A youth sports overhaul could help America's kids be less lonely

• There's an "epidemic of loneliness" in the US, and young people are particularly vulnerable.
• The decline in youth-sports participation over the past decade could be one factor driving the problem.

When Nancy Curtin's family moved from Oregon to Spokane, Washington, in December 2019, she hoped sports would provide an outlet for her elementary-school-age son to make some friends.

But it turns out her son's school didn't have any basketball programs. He joined a wait list for a club basketball league, but it never panned out.

"We just sat and crossed our fingers hoping that we'd get a call and never did," she told Insider. "My son lost a year of being active in a sport that he absolutely loves and interacting with kids and all the benefits that you get from being in sports as a youth."

Last year, she heard about a new youth basketball league with a nontraditional structure that was starting up in the area. Its goal was to offer kids a convenient and fun basketball experience at a low cost, in the hopes this would help boost declining sports participation levels.

It proved to be exactly what her family was looking for.

Hooptown Youth League was founded in 2022 by a group of community leaders trying to reverse the decline in youth basketball participation that had taken hold over the prior decade.

Mike Nilson, one of the league's founding members and the strength and conditioning coach for Gonzaga University's women's basketball team, told Insider that two main factors — high costs and unbalanced competition — were driving lower participation. The average family was paying roughly $600 a season, excluding tournaments, for YMCA and Amateur Athletic Union leagues, Nilson said. Meanwhile, the prevalence of "super teams" that consistently fielded the best players could be demoralizing for the less talented squads.

"When my son played in eighth grade, the top six teams in eighth-grade AAU beat the bottom six teams by an average of 40 points a game," he said. "And you could see how discouraging that would be if you have the money to play, you form your own team, and then you're losing by 40 points a game."

When Nilson and others created HYL, they required players to sign up individually instead of with a preorganized team — and then grouped them based on where they lived. Nilson said this eliminated the hurdle of establishing one's own team ahead of time, allowed practices to be held near players' homes, and reduced the number of super teams. Plus, the league was able to convince some local school superintendents to open up their gyms for free practices. This enabled the league to get the average cost for a single season down to roughly $150 per player or $30 for qualifying low-income families.

"The key to all of it is being able to get into our public-school gyms and be able to access them for free," he said.

The league's efforts seem to have paid off thus far. 3,000 kids from Spokane and the surrounding areas participated in the league's first year, Nilson said, and over 3,800 are registered to play this fall. The cost savings were particularly important for Curtin's family — she said her husband lost his job due to the pandemic.

"This provides a way for us to give something to our son that doesn't cost a lot of money and he benefits from so much," she said. "It's been a really great opportunity for the new kid in town to give them a sense of belonging — like they're part of the community — and meet new friends beyond their own elementary school."

Experts say the US is in need of more solutions like this to help tackle the loneliness problem that's spreading across the country. Loneliness among young people, in particular, appears to be on the rise in the US at the same time youth-sports participation seems to be ticking down. We sought out research and experts to determine whether these trends could be connected, and if they are, what communities can do about it to boost sports participation.

Better access to sports could help kids through an 'epidemic of loneliness'

In May, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued a report on the "epidemic of loneliness" across the US, which he said could have the same health impact as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

While Americans of all ages are vulnerable to loneliness, young people are particularly at risk. The rate of loneliness among US young adults has increased every year between 1976 and 2019, per the report, and the pandemic only made things worse.

Between 2009 and 2019, the share of high-school students reporting "persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness" increased by 40%, according to a 2021 Surgeon General's report. Data on grade-school-aged children is limited in the US, but research in other countries has found that young children aren't immune to these problems.

The rise of social media is a popular explanation for the uptick in loneliness. But when young people spend more time on their phones, they're also spending less time on other activities — like sports — that could benefit their mental health.

In 2021, 37% of US children between the ages of 6 and 12 regularly played a team sport, according to the Sports and Fitness Industry Association, down from 45% in 2008. During the 2018-2019 school year, high-school sports participation declined for the first time in 30 years, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations. After two years with insufficient data due to the pandemic, participation declined again in 2021-2022.

