I remember as a kid running down the street to my friends’ houses to knock on the door and ask if they can come outside to play. There were several other kids who lived on my street. We built a clubhouse in one neighbor’s yard. We played football. We rode bicycles. I remember having bike races up and down the street. This was the decade when CHiPs was a popular television show about California Highway Patrol officers. We pretended to be the main characters, Ponce and Jon, on that show and our bikes were our patrol motorcycles. We would also pretend to be The Dukes of Hazzard and we all had t-shirts with pictures of Bo, Luke, Daisy, and the General Lee. We would run around in the orange grove behind our house and try to climb trees.
What fun times we had running around the neighborhood back in the day. Nowadays, kids are experimenting with play-dates online. For various reasons, kids are unable to get outside for play time: lack of time at home, not enough neighborhood kids nearby, not safe in their neighborhoods. Read this article on kids experimenting with online play-dates using Skype.
Kids as young as toddlers and 2 year olds are Skyping friends down the street when the weather isn’t permitting for them to play face-to-face. It is interesting in the article that young kids are discovering ways to interact with one another online. They are playing with toys together over the internet. They are quoted as saying this playtime is not as good as being together in the same room but it works for a time.
One psychologist “cautions against parents thinking of it as a replacement for face-to-face playdates, which are more valuable for kids.”
I can see one major benefit of Skype playdates being more for long distance family and friends rather than friends within close driving distances. What do you think about this?
