basis, the worst the decline. That much is crystal clear.
As it goes with the health decline of the youths, I don't think the primary issue is being less active.
It's better to be active with a crappy diet, but you can't out active a bad diet (on a population level).
But my point with that is that you get a lot of 'back in my day' and intuitively 'obvious' stuff with no actual data to back it up.
That data may exist, but people are generally just golden aging.
As a for instance - back in MY day, there wasn't stuff like year round sports camps and heavily scheduled athletic activities.
So kids might be riding bikes less, but playing soccer more. How does that shake out? I don't actually know.
And to dive deeper into more anecdotal category, I watched my buddy's eight year old play videos games for an hour, and he literally spent the entire hour hopping from one foot to the other.
So that does that not count?
But were some things better in the past? Sure. But anytime you find yourself or anyone else thinking, you should also mentally audit the idea, because golden aging emerges from how we remember things and, honestly, a certain amount of motivated reasoning, because it makes us feel good about ourselves.
So on the subject of generational health specifically, there's a lot of possibly confounding elements, and a possibility of multiple ones.
- As a confounder, they're comparing people diagnosed at the same age at different times periods. So aside from anything else, they're actually being diagnosed, or not, at different time periods.
Which means some or all of it (or none of it) may be that stuff was simply not being diagnosed. This is especially true for things that don't necessarily have obvious symptoms at the same age.
This is ALSO not including different diagnostic criteria. As an anecdotal for instance, my cholestrol level tend to basically sit right at the line for high....now.
Where I born twenty years earlier, making me 42 in the late nineties, I'd actually be below it. And hey, they may control for that.
- Assuming that the health differences exist then there's the notion of causality. To go with human activity. Our overall activity is actually weirdly stable across time.
People that you would think have vastly higher calorie expenditures often don't, because we tend to save energy in other ways.
It seems intuitively obvious that a guy standing at machine all day will burn more calories than someone sitting at a desk, but the extent of this is often not as great as you'd think, because someone expending more energy at work might just move less at night.
(And that's not speculative - this stuff is interesting in studies and what would appear to be intuitively true often isn't)
Likewise, what we eat also affects output. The obvious and extreme example of this is bodybuilders getting contest lean, especially naturals.
Things like what fast they talk slows down, and their NEAT plummets. But I don't point this out because that applies to average humans, for whom calorie restriction is not an issue.
I mention it because input and output are entwined. So say that the issue actually IS that people are less active.
It may be that the composition of the diet changing has lead to people being less active in the small, subtle and significant ways we often don't notice.
Or just generally.
Venturing back into anecdote again, since I am a type 2 diabetic, I can tell you that if my sugars are up, my activity is down.
Not the intentional stuff. But there's an obvious and consistent pattern of less steps on the Fitbit, and that's not including whatever other stuff the Fitbit doesn't measure.
Because I just feel like crap and don't want to do stuff. I am a middling extreme example, being officially diabetic, but look at the prediabetes and diabetes numbers.
So yeah, maybe the kids are lazy bums, or maybe that's a story every generation likes to tell because it makes them feel good and the truth is immensely complex.
But deeper into the anecdote:
I grew up in the eighties, in rural Pa, without much money. The relevance of all that is that we didn't have computers or video games, we did have gym class and generally speaking I was active as all get out.
We would, very literally, get home from school and then go and play until whenever dusk was. On the side of a mountain, no less, so extra caloric fun for the activities.
Still fat.
I hit three hundred pounds for the first time, actually, when I was working at a sawmill full time AND lifting weights every night after.
My point with this deep dive anecdote is that it informs my own biases. I will acknowledge that I may be discounting activity as primary because for me it was definitely secondary.
And so on.
But this thread is a whole lot of knee jerk stuff of a type that tends to annoy me.
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WxHerk
Total Posts: 334
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I hear ya. Man, I'm that rare fool who's never owned a cell phone.
You are my new hero....and certainly not a fool...
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Old Miler
Total Posts: 1744
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07-17-20 05:46 PM - Post#900424
Having 4 kids myself, this is to me a safety issue. I just do not like the idea of my kids riding their bikes or walking alone to school. It would be interesting to see how rates of death/serious injury of children have progressed based on these items throughout the years.
Same fear is present in the UK. We lived 1 mile from my kids' primary school, with a pavement/sidewalk all the way, when they were in it 15-20 years ago (they are now old enough to out-lift and out-drink me). When I was young kids would walk or ride. For my kids, all the mums were worried about creepy perverts and maybe people driving their car on the pavement. The stats show kids' accident rates have not changed at all for about 80 years; yet no mum wanted to be seen as uncaring by letting their kids make their own way home.
