Report: British Children Are Getting Soft

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 1,500 children aged six to 15, 10 percent could not ride a bicycle and 15 percent could not swim. More numbers, via the BBC:

– 22 percent had never run 400 meters

– 15 percent had never played a sport with their parents

– 33 percent didn’t own a bicycle

– 77 percent owned a game console

– 68 percent owned a cell phone

There is some fun with data going on here. For example, 23 percent of children do not own a game console, and 32 don’t own a cell 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.

A generation of children ‘turn their backs on sport’ [BBC]