Kids are being thrown into too many organized sports too quickly. We spent every day after school playing football, street hockey, basketball or shit, even wiffleball. We made the rules, the teams and resolved differences. Now kids only play sports in a tightly controlled, adult supervised environment.
I don’t have any studies to tell me how that adds to loneliness but I do know that going and finding people to shoot hoops with or play football with kept you connected to the outside world. Now you can play video games until mom takes you to soccer practice.