I realise this sounds un-PC and gender biased, but most dads I know would have been happy with them riding a bike home and scraping their knees occasionally. The mumocracy was uniformly against exposing the little ones to any perceived risk.
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George V
Total Posts: 11
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07-18-20 10:36 AM - Post#900442
It is going to get progressively worse with each generation. Human nature to use technological advancements to create more comforts. Looking at millennials and Zoomers, not only do they have horrible diet options and inactivity that previous generations had, they also have grown up with streaming entertainment.
Netflix is a verb and binging 8 hours of TV in a day is acceptable. There are a few healthy looking boys living next to me. I'm outside all summer, I almost never see them out. I do hear them yelling about fortnight often.
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Volumiza
Total Posts: 1741
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Kids are growing up in a different environment nowadays, I sure as heck don’t envy them either.
As a Gen X parent of two Millennials I’m only talking about what I see, not all kids and all parents.
Whereas my own childhood was spent traversing and playing in the fields and countryside surrounding the village I grew up in, cycling or skateboarding everywhere, school or friends houses in the neighbouring villages, my kids lives are online, viewed in 2D on a screen. They’re connected to everything, friends, films, sounds from the few square feet of bedroom they have. Their base energy expenditure is a fraction of mine at the same age.
My evenings were spent imitating my hero footballers (soccer players to you US guys) with my friends on the streets and local playing fields with real footballs and jumpers for goalposts, getting sweaty with bruised knees and ripped clothes, my kids imitate football players on their PlayStations with friends online.
Whereas I could go anywhere and had the choice of playgrounds, forests and rivers and lakes, and was going camping a lot, kids now have such restrictions facing them. Playgrounds are closed, all land is owned and policed by somebody or some authority telling them they can’t play here. A lot of the open areas I used to play on are now housing estates.
Whereas the school system I grew up in had PE twice a week, full and rigorous competition in all sports, kids now get to secondary school without any real experience of proper coached sports or winning and losing. Especially in the UK. Schools seems terrified of injury to kids or letting kids lose at stuff. Crap.
That’s just the environmental differences. I agree with an earlier post that Gen X’er parents were largely lead to believe that letting your kids out was unsafe. That pedophiles or kidnappers we’re on every street corner. That letting your kids climb trees or swim in the local stream and rivers was 100% unsafe. Now thankfully, I never bought into this bullcrap but to my disappointment, my kids have been influenced, by friends, at school or by the media to not even want to do these things.
I’ve always been an outdoors, adventurous and active chap and I’ve tried my best to instill the same into my kids but it’s a battle. They seem to prefer the ‘easy’ and see no, or little benefit, in getting tired, cold, wet or dirty. It frustrates me as I want them to relish challenges, to be able to traverse ‘struggle’ and find the satisfaction of seeing reward for hard endeavour. I see them bombarded with tempting adverts for video games and cool technology. They don’t see that the cool technology is specifically designed to keep them enslaved to it and it really makes me cross.
Food choices too, cheap fast food is everywhere. In our house we eat well thankfully, but that is only because me and my Mrs know about good food but now there are children being born to young parents who themselves are oblivious to sports and good food choices, what chance have these kids got?
Back to my own kids, I am very lucky in that I have a great home gym. I’ve tried very hard to get my kids into working out and have failed ... until this lockdown. My son, 15, has been working out with me for the last few months. Largely I think through boredom but long enough now to have been coached well and see his progress so he’s now taken to it very well.
I think he’ll be ok, he eats well, is already slim and healthy and is now getting a good level of physical activity but what about his friends? What about all the other kids that don’t realise how unhealthy their sedentary lives are?
At some point our education system will have to really step in and take control and reintroduce proper PE and coached sports into the school system from a very early age. Bring back the proper old PE teachers who know their stuff and are creatures of strength, knowledge and authority. Government funded local sports facilities provided, playgrounds built and kids pushed back into the outside world. We need to stop making life so easy for kids, we need to expose them to risk, fatigue and injury and not fear letting them lose at stuff. Losing is better learned early than late. It’s a necessary skill, no one wins all the time.
Until that happens kids will get more overweight, weaker, of mind and body, and unhealthier and the trend will continue to go only one way.
'You can throw in the towel or use it to wipe the sweat off your face and keep going'
'Well ain't this place a geographical oddity? Two weeks from everywhere.' Ulysses Everett McGill |
Edited by Volumiza on 07-19-20 04:34 AM. Reason for edit: No reason given.
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Kyle Aaron
Total Posts: 1911
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Re: activity levels, I once saw am interesting statistic on how many kids walk or ride a bike to school over the years. Steady decline, made obvious when you’re near a school at start or end of the day.