Team sports make kids less lonely

If you ask many US parents, not playing a sport could hinder their child's social development.

Fifty-eight percent of US adults think that participating in organized sports makes children less lonely, a YouGov survey of 2,000 US adults conducted in July and August in partnership with Insider found; 89% of respondents agreed that organized sports "provide opportunities for children to make friends."

One of the few studies to explore sports participation's connection to youth loneliness was conducted by European researchers in 2019.

"The essential finding is that sports participation in childhood can protect against loneliness," the report said. "By virtue of sports activity, which provides children to meet their social needs and expectations, sports-active children are less lonely."

There's also a wide body of research that suggests the absence of the physical and social benefits of sports participation could be contributing to worse mental-health outcomes for young Americans. In 2022, a national study of over 11,000 young people found that children who participated in organized team sports were at a lower risk of experiencing mental-health challenges than children who played no sports at all.

"Kids who played exclusively team organized sports had lower symptoms of anxiety, they were less withdrawn, and they had fewer social problems," Matt Hoffmann, a Cal State Fullerton assistant professor of kinesiology and the leader of the study, told Insider.

The study also stumbled upon a second finding, one Hoffman said he found more surprising: Kids who participated in individual sports like tennis or gymnastics were more likely to face mental-health challenges than team sports participants and kids who played no sports at all.

Hoffman's research didn't focus on loneliness specifically, but his findings suggest that team sports in particular — which generally provide more social opportunities — can help protect young people from feelings of isolation.

"The big thing we know about team sports, especially at a younger age, is you are feeling that sense of belonging with others, you're developing friendships. We need that social aspect," he said.

How to get kids to come back to sports

Experts say several factors could be contributing to a decline in youth-sports participation. SFIA's data suggests the drop-off began with the 2008 economic downturn.

"The Great Recession took a big chunk out of people's finances, including municipalities," Jon Solomon, the editorial director for the Aspen Institute's Sports and Society Program, told Insider. "So municipalities stopped investing as much into parks and recreation departments."

The cost of sports continues to be a challenge for families today. The average family spends $883 on one child's primary sport, according to a 2022 Aspen Institute survey, and parents with children in travel leagues often spend much more — as much as $10,000 per year — Solomon said. A CDC study found that in 2020, 70% of children from families with incomes above roughly $105,000 participated in sports, compared to 51% of middle-class families and 31% of those at or below the poverty line. The YouGov survey documented a similar trend.

Solomon said the "increased privatization of youth sports" — marked by a shift from local community leagues to private travel leagues — has taken a toll on sports participation for families who can't afford the latter.

He thinks the US could benefit from "an in-between option" that offers quality competition at a reasonable cost.

"As more families move out of rec sports, it's hemorrhaging that capacity for the local community-based rec leagues," he said. "Both in terms of finances because fewer kids are playing, but you also just have fewer volunteers who can officiate the games, coach the teams, administer the league. So it all sort of adds up."

Of course, there are also some kids who simply don't want to play sports.

The 260 adults surveyed by YouGov whose children did not participate in organized sports (and whose children were old enough to participate) listed a lack of interest as the primary reason, followed by financial constraints and the time commitment involved. The break from sports many children had during the pandemic could be a factor.

There are still plenty of children who have an interest in sports, however, Solomon said, but are opting out for a variety of reasons. He said the No. 1 strategy for the Aspen Institute's Project Play initiative — whose goal is to boost sports participation — is for communities to "ask kids what they want."

"It sounds really simple and basic, but unfortunately, not a lot of adults actually do it," he said, "whether it's parents or coaches or administrators or sports providers."

Solomon said young people typically cite having fun and playing with their friends as the top reasons they play sports — well above winning or chasing a college scholarship.

The youth-sports league that has become popular in Spokane — and helped Nancy Curtin's family — could be one model for communities to follow.

Nilson said any group thinking of trying a similar model will need to overcome forces that are eager to maintain the status quo — often for monetary reasons.

"The biggest thing is to be able to have a group of people that really want what's best for kids and for the game of basketball," he said.

Curtin and her family are certainly grateful for it.

"Had we not found out about the league and gotten involved, I fear years could've gone by before we found the right team," she said.