Are kids getting too soft these days, coddled by iPads and AI chatbots?
In New York City, the Wall Street Journal reports, some parents are sending their children to the ultimate screen-free experience: a junkyard playground called “The Yard” where they’re let off the leash and free to do proper adolescent activities like roll around in mud, scrape their knees — and, of course, screw around with random bits of scrap.
They’re not punching digital trees or vegging out to vertical videos, but playing with actual saws and hammers and knives, just as God — or adults whose conception of childhood is shaped by repeat viewings of “Stand By Me,” “The Sandlot,” and “The Goonies” — intended.
Adult “playworkers” supervise the youth from a distance, but otherwise try not to butt in. This is “unstructured playtime.” Let kids do what they want so they can start building some of the independence that’ll carry them through life, the thinking goes. Parents bring them here to save their offspring from the perils of screen time. (Kids succumbing to a tech dominated world is clearly an anxiety shared by many NYC parents; the WSJ notes another “microschool” that offers parents “worried about AI” a place where their children “can get away from the sensory overload.)
In a typical scene, some kids ziplined, one climbed a ladder while clutching a fistful of nails, and another pushed around a wheelbarrow asking if anyone needed a shovel saw or hammer, per the reporting. (Families sign a waiver before letting their kids in, and The Yard carries liability insurance.)
Cofounder and head playworker Yoni Kallai begins the day by asking kids what their names are and what they’re excited to do.
“I like to destroy stuff,” one boy said. “I also like to destroy stuff,” his friend next to him agreed, per the WSJ.
Decades ago, this kind of random — and let’s be real, a little dangerous — outdoor play was normal for kids. You had to get creative to entertain yourself before video games did it for you. Nowadays it’s rare, and maybe kids are losing a little something by not finding stupid ways to kill time with each other outside of a virtual environment designed to drip out addictive dopamine hits.
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