Sports vs screens

Is sports losing the battle against screens? With the plethora of digital devices available to children, and parents often abdicating the effort to raise them to gadgets, what are the things we need to know?

First, the basics: sports increase endurance, muscle tone, and mental health. Screens develop short attention span, obesity, and slower reaction times. Unfortunately, with the increasing stresses of traffic, higher prices, and other distractions, it is more difficult to spend time with your offspring to properly mold them into who they were meant to be. Even babies now are being raised on YouTube and colorful kiddie games. Parents are often focused on the necessity of making a living to provide, and assume that leaving their children in front of a screen does no harm. Getting them involved in sports requires time, effort, expense, and tiring travel.

Even the kinds of video games they play today are vastly different and more harmful. Time was when video games were simpler, and had more personality. You had to really work your way up to the final boss, and you only had one life, three at the most. Rewards were hard earned, updates took weeks, helping strengthen patience and hard work. Today, they are endless, impersonal, and instantly rewarded, just to keep them playing longer.

Even if a child is playing games with others online, it is even more dangerous. They are exposed to swearing, harshness, impatience, and unfiltered influences. In team sports, they learn to get along with other people whom they talk to face-to-face, and develop camaraderie and oneness. With online games, you are desensitized to violence, masked by anonymity, and think that there are no real-world consequences. When playing sports, the results are instant, and other people are relying on you for their own success. In individual sports, you have to maintain mental focus for extended periods or you will lose. It’s as simple as that.

There are other factors that aid children in the long run. Personally, this writer has experienced the difference between being unhealthy and being physically active. As a child, I had asthma, migraines, scoliosis, and flat feet. The first three were healed by sports, specifically swimming, running, and basketball. There are now also technical remedies for flat feet, to allow you to be more comfortable and perform better. Besides, sport is also a form of self-expression, and a means to use up all your restless energy. When a child comes home tired and happy, he or she gets a more restful sleep, and also eats better.

We are starting to see graver and graver crimes committed by younger and younger perpetrators. That is not societal evolution. It is an artificial phenomenon created by children having too much sensory input, without physical or mental outlets. In sports, they work for what they have, and they learn that throwing tantrums or acting out do not work. They are more grounded, more productive, more creative, and more alive. When children are addicted to screens, they are louder, more impulsive, more impatient, more isolated. They avoid responsibility, and believe that the digital world is the real world. But once they get into sports, the change is almost immediate. There is a focus and discipline and charge one gets out of it. That is what being alive is about.