Corrections
How we correct errors, how a correction is shown, and every correction we have made.
Our policy
We correct errors of fact promptly and openly. That includes a wrong number, a misdescribed source or study, a broken attribution, and a statement made at more strength than its evidence supports.
- On the piece. A corrected piece carries a dated correction note that says what was wrong and what it now says. We do not quietly rewrite an error away.
- In the log. Every correction is also listed below, with a link to the corrected piece.
- Updates are different. When a reference page is refreshed with newer data, that is an update, not a correction. It is shown by the page’s “Updated” date and described in the piece.
- Clarifications. When a statement was accurate but could mislead, we clarify it and note the change in the same way.
Report a possible error
Tell us the page, the statement, and why you think it is wrong, with a source if you have one. See Contact. We check every report against the original sources.
Corrections log
- : How many activities should a child do?. We corrected the description of a 2015 Pew Research Center finding, which counted kinds of activity rather than individual activities, and separated our own reading of older studies from the sourced figures.
- : Recreational, club and travel sports: what the evidence says. We corrected the summary, which had linked club play itself with overuse injuries (the research links specialized training with overuse injuries and club play with reported lower-body injuries), cited one study by its full title, and dated a 2019 finding.
- : The cost of youth sports: what the evidence shows. We relabeled two statements that were our own calculation or inference rather than the sources’ findings (the $987 income gap and our reading of New York Life’s $3,000 figure), removed an unsupported description of the survey as the “most detailed”, and narrowed two general statements to what the evidence shows.
- : The time behind children’s activities: what national data shows. We corrected the description of a 2024 survey’s time estimates, which cover the parent and/or a partner rather than both caregivers combined, added how widely the answers varied, labeled our conversions of hours to minutes, dated the 2015 finding on who manages schedules, and replaced an unsupported statement that the national figures understate families’ time.
- : What age should kids start organized sports?. We attributed the age guidance to the American Academy of Pediatrics rather than to pediatric guidance in general, dated the 2019 starting-age figure, and softened two statements the cited research did not fully support.
- : When should a child quit an activity?. We corrected the list of reasons parents gave for a child stopping a sport, which had left out injury or severe illness (5.2% of reasons), increasing physicality or competitiveness (5.2%) and interest in activities other than sport (4.1%), and described the limits of the dropout research precisely.
- : Youth sports burnout and early specialization: what the evidence says. We clarified that much of the research linking early specialization with injury comes from overlapping research teams, that the meta-analysis pooled four studies, and that one study counted lower-body injuries of all kinds; corrected our description of the “70%” claim to match the American Academy of Pediatrics’ wording; and noted where AAP statements about burnout go further than the evidence.
- : Youth sports statistics. We removed an uncited statement about industry surveys, dated a 2020 finding that had been written in the present tense, separated our own comparison of income gaps from the sourced figures, removed an unsupported description of these statistics as “the most reliable”, and replaced an unsupported statement that the national time figures understate families’ time.