Aussie stats here, but it'll be similar in the US. It's prompted by the parents.
"In the 1960s, 83% of kids were allowed to play unsupervised in the neighbourhood. When those kids from the 1960s grew up and became parents, only 25% allowed their own children to play unsupervised in the neighbourhood."
https://theconversation.com/australia-vying-to-be -world-champion-of-inacti vity-27396
Government policies are also relevant. Back in the 1990s the state government closed down a heap of smaller schools and merged them into larger ones. More "efficient" - but it meant the average distance from home to school was larger, and the roads there had more traffic. Kids walking 1 mile to school along quiet roads vs 3 miles along busy roads... well...
Having 4 kids myself, this is to me a safety issue. I just do not like the idea of my kids riding their bikes or walking alone to school. It would be interesting to see how rates of death/serious injury of children have progressed based on these items throughout the years.
On pp87-89 of this:-
https://www.aihw.gov.au/getmedia/e7aaefca-e725 -4f2e-81bc-b594853ea4e8/m otca.pdf.aspx?inline=true
- you can see that
The overall reduction in death rates was achieved primarily by falls in the following
causes between early in the century and 2000 (tables B21 and B22):
• infectious diseases—from around 70 deaths per 100,000 males and females to less
than 1
• injury and poisoning—from around 45 and 20 deaths per 100,000 males and
females respectively to around 8 and 4
• respiratory and circulatory conditions— from around 20 deaths per 100,000
males and females to less than 1.
• The death rates from cancer increased from around 4 and 2 deaths per 100,000 males
and females respectively in 1907 to around 9 and 7 in the 1950s, after which they fell
to around 3 deaths per 100,000 for both males and females in 2000.
So, some is indeed kids being kept inside. But most of the drop in death rate is sanitation and vaccination - look at that drop in infectious diseases and respiratory conditions etc, that's a drop of 88 vs the drop of 25 in injury and poisoning. 78% of the drop in deaths is just washing their hands and getting the jabs.
Only at most 22% of the drop can be attributed to keeping them inside - unfortunately the injury and poisoning stats aren't separate, surely kids are more likely to be poisoned inside the home than outside? So, 80/20 once again - sanitation and vaccination did 80% of the life-saving for kids 5-14yo. Around the time these became universal we started coddling the kids.
Of course, by keeping them inside they're becoming obese and sickly, so they still die early - but not as early. Instead of 8yo drowning in the local river (as almost happened to me, and did happen to a kid I knew), it's 48yo of a heart attack.
I dunno, I feel like there must be some middle ground, where they're active in a way unlikely to kill them...? And not necessarily in structured activities. I don't think we need elite under 10 soccer camps.
Kids will play with whatever is available - limit screen time and see what happens.
With my kids mostly what happens is screaming. Now, if you put them in different rooms it's good.
I also do not buy that good, vigilant parenting leads to mental health issues down the road.
We'll see. Let's be honest: none of us really knows if we did a good job as parents or not until they're grown up. I've no f****g idea, I just muddle along.
My old man took me and dropped me in the bush 10 miles from home. "Got your compass? Your pocketknife and string? Water bottle? Good. Here's your rifle, if you see a rabbit or deer on the way home, bag it. You know what to do, see you for dinner." And he drove off in his land rover. I arrived home about 10pm... I was ten years old.
Yeah, I know not to do that.
I am a huge believer that social media, and digital bullying is a driver of teenaged suicide rates. How do you lessen the impact of these things on your kids?
I've told mine: no phone or laptop etc until high school. Even then I'll probably make them wait until they're old enough to work and pay for the damn things themselves (14y9mo here).
It is going to get progressively worse with each generation. Human nature to use technological advancements to create more comforts.
No. I agree with Thomas Plummer that overweight/obesity will top out at around 2/3-3/4 the population like smoking did, then the various costs to individuals and society will pile up so high there's a swing back.
Longer-term, all this high-tech stuff is just too resource and energy-intensive. We'll never have fusion power, colonies on Mars and flying cars everywhere. Society will become lower-energy than it is now, which means more localised lives, and less sitting on our arses. That's a few generations away though. In the meantime we get the swing back Plummer talked about.
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Volumiza
Total Posts: 1741
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Re: activity
No. I agree with Thomas Plummer that overweight/obesity will top out at around 2/3-3/4 the population like smoking did, then the various costs to individuals and society will pile up so high there's a swing back
There has to be a swing back at some point, I agree. I see that smoking has been very successfully attacked over the last decade and I hope that nutrition and activity levels will follow suit.
