Play … For Life - importance of leisure

Parks & Recreation, Oct, 2000 by Ellen O'Sullivan

The late A. Bartlett Giametti, Renaissance scholar, former president of Yale University, and the commissioner of Major League Baseball at the time of his death, is often quoted as saying:

You can learn more about a society by observing the way they play as opposed to how they work.

If that's the case, then what do our current play patterns and preferences indicate about our society?

* The most recent Surgeon General's Report, the first one released since the report on smoking over 30 years ago, identified lack of leisure-time physical activity as a serious health threat in the United States.

* An average of 21 million Americans lived vicariously as they tuned in every week to watch a group of other people live, work, and survive on a tropical island.

* The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that today an average married couple works 26 percent longer each year than similar working couples did three decades ago.

* A University of Michigan study comparing "real" free time among children ages 12 and under found that leisure time had declined from 40 percent of a child's day in 1981 to 25 percent of a child's day in 1997.

* A study of children ages 6-17 conducted for Nickelodeon found that 50 percent of children were concerned about not having more time to relax.

* Casino gambling continues to hold a winning hand with gaming revenues up 13 percent in this last year, reaching a total of $31 billion.

* A Carnegie Mellon University study found that teens who used computers even for a few hours per week demonstrated increased signs of loneliness and social isolation. These online teens reported having fewer friends.

* Approximately 25 percent of American adults report no leisure-time physical activity and an additional 60 percent don't achieve the recommended levels of leisure-time physical activity.

* The average adult in the United States spent 3,448 hours using consumer media in 1999; that's a 22 percent increase from 1998 and a 55-hour increase from 1997.

* Bureau of Labor Statistics interviews found that by age 15, 64 percent of teenagers were working, with 38 percent of them employed formally. Average weekly hours for employed 15- to 17-year-olds were 17 during the school year and 23 in the summer.

Even a quick look at just a few statistics suggests that Americans are on the road to less free and unstructured time than originally projected for the 21st century and that our activities and preferences are becoming more sedentary, solitary, and passive.

Play -- Our Emerging Vision

It's not only time for all of us to infuse more play into our own individual lives, but it is an absolute necessity that we begin to shift our focus from just providing activities and programs. We need to become facilitators of PLAY -- Positive Leisure Alternatives for Your community. This shift needs to be the emerging vision and role for parks and recreation in the early days of the new millennium.

It's time that we as a profession revise how we perceive ourselves and how we present opportunities and options for play, leisure, and recreation activities to our public. It is clearly time that we help people to Come Out and Play! We can do this by:

-- raising people's awareness as to how important play can be in their lives and the lives of friends and family members.

-- creating interest and incentives to entice people out of the house and off of the couch and away from the computer.

-- involving people in their own lives and the lives of their neighborhoods and communities.

Some of the possibilities include:

Come Out & Play[R] America Campaign

This program is dedicated to connecting with consumers where and how they live, work, and play and is designed to reposition your department as the agency responsible for engaging the community in healthy recreational pursuits. More than 40 agencies throughout the country became involved in this pilot initiative this past summer. Some of the actions, activities, and events department launched included:

Raising awareness -- by including messages about the fundamental values and benefits of play as part of your communications efforts.

Creating interest in leisure activities -- one aspect of the Come Out and Play campaign is articles on various topics and slants of the values and benefits of leisure time. Departments raised awareness by providing local media with timely articles of interest.

Play and Civilization

This article started with a quote from A. Bartlett Giametti that suggested how revealing play patterns and practices are about a society. A quote that issues a challenge to that insight comes to us from Bertrand Russell, who said that

To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization.

What does play and leisure in our current society suggest about the quality of our lives and the future of our world?

gambling ... real TV. .. chat rooms ... cyber-everything and anything ... simulations

Maybe it's not just time but almost in the nick of time to evolve our role to one where we help people to Come Out and Play. We can make a difference in the lives of individuals, families, neighborhoods, communities, and perhaps even civilization through play. It's time to seize the millennial opportunity!