In the western world the answer to that question is often some addictive activity such as playing video games, or watching videos on youtube.
I was a relatively free-range child. I had a bike, I had a pocket full of quarters to call home if I needed to, and if I wanted to I could stay home and play video games (we had an NES, followed by a SNES, but not that many games).
What did I do? I rode my bike to the library and took out books from the programming section. The first ones were video-game inspired. You could get the source code of a game in a book and type it into the Vic-20. I was obsessive with it. Once I'd gone through all of the game-books they had, I started making my own. And then we got a used XT and it. was. on. Quickly went from QBasic to a C compiler (PowerC, if I recall). Around '97 or so we got a Pentium 1 and I heard about this thing called "gcc" which was apparently a better C compiler, so I ended up installing Linux.
And here we are, 20 years later and I've turned all of that into a great career. At the time, my parents were pretty dismayed that I wasn't into baseball, or soccer, or basketball, or whatever... But they did a great job at keeping things balanced. Don't want to play sports? That's ok, but we've got to go take the dog for a walk.
I fully accept that a lot of the computer-related activities are significantly more addictive now (and passive) than they were back then. If I wanted a new game, I had to ride my bike to the library! But... I'm always leery of people who suggest heavily restricting screen time just because it's screen time. If that's the direction someone's going, they might just need a little nudge to make it a more productive learning experience.
Now... Not so much. Much of the hardware is locked, nevermind the software. So kids get to thinking they can't make anything, that it's a primarily passive experience.
To me, that's the big problem, to become passionate about passiveness.
For the record my 5 year old runs KDE on a fanless laptop. It's been great for him to learn letters at school
If you want to do programming, you can do a huge amount just using browser APIs (and that is kind of nice because it is very easy to share what you do by sending people a link). You can do graphics (canvas, svg, webgl), audio, and so many other things.
But to use a computer creatively you don't have to be a programmer. You can use paint programs, 3d modeling programs, music programs such as DAWs, word processors/text editors for writing, and a huge number of other kinds of software that allow non-passive, creative activities.
The problem, as I see it, is that so many passive things are available too, and many are very attractive to kids.
Sure, you can go find an open environment, but when I was growing up, I was already there; and that made all the difference. I didn't need a mentor to introduce me. I was free to stumble into the world of software via my own interests.
The limitations are arbitrary and nearly impossible to get around. Computers, especially smart phones, tablets, etc. are being treated less as property of the buyer and more as property of the seller/manufacturer.
For example: When it is very difficult to unlock a bootloader, then most people do not find it interesting to try other operating systems. Very few are more creative, and the rest are just prevented from exploring/learning/creating just because they have the wrong device.
She'll probably be coding by the time she is 8, but she mostly does graphics and music now (for instance, she uses piano-karaoke software I developed that runs in Chrome on most any device). The "unlocking the bootloader" issue hasn't cropped up yet, but maybe I would be more frustrated if we had an iOS instead of chromeOS, Android and MacOS devices.
This is a problem that has been somewhat avoided in the Android ecosystem, but the trend is definitely negative.
Maybe the question is more about the behavior of the adult than the child? Parents need to enable their children's interests. Maybe your child really wants to roller skate but can't do it unless you enable them by watching them, because it's a dangerous neighborhood. It's your responsibility to foster their interest by making the time to help them.
Or maybe the idea is that parents sometimes don't actually know the interests of their children? So the point of the question is not to open time in the kid's schedule for their activity (because they're doing that activity already). It's to make the parent more aware of what the activity is?
I never would have been a programmer if my parents filled my schedule with football, like they wanted to.
One of the more surprising things I've discovered as a recent parent is how prominent tablets are as a distraction or learning tool.
I'm no exception. We bought our son a cheap, bulletproof Amazon Fire tablet, ratcheted the parental controls to the roof, and let him watch videos or play with it when he requests it (and use it as a helpful distraction when he gets bored in restaurants.)
I'm split on how to approach this. On one hand, I would have done anything to have this magical infinite learning device when I found myself bored as a child, but I also recognize that the content on it is more often than not designed for addiction. Our son is not yet old enough to understand even rough warnings of addictive behaviors, so we're kind of watch-and-waiting. We limit screen time per day, but as he gets older, and gets access to a web browser, I'm not sure how I feel about those limits in relation to traditional information sources.
A video game is an immersive experience that allows an individual to effectively sync into a state of flow detached from reality.
If reality is chaotic and stressful and reinforces that sentiment from all directions to yield those internal feelings of agony, it seems obvious that anything that can alleviate such agony would be immediately ran to.
Better to be addicted to video games than heroin, right? At least video games can teach modular reasoning. And yes, extreme cases of video game addiction have led to death, but a kid having a daily hobby of playing video games after school is not the same thing.
> Better to be addicted to video games than heroin, right?
> At least video games can teach modular reasoning.
Or programming, having a job you have passion for and are good at, being able to produce work people see value in, sustaining yourself, you know, not living in a gutter and stuff dying of a heroin overdose?
> Only in terms of your physical health. Otherwise iirc addiction is defined as having negative effect on your life (work, social, personal) so it is as bad.
Well, if you love video games and everyone around you hates video games, and thinks video games are as bad as heroin, I could see how that could have a negative effect on your work, social, and personal life.
And, just to be pedantic because I hate the term, the Yucatan is in the Western World.