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Consumer Electronics Causing 'Death of Childhood'?
An anonymous reader writes "Top children's authors, including best-seller Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials), have written an open letter to the British Government claiming that consumer electronics have brought about the death of childhood. They say that children desperately need 'real play (as opposed to sedentary, screen-based entertainment), first-hand experience of the world they live in'. The letter writers also state that children have lost their imaginations because they are, 'pushed by market forces to act and dress like mini-adults and exposed via the electronic media to material which would have been considered unsuitable for children even in the very recent past.' The article asks, 'is modern life too fast for the supple human mind? Do children have a rev counter we're red-lining by exposing them to so much input?'" So what does Slashdot think? Are kids growing up too fast nowadays because of them new-fangled technologies?
It's easy to see why parents, assaulted by the constant barrage of news items on paedophile attacks, terrorism and murder, encourage their children's seclusion in the hermetically sealed confines of a softly carpeted room with a plasma TV and Xbox 360.
I personally think that parents who make this decision are failing their children. The child needs to be aware of what's going on in the world. That's why I love school classes that have current events, I encourage my child to read and / or watch the news. If they're secluded from everything, they're going have no clue what's going on when they hit the real world.
But sincerely,
Every generation has some aspect that is supposedly going to bring utter ruination to the future. And every generation manages to cope. I think we will be allright as long as parents bring some healthy balance to thier kids activities. When has that concept ever been new and fresh? It has always been that way.
My humor is probably your flamebait
The reason that kids are growing up too quickly has to do with the parents encouraging kids to just watch TV by placing them in front of it instead of actually paying attention. This behavior becomes habit -
-also, as we over protect our children, we seperate ourselves more and more from the rest of the community. This splits our kids away from the available social networks and playmates - encouraging further isolation.
So, it's not the technology - but the fact that we don't teach or give our children any other options.
TRHOnline - Staggering Towards Brilliance
It's not a matter of the "corruption" or "degeneracy" or youth in the sense that the kids are rebelling. That is the perennial complaint. Rather, it's a example of parents responsibly asking themselves if they are meeting the needs of their children.
It's also electronic content. A kid should not be raised by proxy in front of a video screen, whether he/she has a controller (or a mouse and/or keyboard) or not. There's more to growing up than that.
One should also be actively and physically engaged as well. Playing outdoors, running around, playing with physical objects (whether they be Legos or whatever).
Being raised is a matter of mind and body.
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
Top children's authors, including best-seller Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials), have written an open letter to the British Government claiming that consumer electronics have brought about the death of childhood.
what exactly does he expect the government to do?
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Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
It's all well and good to have an opinion on something. However, like the saying goes, opinions are like assholes, everyone has one and they all stink. I can't tell where this guy's opinion ends and real unbiased scientific scrutiny and experimentation begins. TBH, I would have to disagree wholeheartedly with the statement "death of childhood". Childhood may be changing, perhaps in many different ways, but that does not mean it's dying.
Part of me wants to dismiss his entire argument as nonsensical luddite ramblings. Another part of me wonders if he might have at least a small point. But it's where those two parts of me meet and ask "where's the proof?" that I finall come to the conclusion there is nothing to see here, move along.
At least, from the children I know and observe, I don't see them suffering developmentally from the fact that they can play their PSP all day. What I mean is, don't blame the PSP. The fact is, I think through simple, good, old fashioned parenting, a child can have a better upbringing today than ever before, as long as the parent is able to understand and integrate today's technology, within moderation, with the raising of their child(ren).
Maybe too many parents are becoming lazy, thinking technology can replace them in areas of parenting where it should not. But like I said above, about opinions.....
TLF
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
No, they're growing up too fast (and often in unhealthy ways) because of poor parenting and poor education systems.
It is not rocket science that a child left unsupervised with an unrestricted TV, Internet-enabled computer and PlayStation n in their bedroom is likely to spend an unhealthy amount of time in front of a screen, and come into contact with less than suitable material for someone their age. The also-not-rocket-science solution to this problem is... not to give kids all the toys and the chance to use them unsupervised all the time.
Likewise, it's easy to let the kids buy junk food on the way to and from school, and to eat school meals with poor nutritional value and drink soda, and then to throw a quick microwave meal or frozen pizza in for dinner. And then we wonder why more of our kids are seriously overweight and developing health problems than any time in recent history. The revolutionary solution to this is... giving kids real food and drink at meal times.
Of course, it's much easier for parents to leave little Jonny and Suzy to play with their hi-tech toys and then cook them frozen pizza for dinner than it is to take an active part in their upbringing by, I dunno, talking to them, reading to them, having dinner with them, and taking them to see and do interetsing things. The work-life balance in many western countries is now so far left of stupid that many parents see the easy option as the only option, however.
