“Free Play” Is Highly Important to Human Social Development
A new theory suggests that early humans used play to overcome the innate tendencies toward aggression and dominance which would have made a cooperative society impossible.
The kind of "play" that helped hunter-gatherer children develop into cooperative adults is similar to the sort of play that at one time characterized American children's summers and after-school hours in contemporary culture. This play is freely chosen, age-mixed, and, because it is not adult-organized, non-competitive, he said. This "free play" is distinct from leisure pursuits such as video games, watching TV, or structured extracurricular activities and sports.
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