In the dark times, before the internet and video games, British children played outside. Now? They don’t!
According to a British Triathlon and Tata Steel poll of 1500 children aged six to 15, 10 per cent could not ride a bicycle and 15 per cent could not swim. More numbers, via the BBC:
– 22% had never run 400m
– 15% had never played a sport with their parents
– 33% didn’t own a bicycle
– 77% owned a game console
– 68% owned a mobile phone
There is some fun with data going on here. For example, 23 per cent of children do not own a game console, and 32 per cent don’t own a mobile phone. That’s almost as many as the kids who do not own a bicycle!
The real issue here is that a number of kids said they’d never played a sport with their parents. That’s a shame.
Young people, old people, please go outside. Video games are great (they really are), but so is riding a bicycle, collecting insects and kicking a soccer ball. Do that, too.
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