Similarly, one has to wonder at "education" systems that spend more time worrying about whether 7-year-olds can pass formal examinations than worrying about 7-year-olds learning to interact with other 7-year-olds, make friends, and play together. And yet, this is exactly where we're headed.
Society needs a wake-up call, particularly if it thinks it's worked this one out. Hi-tech toys are just the symptom, not the cause of the problem.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
IMO, the key is balance. Exercising only the mind or only the body is unhealthy in a child, and in an adult.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I wish that I had mod points. I hear what you're saying and can attest to this same problem with my nephew. He's 14 and is afraid to go into stores by himself, etc. Heck most kids when I was growing up had to ride their bikes over to the grocery store for mom all the time even when we were about 8 years old or so.
"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." - Shepard Book Quoting Malcolm Reynolds
Every generation has some aspect that is supposedly going to bring utter ruination to the future. And every generation manages to cope. I think we will be allright as long as parents bring some healthy balance to thier kids activities. When has that concept ever been new and fresh? It has always been that way.
But how many generations had their kids sitting in front of, essentially, puppet-shows (or some other analog equivalent) all day, every day? In fact, one could argue that the loonier offspring of the "idle" artistocracy and their highly entertained (but not so very challeneged, physically, etc) kids were the precursor to what we're seeing now, but across much larger swaths of the society: flacid minds, a sense of entitlement, no sense of causality or critical thinking... sort of the Caligulazation of a much wider population.
Basically, the standard of living for most of modern western society is now so high that most of us are living like (or better than) the aristrocracy of the not very distant past.
Yes, we all assume that our current generation's kids are the ones that will wreck civilization, but there's actually something TO this one, I think, at least a bit.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
-also, as we over protect our children, we seperate ourselves more and more from the rest of the community. This splits our kids away from the available social networks and playmates - encouraging further isolation.
When you have the mass media constantly scaring people about sexual predators that prey on children, is it small wonder why parents nowadays are absolutely scared about letting their children go out and play in the neighborhood? Small wonder why the only time you see children at a playground nowadays is with very strict parental supervision....
Your situation is exactly the problem.
Our society ignores social ills by denying that they exist and using tools to pretend that reality is something else.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Letting your kid outside to play with his friends is un-workable in dangerous, urban environments. I'd much rather my kid get the same kind of exploratory feelings I got from playing in the woods from playing Zelda, versus having him venture, unsupervised, into the dirty, polluted, woody ravines by our home in east Oakland, which are overrun with crack users, and prostitutes.
I mean no criticism of you and yours with the following; it's just something I thought should be said:
In a rational society, either the people's law enforcement system would take care of the problem of crack users, prostitutes, and polluteres ruining woody ravines near their homes, or the people would be empowered to take care of the problem themselves using whatever force is necessary.
It's irrational to create a society wherein good people hide behind walls while the criminals roam free.
Please, folks, wherever you live, work toward getting people who understand this into positions of power.
We went to France once. Here my mother stood aghast at my total disinterest in the majesty of the cultural capital of the world. My regard for Paris paticularly offended her. I was bored out of my tree, and if I'd had a gameboy, I would have finished Metroid during that trip.
But in Paris, there was succor. The Musée des Arts et Métiers. Oh such joy! When my parents refused to take me, as they had more "cultured" places to visit, I went alone to what was one of the most memorable expieriences of my life. A menagere of scientific legend awaits all who enter. I went twice. If I'd had a gameboy, I would gladly have smashed it to pieces to get another tour.
I did finally manage to drag them to the Panthéon. They went for the "cultural" expierience, as some great men or other were entombed within. But I went for Foucault's Pendulum, one of the most elegant experimental proofs ever made. And within also, is a copy of Foucault's paper on the pendulum, containing his own mathematical equations, explaining the revolution of the pendulum as being caused by the rotation of the earth! Bliss!!
They left France thinking themselves "educated", and I a philistine, just as you might think that children dragged off to rocket launchings they have no interest in are similarly philistines. The simple reality is that people have different interests, and if you want to encourage your children to put down their gameboys you have to find activities that they find interesting, not activities you find interesting and simply want to force them into enjoying. So lay off sespairing at their lack of interests when you don't even know what their interests are.
May the Maths Be with you!
Our mass-media (meme-propagation system) has increased in efficiency tens or hundreds of times faster than our context-supplying instincts.
We evolved in loose groups of 150-250 individuals. If you heard about someone getting eaten by a tiger then, chances are you should watch out because he was likely only a few hundred metres over that way, so the danger to you was very real.
Then we started to hear about things that happened to someone at the other end of the country, and suddenly it seemed like there were murderers and rapists and nutjobs everywhere, because barely a day went past when we didn't hear of someone getting killed in an inventive or gruesome way.
