Jeff Minick: ‘If you don’t have to throw the kids in the bathtub, they haven’t played hard enough.’

A guard in a Wabash, Ind., prison gave me that title. The prison was featured in a 2017 video , “Free the Kids—Dirt Is Good,” where inmates are permitted two precious hours a day outdoors.

The short film contrasts that privilege with data showing that children spend less than an hour a day outside their house. At least one study found that the average American under age 16 is outside and engaged in free play for less than 10 minutes daily while spending an average of seven hours in front of a screen.

At first, the headlines announcing this news struck me as clickbait, but then I thought of my own neighborhood. Nearly every evening this summer, I’ve seen two sets of parents walking our quiet streets while their children ride bicycles near them. Two tween girls sometimes glide past my