Evidence · Youth sports
Are youth sports good for children?
Children who play sports tend to be healthier on average, but early single-sport focus and heavy training schedules raise the risk of overuse injury.
The short answer
A little over half of American children ages 6 to 17 play on a sports team or take sports lessons. Participation fell during the pandemic and has since recovered for high school students. Children from higher-income families play at about twice the rate of children in poverty, and family costs keep rising. Children who play sports, especially team sports, show better physical and mental health on average, though most studies show association, not cause. In sports medicine studies, children who specialize early in one sport, or train more hours a week than their age, have more overuse injuries. Free, unstructured play still matters alongside organized sports.
How many children play organized sports?
The National Survey of Children's Health asks families each year about sports teams and lessons. In 2023-2024, 56.7 percent of children ages 6 to 17 took part, almost 28 million children. Boys played at a rate of 60.7 percent, compared with 52.6 percent of girls. State rates ranged from 46.3 percent in Nevada to 70.9 percent in New Hampshire.
The federal Healthy People 2030 plan tracks the same measure. Participation fell from a baseline of 58.3 percent in 2016-17 to 54.6 percent in 2022-23. The government rates this objective as getting worse, against a target of 63.2 percent. The 2023-2024 figure of 56.7 percent shows some recovery, but it remains below the 2016-17 baseline.
The CDC's Youth Risk Behavior Survey shows the pandemic drop most clearly for high school students. The share on at least one sports team was 57 percent in 2019, 49 percent in 2021 and 52 percent in 2023. In 2025, it reached 57.6 percent, a significant rise from 2023. Girls drove much of that gain, rising from 48.1 percent in 2023 to 54.6 percent in 2025. For comparison, the rate stood at 55.1 percent in 1999 and 58.4 percent in 2011.
Who gets left out, and what does it cost?
Family income shapes who plays. In 2023-2024, only 36.7 percent of children below the poverty line played sports. At four times the poverty line or more, 74.1 percent played. A separate federal survey from 2020 found the same pattern: 31.2 percent below the poverty line versus 70.2 percent at the top income level. Children whose parents had a high school education or less played at 36.8 percent, versus 67.6 percent when a parent had a bachelor's degree.
Census Bureau data suggest the gap has widened. They show that sports participation among children at twice the poverty line or higher rose from 43 percent in 1998 to 47 percent in 2020. Among children in poverty, the rate stood at 23 percent in 2020, with no significant change since 1998. The Census survey uses a different question, so its rates run lower than the other surveys.
We found no government data on what families spend on youth sports. The best available figures come from survey data collected by the Aspen Institute's Project Play. Its 2024 survey of 1,848 sports parents found families spent an average of $1,016 on a child's main sport, up 46 percent from 2019. With other teams added, the average reached nearly $1,500 per child. Families earning $100,000 or more spent $1,471 more a year on a child's main sport than families earning under $50,000.
What are sports linked to?
Children who play sports look healthier on many measures. An hour of activity on 4 to 6 days a week was reported for 37.4 percent of sports participants, versus 16.7 percent of non-participants. They were more likely to get adequate sleep, 68.9 percent versus 60.3 percent. They were also more likely to keep weekday screen time to two hours or less, 54.3 percent versus 43.1 percent. Our page on phones, social media and children covers screen time in more detail.
Mental health shows a similar pattern. Current anxiety was reported for 10.9 percent of sports participants and 16.4 percent of non-participants. Current depression was reported for 3.3 percent versus 7.6 percent. The federal brief states that these cross-sectional data cannot establish causality. Healthier children may simply be more likely to join a team.
The type of sport may matter. A 2022 study of 11,235 U.S. children ages 9 to 13 compared team and individual sports. Team sport was linked to 19 percent lower withdrawn and depressed scores and 17 percent lower social problem scores. Individual sport alone was linked to 16 percent higher anxious and depressed scores. The authors note that the design cannot show cause and the effects were small. Our page on children's mental health covers the wider trend.