Longer-term, all this high-tech stuff is just too resource and energy-intensive. We'll never have fusion power, colonies on Mars and flying cars everywhere. Society will become lower-energy than it is now, which means more localised lives, and less sitting on our arses. That's a few generations away though. In the meantime we get the swing back Plummer talked about.
Again, this is a good point. Our current path is completely unsustainable and there will be some major redirection in years to come, a back-to-basic if you will born out of complete necessity.
'You can throw in the towel or use it to wipe the sweat off your face and keep going'
'Well ain't this place a geographical oddity? Two weeks from everywhere.' Ulysses Everett McGill |
Edited by Volumiza on 07-19-20 07:08 AM. Reason for edit: No reason given.
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Donald123
Total Posts: 61
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07-19-20 06:54 PM - Post#900482
“I this sounds un-PC and gender biased, but most dads I know would have been happy with them riding a bike home and scraping their knees occasionally. The mumocracy was uniformly against exposing the little ones to any perceived risk.”
In my case I inflicted this on myself. In 7th grade I usually walked home. It was about 2 miles. One day some friends and I decided it would be fun to throw rocks at each other. We were far enough away there was no chance we would hit each other, except that when I got bored and turned to go home I got one right on the top of my head. For some reason I thought my friend next to me did it and tried unsuccessfully to strangle him before he convinced me he was innocent. ( I came up to his shoulder so he wasn’t in much danger). I came home with a copiously bleeding scalp wound.
For some reason my mother insisted on picking me up from school after that. It was a small rock after all. This lasted for two years.
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Upwind
Total Posts: 404
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07-19-20 10:15 PM - Post#900485
I was driving home from a hike with a friend in the nearby national forest last week. Along the way we passed by a state park on a lake my parents used to bring the family to back in the early 60s. Through high school I used to hitchhike there.
There used to be a raft anchored in the deep water. Swimming out to it was a right of passage. The raft's been gone for decades, and the buoys indicating the limits of the swimming area are now in closer than where the raft used to be.
By the time I was bringing my kids there 25 years ago, the state had taken down the slide and the swings my generation grew up with—both too high. And last week i noticed that the newer, lower playground equipment is wrapped in orange plastic tape, a covid precaution.
Apparently, playground equipment like what used to be in this state park used to be a lot more common. In the video below, the swings at the state park used to let us do what you’ll see at 1:10. The slide was similar to what you’ll see at 2:04.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQ3g7G0iiTY
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Neander
Total Posts: 7755
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The slide at 2:04. When my kids were small there was a slide at the playground with a real big bump in the middle of it. The deal was to get as much air as you could. But not go over the edge. Yeah, you had to get as high off the slide as you could but come back down on it, not go down to the ground.
There was another park that had a high slide with the "ladder" going up made of rocks piled and secured. No hand rails, no guard rails, just a small army of screamin' kids crawling up.
When I was a kid there were some crazy things to play on. There was always the bucking bronco deal; made of metal and on sort of runners. A kid or two would get on and a pile of other kids would get the thing rocking back and forth like crazy.
They shoulda called that one the dentist! Plenty of teeth hit the dust there.
This thing that was a big wooden circle with a couple of handles on it. A couple of kids would get on, stay standing and try to hang on the longest while other kids ran like hell turning the thing faster and faster.
Remember "crack the whip?" We used to play that a lot in the concrete walled basement room of the grade school in winter when it was too cold to go outside. Hahaha! Plenty of teeth bought it that way too.
Hey, I ain't judging either way here. Just recalling some games.
Life's too short to worry about longevity.
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Edited by Neander on 07-20-20 12:10 AM. Reason for edit: No reason given.
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Volumiza
Total Posts: 1741
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This thing that was a big wooden circle with a couple of handles on it. A couple of kids would get on, stay standing and try to hang on the longest while other kids ran like hell turning the thing faster and faster.
Haha, we had that. Looking back, I’m not sure which was more dangerous (and fun), getting flung off through the air like superman and crashing and burning or running alongside it until your legs got tired, that panicked moment where you realised the ride was now going faster than you and you got dragged facefirst on the ground hanging onto the thing, leaving a circle of face behind you. Splendid. That ride kept the local plastercast department going singlehandedly.
'You can throw in the towel or use it to wipe the sweat off your face and keep going'
'Well ain't this place a geographical oddity? Two weeks from everywhere.' Ulysses Everett McGill |
Edited by Volumiza on 07-20-20 02:58 AM. Reason for edit: No reason given.
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BrianBinVA
Total Posts: 5140
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These are very difficult, complicated issues, and tough to tackle.
