[Editor's note: Click Read More for some great links about the importance of play]
Face to face interaction is vital to our well being - it engages our minds intellectually, socially and emotionally. A Duke 20 Year Benchmark Study shows that we have fewer friends and family to turn to in crisis. We may have more friends on facebook, twitter, email, etc., but we have fewer close friends that we can turn to in time of trouble. Promoting face-to-face iteraction can help reverse that trend.

Dr. Stuart Brown did research that concludes that play can act as a powerful deterrent, even an antidote to prevent violence, in violent individuals.  

From Cognitive Fitness, published in the Harvard Business Review:

“Play engages the prefrontal cortex, feeding our highest cognitive functions…Play improves our ability to reason and to understand the world…Play can be a powerful tool for allowing people to develop creative capacity and cognitive health.”

 Play is the highest form of research.  – Albert Einstein

 People tend to forget that play is serious - David Hockney

Links

• www.GamesforEducators.com: Collection of research and classroom experiences on the benefits of incorporating play into the classroom and into libraries.
• The Strong National Museum of Play on the Importance of Play
• NPR’s Old Fashioned Play Builds Serious Skills - an article from NPR looks at how the changing face of play is affecting our kids.
• The Importance of Play, The Atlantic. Psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim decodes the value of play.
• "Creative Play Makes for Kids in Control", an article from NPR about using imaginative play to help kids build cognitive control.
• Ideas Aren't Cheap: Promoting the Serious Business of Play – Creating a Culture of Play in Business
• National Institute for Play – A Life Without Play
• Crisis in the Kindergarten Why Children Need to Play in School
• Stuart Brown: Why play is vital -- no matter your age
• This one is not exactly about play, but it is about imagination and one of our favorite Ted.com talks – J.J. Abram’s Magic Box

"Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul" by Stuart Brown

The truly great advances of this generation will be made by those who can make outrageous connections, and only a mind which knows how to play can do that." - Nagle Jackson