Is playtime over for kids?

Now everything is pre scheduled and gone are the days when kids could play at their friends' home, leave when they want and walk home. Children don't have the freedom to storm out and run home after a fight, they have to wait until a parent picks them up. The organic nature of socializing is lost when kids depend on adults to tell them when the playdate is over. Now even recess, the last arena for free play is being replaced or augmented with recess coaches.

At home young children are spending up to 28 hours a week on computers and other technology demonstrating that how they learn to negotiate the world from a very young age is very different from their parents' childhood. in The New York Times, David Elkind writes about how children are learning about the virtual world often at the expense of the social world.