As there always is in these "generational" things, there is more than a little bit of "back in my day, things were better because we _____." The content of the blank just depends on which generation the author was born into. I grew up in a rural area without many kids around, and my non-school days were often some variation of "I think I'll take my dog and bb gun/hatchet/swiss army knife and go for a walk in the woods/canoe ride." We live in the city now and that certainly is not my kids' reality, but things can be done for sure.
Changing society from the top down is of course very hard, so household-level solutions are probably best. One of the unsung (potential) benefits of the COVID situation is that parents have a probably unprecedented opportunity to model behaviors for their kids, and to replace, and even hopefully undo, some of the negative things they may have been exposed to at school or among their peer/friend groups. So just think about what your kids see you do when you have downtime. Is it flopping on the couch and watching TV for four hours every day when your work is done? (Unlikely in this group, but not everywhere.)
There was an anti-drug ad on TV when I was growing up that we all used to make fun of, and that any American gen-Xer like me will remember. It starts off with the dad, who has clearly found drugs or drug paraphernalia, yelling at his teenage son, something like: "where did you get this? Where did you learn about this stuff?" And the kid yells back, something like: "from you, all right! I learned it by watching you!"
So, TL;DR – if you're a parent, don’t do drugs (or watch a ton of TV or have your head constantly buried in your phone) in front of your kids. Instead, when your workday is done, do some clean and jerks in the same room where the kids are finishing up an art project (or whatever), then take them for a walk (no matter the weather!) and have them help you cook a healthy meal.
Edited by BrianBinVA on 07-20-20 08:57 AM. Reason for edit: No reason given.
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ohiojosh
Total Posts: 47
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07-20-20 10:14 AM - Post#900507
There is so much of BrianB's post above that I like, that I don't even know where to start. I can tell you this much: I was raised by a totally sedentary single mother, so I had terrible behaviors modelled to me as a kid. It wasn't until I met my wife that I had any notion that other people didn't spend their entire life sitting down watching TV. My mother thought exercise was a total waste of time, and thought people should eat whatever they wanted. Fast forward to me at 21: a 315 lb alcoholic college dropout who had never been in a gym.
Finally I made it my mission to get healthier, graduate college, make something of myself, start a family, and model better behaviors to my children.
1. As Brian said, walking no matter the weather every single day.
2. Drinking lots of clear water and some coffee/tea, with zero sugary drinks and no more than 2 alcoholic drinks/day.
3. Eating a diet centered on lean protein/vegetables/modera te carbs.
4. Being thoughtful in general, and seeing both sides of issues. Non-binary thinking as Dan has (thank God) become a champion of.
5. Reading the newspaper every day and reading books every night.
6. Lifting weights 3 days a week.
7. Limiting TV to 60-90 mins a day and keeping the phone in a central location so you are not buried in it by carrying it around with you all day.
8. Spending at least an hour outside everyday.
9. Going to bed between 9 and 11, and waking between 5 and 7.
10. Shower everyday, brush and floss your teeth, wear sunscreen, wear a seatbelt, drive safely, change your furnace filter, get your oil changed, keep your house clean, and keep your grass cut.
My thought is, if I can maintain 90% adherence to the above, I am setting a solid example for my kids, and at least mostly doing my job. Some of those things are a real struggle for me, but I try my best to do them, and work through the failure.
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WxHerk
Total Posts: 334
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07-20-20 11:26 AM - Post#900513
...if I can maintain 90% adherence to the above, I am setting a solid example for my kids, and at least mostly doing my job. Some of those things are a real struggle for me, but I try my best to do them, and work through the failure.
It's not how you fall, it's how you get up. You have come a long way and are doing an absolutely terrific job!
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German75
Total Posts: 50
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07-22-20 04:11 AM - Post#900556
A little late to this wonderful thread, here my 2 cents from Germany.
I am absolutely perplexed on how bad kids (including mine at 9 and 12) handle balls thrown or kicked at them, or how they throw and kick. I don´t know any studies about it, but me (born 1975) and all of my friends did way better than that. This for me is a sign of something missing in general.
One of the reasons: Other kids don´t go outside that much any more and play in public.
During our "light" lockdown in Germany due to COVID 19, most people and families didn´t go out anymore at all. A huge chance missed in my opinion. We were allowed to go hiking in nature since you could practice social distancing there. We hiked every weekend for 5 hours at a time a day. We rarely saw people at all. We had plenty of time preparing amazing fresh food at home and i really hope my kids will remember that time in years to come. Yes, my kids aren´t obese, they are active, but still, i fear the day they will go away to college and may develop unhealthy habits and get out of shape or overweight.
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