Brendan Hyndman's research has been taken up by The Conversation, a Leftist university based organisation. The trouble with these researches is that most of us don't have the interest, the skill or the time to put them under the microscope. So, there might be a problem with Australian kids not getting off their "butts" (Americanism) - or there might not. Either way, this piece of research, like most studies, will be shelved to gather dust, and the lives of kids won't be affected by it. Thankfully.

My parents were far from perfect, but one thing that I am am grateful for is that they didn't force me to play sport and do horrible, sweaty, often dangerous, physical activities.

"Thus for all these reasons, kids won't get out to play very often. You can forget your Don Bradmans and Ian Thorpes and Cathy Freemans. The sporting Aussie will be a thing of the past."

The 'sporting Aussie' SHOULD be a thing of the past, and with current poor performances in world competition, if will be sooner rather than later.

Three cheers. It's time our obsession with sport (mainly as spectators) ended. We need people with big brains, not big muscles, if we are to resist the growing threats to the West

In some Asian societies, the school day averages around 8 hours or two hours more than we? Those extra 2 hours could include homework and at least one hour of PE or a sports competition, only avoidable with a countersigned medical certificate, that can not include morbid obesity. Which should then allow the obese to have their PE/sports comps, to be conducted exclusively in the pool!

Today both parents are abut compelled to both be working holding down individual jobs to be able to afford the mortgage or price gouged rent. Thus they are all too often consumed by the day to day realities of survival, not spending time with kids, who all too often are isolated behind screens of welded to smartphones?

Our society has been sold down the river and at the behest of property developers and landlords! Who are the ones who've built the concrete jungles and demand the price-gouged premiums?

Arguably given far too much prominence and power in a de-industrial society

Only made possible by asinine spit lickle governments?

We could do so much better if only we had men and women with future vision at the helm, with the courage of conviction, backbones and ears that still work, along with with genuine concern for the least among us and the patently missing integrity.

And rated in the honesty stakes at present, somewhere south of used car salesmen selling deathtrap rust buckets to kids?

Given kids are exposed to all this and incompetent corrupt governments all combining via inactivity and hopeless energy policies that all but guarantee our kids will have no future or a hellish one?

Why should they get up off of their butts? WTF ging hell is the point?
Alan B.

Here's Alan B and myself on the same page again.

...*Our society has been sold down the river and at the behest of property developers and landlords! Who are the ones who've built the concrete jungles and demand the price-gouged premiums?...*

We are not observing an underactive overly obese society, but actually a " youthless" one.
If you really wish for an engaged society, radical changes will need to appear in the housing opportunity given to young families.

Flogging the limited resources of families forced into a lifetime of ever increasing rent payments is not good.
Forcing this escalating loser-class into short term leases which marginalise their children through multiple schools, and breed an unattachment instinct for life, is not good.

Presenting a quasie sentiment of care over youth, by branding each and every one of them (it would seem), with a victimhood status; particularly a mental disability excuse to disengage forever from a normal human and productive world, is not good.

Access to the internet should be restricted to those older than twenty one. Follow The example of Iran, and shut it down altogether as an alternative, would be good for youth by offering them the opportunity and the time, to smell the roses.

Dan

Dear Dan,

«Access to the internet should be restricted to those older than twenty one.»

The internet is only a symptom. We do need all this silly technology in order to compensate and support the ever increasing number of people - without it people would starve for food, with it, people starve for meaning.

The article discusses a particular shortage, but shortages there must be, if not this than that, for the blanket is just too short. The number of people on earth is far too high, it is no longer a suitable place for new human bodies: souls ought to queue up and wait for their turn rather than push to come here all at the same time.

Regarding the article's title, what failed is family-planning and if kids are lazy then it is for a good reason: life in these crowded conditions lacks purpose.

Family planning? Ha!

God gives men and women the ability to have kids. From about 11 or 12 in most cases, and kids are growing up faster.
It's up to the parents to work out how to limit the family to what they can manage.

Look at kids in supermarkets today. They do what they want. Good forbid anyone should give them a smack or threaten to take away their pastimes

Dear Waverley,

«It's up to the parents to work out how to limit the family to what they can manage.»

And how many would-be-parents could afford a child, even one, if they truly had to pay all the expenses involved (including health and education) without any government support?