PLAY IS NOT FOR JUST KIDS

Science shows that play is central to human life and too little of it can have serious health consequences

- ADAM PIORE

KATHY HIRSH-PASEK thinks Americans. have finally reached a tipping point in their collective level of self-imposed misery.

Neuroscientists, educators and psychologists like Hirsh-Pasek know that play is as an essential ingredient in the lives of adults as well as children. A weighty and growing body of evidence-spanning evolutionary biology, neuroscience and developmental psychology-has in recent years confirmed the centrality of play to human life. Not only is it a crucial part of childhood development and learning but it is also a means for young and old alike to connect with others and a potent way of supercharging creativity and engagement. Play is so fundamental that neglecting it poses a significant health risk.

And yet Americans have been squeezing playtime out of their busy schedules for years the average adult now logs more hours at work than a 14th-century English peasant. Although this trend was underway long before the pandemic struck, the two years of fear, illness and death that followed drove the nation's level of loneliness and isolation to intolerable levels. Hirsh-Pasek, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a bestselling author, thinks the ordeal may have pushed already work-weary Americans over the brink to the point where they are finally revising their attitudes toward work and play for the better. "People need joy in their lives," she says.