Slashdot Mirror
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?
They're "LEGO bricks", not LEGOs. Watch out, or you may get a chair built of LEGOs thrown at you. Oops.
With all due respect, I think you're missing the point. There is something fundamentally different between physically playing and being outside, and doing stuff on a screen. The best simulation available is still not the real thing, and I don't think that video games are even a good simulation. So, despite what Mr. Henry Jerkins might say I don't think that games and reality at AT ALL similar - not in terms of realism, and not in terms of the kind of development they promote.
That said, I do sympathize, when I have kids, I'm certainly not going to let them roam urban areas unsupervised.
-TimedArt