Most of us would agree that the slogan “Just Do It” has served Nike pretty well. This fall, though, the company added a new slogan: “Why Do It?”

And the question is … why’d they do it? Why did they start asking a deep, philosophical question instead the ol’ kick in the pants?

I’m guessing it’s because so many children are “just doing” so very little today.  A recent Harris Poll of children between 8 and 12 years old found that most of them have “rarely” or “never” walked around their own neighborhoods without an adult. Nearly half have never been down an aisle at the grocery without a grown-up. And — sit down, Gen Xers — 71 percent of them have never used a sharp knife.

Get used to that kind of helplessness and you can probably relate when Tyler the Creator asks in the Nike ad, “Why do it? Why would you make it harder on yourself? … With so much room to fail, why risk it?”

That same hesitancy is being reported by psychologists, teachers, employers and sociologists. They’re seeing young people shrinking from dating, driving, daring. Doing.

“So many parents report to me that their kids will sit on the couch and hold their hand up — they can’t even exert the effort to utter the words, ‘Can I please have some water?'” says a Long Island University psychology professor, Camilo Ortiz, inventor of “independence therapy.”

And you can’t even blame tots for being that lazy, Mr. Ortiz says, “because for evolutionary reasons, (humans) will do the minimum required to get the job done.”

Actually, you can’t really blame their folks, either. Even the ones who want to “free-range parent” are up against a crippling, coddling culture.

For instance, recently a suburban mom wrote to me to say that her child’s school won’t let her 7-year-old get off the bus and walk the four houses home from the bus stop on his own.

Contrast that with what happens when youngsters actually  are allowed to ride bikes, run errands, do things with their friends. They make things happen. They come home tired and happy — or scraped and scared but eager to go out again because it feels so great to be free.

Children are missing that glorious feeling, and they know it. That same Harris Poll of 8- to 12-year-olds found that the thing tots want to do most with their friends — more than participating in organized activities, more than going online — is just playing with their friends in real life.

Yet a Harris Poll of parents found half of them think if two 10-year-olds play at the park, they’re “likely” to be kidnapped.

That’s like thinking if your 10-year-old takes a bath, they’re likely to drown.

Anxiety is the order of the day. It is the barrier that keeps tots supervised and stuck. On those blessed occasions — usually vacations — when children finally get to “just do” something on their own, the heart soars. 

In August when I managed to witness a gaggle of grade-schoolers in the wild. They were on summer break, organizing a baseball game, yelling, “This is first base, and there’s no second base.”

Nothing was going to stop them — because THEY were running the show.

Nike has been watching the adult takeover of childhood. They’ve seen tots shrinking from the world. Now they’re trying to reverse that, in a culture that has made children as anxious as their parents. 

“The whole idea of ‘Why Do It?’ is about taking that first step and actually doing it,” Nike’s executive vice president and chief marketing officer, Nicole Graham, told Adweek. “We wanted to give voice to those doubts but very clearly give an answer: Do and it and look what happens.”

Step back and let your children do something on their own, and watch what happens.

Or wait: Don’t watch. Run inside and let them …

Just do it.

Creators.com