Now we've got the web, and e-mail, and satellite TV, and blogs, and we hear about it if a mouse farts in Buttfuck, Antarctica. And now it's not even safe to let your kids walk to school for fear of them getting molested, you can't get on a 'plane for fear it'll be bombed out of the sky, and you can't visit the toilet in your own house without getting abducted and beheaded by terrorists.
The only way to tackle this is by recognising what's going on and overruling your instincts. They served you well ten thousands years ago when you lived in a tree and had to avoid tigers, but now we're living in condos and keep small tigers in the house as pets.
Try my patented Lightning Test: Look up the statistics of whatever the latest mania/terror/panic is about, and worry about it if it's more likely than.. oh... say... getting hit by lightning.
Try terrorism - look up the number of deaths form terrorism each year, then look up the number of people who get hit by lightning.
Now if someone's advocating taking away civil rights because of terrorism, or locking up our children because of paedophiles, you can apply the simple test: Are they also advocating the compulsory wearing of earthed metal hats and rubber gumboots?
If not, then their little pet crusade is clearly disproportionate and can be safely ignored.
This has been a Public Service Announcement from the Lets All Get A Fucking Grip Society. Have a nice day.
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
In a rational society, either the people's law enforcement system would take care of the problem of crack users, prostitutes, and polluteres ruining woody ravines near their homes, or the people would be empowered to take care of the problem themselves using whatever force is necessary.
In a rational society the medical system would take care of the problems of crack users and prostitutes.
In a rational society, either the people's law enforcement system would take care of the problem of crack users, prostitutes, and polluteres ruining woody ravines near their homes, or the people would be empowered to take care of the problem themselves using whatever force is necessary.
Actually in a rational society the people would just legalize drugs and prostitution and the problem goes away tomorrow. Decades of whatever force is necessary has turned this society into a police state full of frightened and abused citizens.
See how simple that was?
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better." - Unknown
But how many people out there were claiming we wouldn't be having any new low-level programmers because kids these days grow up with Windows and Macs rather than Apple IIe and C64's?
Who says we do?
I think the generation that missed out on programming in severely constrained environments (I came in the tail end of it myself) are never forced to code with any discipline. If there's a problem, just throw more giga[bytes/hertz/whatever] at it.
Why do you think each successive version of Windows requires twice as much memory as the version before?
Unless you have worked in a very constrained environment and/or developed a set of tools from the ground up (say, the basics of a run-time library or class library), then it is not very likely you will have the discipline you need to write good code. To me, this is why throwing CS Freshman at Java is a Bad Idea. Throw 'em at an 8080 assembler with 16k or RAM. Things like Java can come along, but later.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I'm sure Paris and Nicole will look just fine at 50 thanks to the wonders of modern technology, but what about the rest of the US's children, who are driven one block to school, even in the best of neighborhoods, and will be fat and diabetic by the time they are 30? I'm not putting my money on increasing life expectancies especially when the fattest and most diabetic are the ones least likely to have access to top shelf medical care.
If I had kids they could play all the video games they wanted, but the hardware would be powered off deep-cycle batteries charged by a stationary bicycle. You play, you ride.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
was harsh and brutal for many people.
My great-uncle became "man of the house" at age ten, when his father died in a farm accident. Today, he'ld be given counselling; then, he was given a household full of siblings and a farm to take care of. And he did it, because that was his duty as a man. Today, nineteen year old men are still considered "kids". They've had the luxury of growing old without growing up.
Two of my dad's eight siblings died during or shortly after childbirth. Most of my parent's family ended up with farm related injuries and scars. My uncle is missing a leg from where it got caught in a baling machine. My cousin died down a well, trying to fix it so that his family could have clean drinking water.
We don't want the simple life back. It would kill half of us, and lead the other half back to an early grave. Kids today aren't being "forced to grow up too fast". Try taking on adult experience at age 14. Try getting through life with a grade 3 education, because your Dad made you go to work to earn money for the family before you even finished grade school, like happened to my Dad's father.
Then try whining to me about how kids are growing up "too fast" compared to their forefathers. I don't see it. To me, they're barely growing up at all.
I completely agree with this post.
I'm convinced that the next couple of decades are going to be very difficult ones for parents throughout the Western world, simply because our priorities have become skewed due to pressures beyond our presumed reach.
When I was public school, I was in a Gifted program. It was a hard experience, mostly because you're labeled "different" and "strange" due to the fact you loved reading up on history, science and other "nerdy" topics. The sense of isolation was so bad sometimes that there were days when you'd trade in all those intellectual skills you were given just so you could get along with people more easily. I know the easier way was to confine myself to watching TV (something I did far too much) and reading books - distinctly non-social activities. I spent a lot of time wondering what was wrong with me instead of really trying to deal with the problem. Being a kid and feeling like your only true friends were "things" as opposed to people is one of the worst experiences of modern childhood. It's not like instant pain; it's like a sustained, slow burn into your self-confidence and self-esteem. It's taken my years to get over it and I'm still not entirely there, but believe me I want to succeed.
