Depressing Facts about the State of Play

42% of children have never made a daisy chain
32% have never climbed a tree
25% have never rolled down a hill
A third of children have never played hopscotch
One in ten have never ridden a bike

72% of adults played outside rather than indoors,
compared to 40% of children today.

-from new research from Savlon and Play England

August 3rd, 2011 is Playday, the national day for play, a celebration of kids’ right to play and a campaign that spreads awareness of the power of play in kids’ lives.

In the UK, that is. It’s not happening here in the US of A.

Apparently, in the UK they’re not being facetious when they talk about kids’ right to play:

Children’s right to play

In 1991, the UK government ratified the United Nations convention on the rights of the child. The Playday campaign is committed to achieving the full implementation of this right, to ensure all children in the UK can play.

Article 31 of the convention states that:

• Parties recognise the right of the child to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child and to participate freely in cultural life and the arts.
• Parties shall respect and promote the right of the child to participate fully in cultural and artistic life and shall encourage the provision of appropriate and equal opportunities for cultural artistic, recreational and leisure activity.

Similarly, last year in Berlin, a law was passed which stated that it was “fundamentally and socially tolerable” for kids to be noisy.

Axel Strohbusch, from Berlin’s Department of Noise Protection, said it was “the first time we have it written in law that we have to consider the rights of children to shout and make noise while they are growing up.”

I ask you:

How depressing is it that laws need to exist to protect kids’ right to be kids?

Is it more or less depressing that kids don’t have those legal rights to childhood here?

I’m curious to know how our stats stack up against the UK… do me a favor and vote in the poll. (Poll embedded below. Subscribers may have to click through, sorry!)