One of the biggest regrets I have from my childhood was only playing one season of organized baseball. Sure, I wasn’t very good. But I have more fond memories from that one season of baseball than I do of all the years of playing video games combined.

may be related–I was pondering the news that many colleges are now 60 percent women and wondered if it was due in part to the fact that girls are less likely to become adicted to video games? at least it seems so.
what does the church do? well some of the older people in my church spend a good deal of time bragging about their iphones.

So maybe all those X-boxes and flat screens in the youth center wasn’t the best idea for outreach to eventually encourage the kids to be countercultural and lead a Jesus revolution?

I _hated_ sports when I had to take Physical Education. I was always the last person to be picked for a team, or even asked to be the referee. Suffice it to say I stank at most sports. I wonder if many other school children these days are finding that their experience of sports in school is bad enough to _deter_ them from participating; so far as I know, the time children spend on video games could be a _symptom only_ instead of a causal factor.
At least I walk almost every day, now; this _solitary_ sport allows me to keep myself in fair-to-middling shape.

Douglas, this is a trivial anecdote, but I’ll share it anyway.
I was a full year younger than everyone in my class (I skipped kindergarten), and as a freshman I was always the last one picked for any athletic event, particularly the football games. But I didn’t let that get to me, and I certainly didn’t let that make me give up playing and retreat into video games. (It must have been my disastrously poor luck with the girls that drove me to video games!) But by the time my senior year rolled around, I was consistently the first player picked in all of our pick-up football games.
Like I said, that’s trivial. But I hate to see a kid give up on sports because he was the last one picked. Isn’t so much better to challenge ourselves and use our failures as motivation than to retreat into self-protection and cynicism?

I was not impressed with this article.
For one thing, “Oh no! Videogames! The sky is falling!” is a serious overreaction.
The article also seems to be mostly about declining involvement in baseball, and doesn’t suggest that perhaps, baseball is in fact boring, and more kids are playing soccer. Baseball hasn’t been “America’s pasttime” in a long time.
“Sandlot baseball”. You might as well complain that kids aren’t running around rolling a hoop with a stick.
Obviously, everything in moderation, including videogames, sports, or whatever. But this whole topic reminds me of Douglas Adams’ quote: “Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”

Well said Travis! A bit of over reaction is going on I think. Yes there are concerns but it is not the end of the world. I am 42 and am amazed at how much the younger generations are digital, but I am not surprised. I enjoy the Wii as much as my kids do!

Travis,
My son likes baseball and plays in the local rec/travel league when he can. He played some soccer, but doesn’t care much for it. Other kids play many other organized sports.
But I am not concerned with sandlot baseball per se — rather the absence of all such games and activities. We live in a safe small town – and the kids simply are not outside playing, not riding bikes, not playing soccer, not playing basketball, nor any of the other multitude of active group games. They are all sequestered in their own homes playing video games. Occasionally it is with each other online, occasionally they visit each other, – but mostly alone.
It can’t be good in the long run — and obesity is not the only issue.

The article also mentions how they are connected every waking hour. I know my daughter is never ever ever out of communication with her friends. Even though physically she may be up in her room by herself, there are texts coming in, the phone is ringing, facebook conversations and chats are happening, email, etc. etc.
Baseball came of age as a result of the industrial revolution and the movement of populations into towns. Video games are a result of the internet revolution.
One thing not pointed out is the the families I know who are most gung-ho into sports rarely get to attend church because they’re always out of town on the weekends at games or tournaments.
To me, it feels as if the kid’s sports are as much about satisfying some need of the parents as they are about development of the child. The article had a bit of that flavor.