Some benefits may last into adulthood. A national study followed 9,668 teenagers until they reached ages 24 to 32. It looked closely at those with adverse childhood experiences. Among them, playing team sports in grades 7 to 12 was linked to lower odds of adult depression and anxiety. This was an observational study, so it shows an association.
For school performance, a 2022 review pooled 115 studies covering more than one million students. It found a small positive link between sport and academic performance. The authors said most of the included studies were low quality, so the link is not proof that sport raises grades.
Does early single-sport focus raise injury risk?
Specialization means a child trains in one sport for most of the year and drops other sports. A 2015 study compared 1,190 young athletes ages 7 to 18 at sports medicine and primary care clinics. After adjusting for age and hours, specialized training was an independent risk factor for serious overuse injury, with an odds ratio of 1.36. Children who spent more hours a week in sports than their age in years had about twice the odds of serious overuse injury. A 10-year-old training 12 hours a week falls into that group.
A 2017 study followed 1,544 athletes at 29 Wisconsin high schools through their seasons. Compared with athletes low in specialization, moderately specialized athletes had a 51 percent higher rate of lower body injury. Highly specialized athletes had an 85 percent higher rate. Because this study tracked athletes forward in time, it gives stronger evidence than a single snapshot.
Early specialization also does not appear to build champions. A 2022 analysis of 51 study reports covering 6,096 athletes compared world-class and national-class performers. World-class adults had more multisport practice as children, started their main sport later and progressed more slowly at first. Higher-performing youth athletes, by contrast, started their main sport earlier and practiced other sports less. The path to early youth success differed from the path to adult excellence.
How does free play fit in?
Adult-run sports are only one kind of play. In a study of 6 and 7 year olds, children who spent more time in less-structured activities showed better self-directed executive functioning. That skill lets a child set goals and switch tasks without an adult directing them. More time in structured activities predicted poorer self-directed executive functioning. The study was small and correlational.
The balance also matters for injury. The 2015 clinic study compared hours in organized sports with hours in free play. Children above a two to one ratio had higher odds of serious overuse injury, with an odds ratio of 1.87. The study did not show that free play itself prevents injury. It may reflect lower total training load. Our page on free play and independence covers how much unstructured time children get today.
When do children stop playing?
Participation peaks in the middle grades and falls in the late teens. It was 60.0 percent at ages 9 to 11 and 59.6 percent at ages 12 to 14, then 50.8 percent at ages 15 to 17. We looked for a government or peer-reviewed source on the share of children who quit sports by a given age. We did not find one, so this page does not give such a figure.
Questions to ask before signing a child up
Anyone who cares about a child can ask these questions of a coach, league or club:
- How many hours a week will my child train and compete, including travel? Is that more than my child's age in years?
- How many months a year does the season run? Does the program expect children to give up other sports?
- Does every child get real playing time, or only the strongest players?
- What are the full costs, including fees, travel, uniforms, equipment and private training? Are scholarships or fee waivers available?
- How do coaches handle pain and soreness? Who decides when an injured child returns to play?
- Are coaches trained and background checked? How do they talk to children after a loss or a mistake?
- Will my child still have free afternoons and weekends for unstructured play?
What Restore Childhood is doing
Restore Childhood is a 501(c)(3) that makes films, reporting and tools for everyone who cares about children. Its film 15 DAYS covers America's pandemic school closures. It publishes reporting on its Substack. This page is part of a series of plain evidence pages on childhood and school.
What you can do now
- Add up a child's weekly hours of organized sport. Compare the total with the child's age in years.
- Encourage children under their teens to try more than one sport across the year.
- Protect some free time each week for unstructured, child-led play outdoors.
- Ask your school or local recreation department about low-cost teams, fee waivers and equipment swaps.
- Watch for overuse warning signs, such as pain that lasts or returns, and see a doctor before more training.
- Share this page with a coach, league board or school athletic director.
Related
We update this page as new data comes out. If you see an error, please contact us.