Daily life and parties, relationships and encounters

Free activities

There is, therefore, no doubt that children’s free time and leisure time have been drastically reduced, even though the following three areas (see model) continue to represent a significant portion of the potential for free activities.

Many “offers” (often more or less in the guise of “obligations”) encourage passivity or are simply passive entertainment in the form of internationalised products. This can be measured by the number of personal computers and TV-sets in children’s rooms which could very easily lead to greater attention being paid to “activating” children (as opposed to “encouraging them to be creative”).

The effect might be insufficient stimulation of children’s imaginations due to:

• the many, frequent changes of activity,
• children spending more timewith adults and less time in contact with other children and
• increased consumption of "ready-to-run” products.

Over thousands of years and in their own anarchistic way, children have, however, always retained the ability to invent, discover and establish time, space and “new” things for play - and often without the adults noticing what is really happening.

Without attracting adult attention, children have always played experimentally and alternatively with objects which were in no way calculated to be used in the way the children chose to use them.

They will continue to do so - especially because there are markets, including the toy market, advertising and TV ads which stimulate vigilance and attention and also especially because electronic aids in the form of toys in the play and fantasy universe of both children and adults will continue to demonstrate the limitless opportunities available to “Homo Ludens”.

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