Are video games making it harder for kids to deal with heat and athletics?

Here where i live in the south there have been alot of heat related deaths with kids. It seems that most of them ahve been during football season. they are making new rules for the coaches to follow. such as you can only practice for 30 minutes then kids have to get a water break if the temp is 90 or above and alot more rules.

Now when i was younger and i played football in high school we had 3adays in 100 degree weather and nothing ever happened, when we had camp we got our asses run to death. nothing ever happened to us (im not complaining), but now it seems that they are starting to get special treatment.

It is my own personal opnion that (SOME) of todays kids are not accustomed to the heat cause their parents let them play video games all the time and they never really go outside and experience the heat. im sure for most of yall on here, when i was a kid if it wasnt raining i was outside, and if it was raining i wanted to be outside in the rain getting muddy. So does it make since that kids need to be outside more playing, working, or whatever instead of playing video games??

 

Well, death is usually an indicator of something bad.

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I'm not a sports health science genius but I was in the military and have spent a good chunk of the last decade in an area that gets up to 130.

Heat injuries are no joke and can really fuck up your life both physically and on paper. Nobody wants to see a kid get hurt like that, either.

You could play the Damn Kids 'n Video Games card but maybe we've learned something from all these young'ns dropping dead on the field.

The US military, for example, has a work/rest chart that dictates what is the acceptable activity level for troops operating in high temperatures

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Today's Demotivational Poster:

High School Football
It's not worth dying over.​

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I hope this doesn't turn into one of those "Ten miles in the snow, up hill both ways" arguments. Or a bunch of global warming jokes.

Also:

We really need to work on thread titles that aren't the most vague shit on the planet. No offense to you but I'm tired of guessing thread topics.

 

Safety first. Just because one group of kids didn't die from a certain activity, doesn't make it right to continue doing the same things. It might have eventually happened, and is almost assuredly a preventable thing. Stick with safety, you never know when it's going to be too much, until it happens.

 

I don't know what to "blame," but have thought that more heat related deaths have occurred in recent history. Is it due to a change in climate, kids being wussies or the coaching/administration in high school sports?

I will say I don't like passing up an opportunity to say, "DAMN KIDS THESE DAYS and their hippity hop music and atari machines."

THANK YOU for mentioning this. It is quite frustrating.

 

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-+-{Important TFP Staff Message}-+- I fixed the thread title. Everyone, let's same the staff the hassle, ok?

ZS, I'm interested in whether or not heat-related deaths have gone up or not. I wonder if it's a change in diagnoses or something else. I don't see a reason why it would be limited to those under 18. Are folks over 70 also affected? Is it a sedentary lifestyle or the fact that more folks have air conditioning and aren't as used to working hard outdoors during hot, humid weather?

 

*Thread Title Magically Changes to Something Great*

 

It's acclimatization.

I started out as an office a/c weenie. Overheated easily. After being out in the sun for about 3 months and getting a *GREAT* tan, running around in the afternoon sun became much more bearable.

No medical citations here, but your body needs to adapt to sweat more and remain cool.

It may have to do with the sedentary culture, but it's not stupid to impose rules to limit heat casualties. The last thing you want is someone end up hospitalized with heat injuries because the coach wanted to be "hardcore."

You also have young kids who don't know they should drink like whales when they're perspiring that much.
--- merged: Sep 26, 2011 5:24 PM ---
Oh yea. And it's not just video games. It's the cushy life we call first-world life. Air Conditioning from the house to the car to the job. Hell yea.

 

http://www.weather.gov/om/hazstats.shtml

It doesn't break it down by age though. Of course the elderly are at higher risk.

Hmmm....1995 was crazy.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080730164322.htm
Looking for a more recent article.

 

The bottom line is, yes the kids are different. They might not be as physically fit as they were a generation ago, but they are smarter. The world is a changing, and the youth go with it. Not only has childhood changed, so has football. Football is more competitive, kids who are athletes are pushed harder to excel by both parents and coaches. People used to care about the game, more and more they care about winning.

This puts more pressure on the kids to push themselves and more pressure on the coaches to push as well. Lets face it, your average high school football coach isn't a medical expert by any stretch. They don't know where the line is any more than the kids do. The equipment is also heavier and covers more of the body, both of which contribute heavily to overheating.

All of these things rolled together have been building to disaster and now it's finally happening frequently enough that people noticed. Bottom line is these rule changes are a good idea and to call sensible changes to the rules that prevent kids from dying 'special treatment' is little more than inter-generational bravado.

 

first of all: sorry for the title. my bad...

maybe these things happened when i was a kid and i didnt know it cause i didnt watch the news. if so, ok then shame on me. i always see on the news in the dog days of sommer that people are tying to help out the older generation with fans and ac's to help keep them cool. im all for that.

i work in a shop. with that said im sure all of you know what i mean by shop. open doors. when its hot, then im hot, when its cold im cold. i get aggervated when i am sweating my ass off and some office person walks 20 feet outside and starts ranting on how hot it is, then asks me if im hot. "NO SHIT, IT'S HOT" is typically my response. but my point is not about work environment. its more about trying to keep kids active

 

I don't think anything is terribly more prevalent than a generation ago.
Only difference now and then is a 24 hour news cycle and, of course, the internet.
A generation ago, the tragedy would only have spread as far as the local newspaper/tv news coverage area.

 

Probably several reasons if there really is an increase in deaths. Don't know how many years ago you were in high school, ralphie. I assume 30, if not more. Over that time a gradual change with several factors such as diet, physical activity, fluid intake (decreased water, increased soft drinks, increased energy drinks), increase in air conditioning could all have contributed.

 

and this is true.
--- merged: Sep 28, 2011 3:48 PM ---

im 30 now, so it was 12 years ago when i graduated

 

Ok, then I guessed wrong. I was thinking that all sorts of factors were involved over a longer period of time. Hmmm, 12 years is not long at all

 

its not long at all