Headline: Shocker: Empathy Dropped 40% in College Students Since 2000.
Without unstructured free time with playmates, children simply don’t get to know each other very well. And you can’t learn to connect and care if you don’t practice these things. Free play declined by at least a third between 1981 and 2003–right when the kids who hit college in 2000 and later were growing up.