I know the only way I got through it was through my mom, who really tried to help me get involved in sports (softball, floor hockey, still loads of fun) and other outside activities. I knew I was born different and that was hard for me, but I worked hard and tried to become more social on an intellectual level, as opposed to an instinctual level that many other people seem born with.
Truth be told, I've made mistakes along the way and there are times when I've felt socially underdeveloped in comparison to other people my own age. But I've worked hard and I feel like I'm doing better. I've earned multiple university degrees, got a great job, a lot of good friends now, I work out, a rich full life and a wonderful, supportive partner. I'm refusing to let past hurt defeat me. I know my childhood was better because of my mom.
What's the point of this? I'm worried that technology could isolate permanently a lot of kids if their parents are too busy, too harried to sit down with them to have dinner, help their kids with homework, talk to them and let them feel loved and supported. I don't think I'm perfect now by any means - no one ever is - but I know for a fact that if my mom hadn't been there to help steer my childhood in a positive way, I'd be in far, far worse shape today. Technology is a wonderful thing, but it is ultimately artificial, a replica of reality that simply can't replace the real and wonderful experiences that make life worth living. Kids need balance now more than ever in a world that regularly broadcasts such media events as 9-11, Paris Hilton and 50 Cent - hardly examples of media's power to inform and shape the mental environment. If you can't help guide them towards a balanced lifestyle when they're kids, how do you expect them to live that way as adults? Through powers of suggestion? Through merely "getting on with it?" No way, not going to happen.
I agree with brianerst that the modern concept of childhood, i.e. "a time of play and learning lasting well into your teens", is a relatively recent phenomenon. It is only in recent history that industrialization and advances in technology have made it unnecessary and undesired for children to work much the same way that adults do.
But I would like to take it one step further and point out that it is also a relatively recent idea that children must be entertained at all times. In this day and age it seems that a child cannot make their own fun; rather, their entertainment must be provided by their parents (or other responsible adults). When did the threat of "go find something to do or I'll find something for you to do" lose its effectiveness?
Also, I have learned that many parents use electronic entertainment (TV, video games, computers, etc.) as a way to not have to deal with the responsibilities inherent in raising children. It seems to me that too many adults aren't willing to have the kids "underfoot" while they are doing things like cleaning house, fixing the car, doing lawn work, etc. However, this attitude has gone on for long enough that there are teenagers (and even adults) these days who leave home and suddenly realize that they don't know how to run a washing machine (as an example).
One of the best ways that children learn is to imitate their parents, and believe it or not children actually like spending time with their parents, just about no matter what their parents are doing. Even if a child is too young to actually help with what the parent is doing, they will be more than happy to play with related tools (e.g. if parent is cooking dinner, child plays with pots and wooden spoons). It may require a little more supervision and (possibly) a lot more noise than plunking your kids in front of the TV while you make dinner... But aren't kids supposed to be noisy and actually require effort to raise?
(And no, I'm not saying that kids can't try a parent's patience and need to be distracted by something, anything quiet far away from where the parent is. I'm specifically talking about people who do this as a matter of course rather than as an exception.)
I don't think there's an easy answer to this. I think you have to actually understand what you do and how it looks to your children, which unfortunately requires you to think about how other people view your behavior... and a lot of people just seem incapable of that.
I think what you're mentioning here (perhaps accidentally) describes a little theory I've developed. For a long time now teachers and parents have been pounding the "you're special" and "just be yourself" messages into kids until they've developed this "I don't care what anyone else thinks, I'm me and I'm pursuing happiness" attitude. We celebrate attitudes like that in adults, too. I think this is a perversion of an idea that was supposed to make you always comfortable enough to do the right thing, regardless of outcome, into an idea that you don't owe anyone anything and anyone who expects anything of you (most of all sacrifice) is trying to prevent you from "being you".
I think we owe everyone arounds us something. I owe it to my neighbors to take my garbage out, keep my music down to a sane level and return their dog if I see him running down the street. I owe it to my parents to come help move furniture when they call. When I have kids, I'll owe it to them to make sure they get what they need, when they need it. In turn, each one of these people has certain responsibilities.
In an effort to bolster childrens sense of self-worth by ridding them of shame or guilt, we've thrown out responsibility with the bath water. I think we SHOULD care about what people think of us, and might have to start teaching kids that.
Just a thought I had.
Meh. The dangers of video games and consumer electronics towards children's development is over-rated. Most slashdotters grew up playing tons of video games and look how polite, physically fit and socially active we all ended up.
I'd rather be lucky than good.