i have a couple ideas…i’m a high school baseball/football coach, former collegiate athlete, and youth pastor.
as a coach i see kids who are extremely talented quitting sports all the time. why? parents. pressure. lack of fun. as long as the element of fun is stripped from sports, kids will look elsewhere for entertainment and enjoyment. can you blame them? kids [myself included] play video games to escape the junk of life. video games are a release and a place where the kid who isn’t good enough can be the best. it saddens me that the kids i know seem to no longer believe that hard work in “real” life can pay off in the same way.
“what can the church do?”
seriously look at a couple things. 1) the role of competition on our society. are we modeling healthy competition? are we showing kids that sports are about teamwork, sportsmanship, commitment, discipline, and FUN? i see way too many Christian parents modeling a “win at all costs” mentality in all areas of life. 2) the role of sports and entertainment. are parents showing kids what it means to have fun? can kids play “games” that are fun, or do they need to go to virtual games for this? at youth group, we still play games because i believe kids need a place to “play” without worrying about being left out, picked on, losing, etc.

Interesting games for all fans and dedicated gamers from all continents. It is the best way to kill time.

I think #9 and #10 are getting to the root of the problem and that one symptom of it is what RJS points out. My sons–now 15 (twins)–one in particular, absolutely longed and dreamed and fantasized about pick-up baseball games with friends in the neighborhood. It was never going to happen, because many neighborhood kids were programmed into activities and many parents were too afraid to let them play outside in an unstructured way ( even though this was a safe, middle class neighborhood). I felt sad, because something that was a given of my childhood was a fantasy for my children. (We did get them involved with–and they loved–Christian Athletic Association baseball, which doesn’t schedule Sunday games.) In any case, I think the kids turn to video games, in part, because they can have some freedom. Video games are the equivalent of pick-up sports of yesteryear–not suffocated by parents, not regulated, planned, ruled and colonized by adults–but a space where kid and teens can learn to work it out on their own, self-manage etc.

I believe #9 and #10 are on to more of the real problem as well. Youth sports are no longer about kids. They are about the parents trying to live dreams out through their kids.
My son is an avid baseball player — However, the local park rec league that he used to play in shifted its philosophy this year. Instead of having one travel team for 10 year old kids as they have in the past, they are having 4… That’s right 4 travel teams from one park at around $1500 a kid so they can play 60 game seasons… Really, this is about 10 year old kids??
I would be more inclined to guess that kids are not only leaving sports because video games are pulling them there but that they also don’t like the hyper competitive environments the parents have created. What’s fun about that?

Chad, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head regarding fun. I’m teaching a class on Spiritual Disciplines and using Willard’s book as a guide, and one of the things that struck me most is that truly spiritual people have fun! I think parents can suck the fun out of sports because of their own issues and insecurities. I have three kids (all under 4, so we haven’t hit the sports stage yet) and I feel that twinge of insecurity when my nephew does something better than my oldest son. Boy, if that doesn’t die, I could really suck the life out of all my kids activities.

Hmmm…I will offer up a differing experience and opinion.
We control the amount of time our boys (9, 11 and 14) spend with electronics and we don’t watch TV, but we did finally get a Wii 14 months ago.
And in the last year, my boys have gone from not knowing much about soccer to playing all the time … because of the soccer they play on the Wii.
We have also limited the organized sports our boys can play to those offered at school. I have children who will be big (tall) and I’m not interested in them using up all their growing energy on sports … plus I’m concerned about injuries to growing bodies as well as poor sportsmanship examples (kids and parents) regarding excess competition.
Yes, our boys miss out on lots of neighborhood pick-up sports because other kids are in sports, but we also have serious “inside” time because of the rainy winter climate. (If we had snow, they would be able to be out more — I grew up in GR, Michigan!)
It’s about balance — and when the weather is good, the Wii controllers get put away, and Dad takes the boys out with the soccer ball and has a blast. Sometimes the boys go down to the park even before Dad gets home. And I have had to ban the soccer ball from the house … dribbling and tackling and goal practice, AAUGH. We set up an old king size mattress and a 2 X 4 frame on the back porch for them to practice both goalie and kicking.
Don’t know what we’d do without the Wii in the winter….