Consumer Electronics Causing 'Death of Childhood'? 758
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?
No real programmers either (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
Not my children (Score:3, Interesting)
Sad Sight (Score:5, Interesting)
More than a few of the kids present were squatting on the ground, or in car seats, blank expressions on their faces, banging away at portable game machines.
How pathetic.
Someday these kids will need to take special classes to learn how to walk on dirt.
I've seen this first-hand (Score:5, Interesting)
Kids MUST watch some TV (Score:5, Interesting)
I had a friend in high school who did not have a TV growing up, and as nice a fellow as he was, he was a hopeless rube that at the age of 18, still believed that wrestling was real and would purchase the bridge you had for sale at the drop of a hat.
I think he could have benifited from a few hours of TV per day, with an audio tape loop in the background repeating "None of this is real... None of this is real..."
Faster (Score:3, Interesting)
I think many people would say we need to move faster. The young mind should be free to learn and absorb at the rate it needs. I for one welcome the explosion of information, I think in the past it hasnt been accessable enough to the young mind. And of course it is up to the parent to moderate what kinds of information the child gets, as each family has separate belief systems. But all in all the young mind will soak up things quickly, give it to them. When I was younger I was fortunate enough to have an encyclopedia. Now everyone has one at their fingertips. You can get answers quickly now rather than waiting for the bi-weekly trip to the library.
Second, just because a child doesnt experience "Your" childhood, doesnt mean that they are not a child. Play may be different now, it is always changing. Just because a child now at age 7 has the knowledge of a 15 year old isnt a bad thing. We are starting to see people in their 20s, and even in their teens with more knowledge than people in their 50-90s. This, I think, is a good trend. The accellerated intellect will allow us to advance our civilization quicker and better than ever in history. Just check out the last 50 years, even the last 15. It is quite impressive. However it is causing a lot of stife in workplaces and life in general as we have intellect vs wisdom everywhere. Give it another 30 years and we will see an amazing culture as long as we dont stifle it.
Re:Growing up too fast? (Score:5, Interesting)
Henry Jerkins at MIT makes the excellent point that kids playing videogames are basically doing the same thing as kids playing cowboys and indians, and that videogames have become the virtual playspace for a new generation of kids who don't have the opportunity to roam in real environments. (He also makes the point that mom's are only freaked by games because they never saw what kinds of real and imagined violence went on when kids played outside.)
Finally, anyone who thinks kids today have been robbed of their imaginations should drop a box of legos in front of them.
Can't just blame technology... (Score:2, Interesting)
We can't just blame technology for the trends. There are many factors that, IMHO, seem to be going into this.
Growing up in my hometown 5-10 years ago, I remember kids being outside all the time, playing whatever, chasing each other around. I loved playing street hockey with my friends, for example. However, you go back now, and even on the most beautiful spring day the neighborhood is practically devoid of kids just playing outside (organized sports are still popular, or course, but I mean jusy *play*). Instead, most of them are inside watching TV, playing video games, or, as is more and more the case these days, they are simply trying to do everything and anything to get into a good college (that's put simply of course, but that seems to be the gist of it). Kids aren't allowed to be kids anymore, due to pressure to do everything, due to media influence, etc. "Playing" seems to be considered a waste of time.
Another thing I've noticed is fear in the parents. I used to play outside and get hurt, dig around, get sick, etc. My parents would keep an eye on me but they didn't stop me from playing.
Anyway, just my 2 cents...Re:Yes, but only if.. (Score:3, Interesting)
We never had cable TV, except for one month when we moved and the previous owners' cable hadn't yet been disconnected. I remember that the month after that was very difficult as we had started to gravitate toward TV a lot more than we were before, and readjusting was hard.
Today I don't even have an antenna, let alone cable TV. And while I collect movies (and have more than 300 on Laserdisc, and about 100 more on DVD and VHS) I don't just let random crap come broadcasting into my home. I self-censor because I have better things to do with my time than sit there and watch TV for several hours a night.
Choose what you're going to experience, don't just passively sit there and let others choose it for you.
Re:The reason that kids are growing up too quickly (Score:4, Interesting)
Often the reasons that happens is both parents work or it is a single parent home. Plus there is so much mind numbing entertainment that our culture now expects to entertained all the time. I can not tell you how many times I have seen kids watching DVDs in the car when they are just driving around town! Adults are no better, we have games and TV on our cell phones, and movies on our IPods. One wonders what we could do with that time if we where not being entertained.
Childhood's End (Score:5, Interesting)
Up until widespread schooling began in the 17th and 18th centuries, the modern concept of childhoood, as a time of play and learning lasting well into your teens, didn't really exist. "Real" childhood, that period where you are more of a burden than a help to your agrarian family, only lasted until you were old enough to start doing chores around the farm. By the time you were in your teens, you were probably starting to think about starting a family of your own.
While there is some controversy about whether modern childhood was "invented" in the 18th century, it certainly changed quite a lot. The changing standard of childhood is a little better understood in Japan, where the concept of modern childhood was largely introduced by globalization in the 19th century [findarticles.com], and was thus studied a little more rigorously than in Europe and America, where it was a more organic process.
What many of us now consider "childhood" (school and play, with hardly any work until late teens) is really a 20th century phenomenon - once the West de-ruralized and mechanized, the amount of work needed to be performed on a daily basis dwindled to the point where child labor, at home or away, wasn't really needed or desired. The Western 1950s-70s were the absolute high-water mark for a childhood of outdoor leisure - not surprisingly, exactly the time when Pullman (and I, and a large chunk of Slashdot) grew up.
As with any nostalgia trip, Pullman (mis)remembers all the highlights of these times, but not the downsides like the often crushing boredom of having absolutely nothing to do on a rainy weekend (unless, like us, your were a geek and read a lot).
Maybe playing Madden 2007 on a rainy day leads to less creative thought than reading "The Mad Scientists Club" for the fifth time, but I don't think Pullman convincingly makes that case.
Intelligencia display self loathing/importance (Score:3, Interesting)
So much variety. Encourage a rounded upbringing. And if technology leads to a narrowing of focus then that is bad. But tech can lead to a widening of focus, that is good.
No easy path through these waters, GPS guidance installed or not.
Re:Not my children (Score:1, Interesting)
I promise you, the kids of weird parents always end up being the most clueless, and it shows.
On the bright side... (Score:2, Interesting)
Parental Involvement # 1 (Score:4, Interesting)
Through trial and error, I have found that what kids NEED is what they crave: Parental attention. These kids love doing nearly anything that involves me helping them out. Whether its schoolwork, some little art activity, building something (I DO have a big box of LEGOs), taking a walk, made-up games, whatever. They are ecstatic that someone will spend time and attention on them.
So if their your kids, your stepkids, your neices and nephews, your friends kids, whatever. Just listen to them, play a game with them (spontaneous made-up games are a favorite), teach them something cool. They'll grow up all right, and you'll be that really cool person who they admire from their childhood.
ADD, ADHD, Asperger's, Autism (Score:4, Interesting)
The increase in ADD, ADHD, Asperger's, and Autism would seem to indicate that children are being "revved" beyond their abilities.
I don't think it's the "fault" of electronic entertainment, but rather the incessant push to not merely succeed, but to excel. Those children with a variety of educational/entertainment/sport activities end up more balanced, but are still stressed.
Another part of the problem is that parents and authorities would rather push pills for ADD/ADHD than punish a child. When we twitched around in our seats in school, we got punished and learned to pay attention (sort of.) Now they flag a "problem" and stuff the kid full of pills.
The truly scary thing is that statistics are now showing that the ADD/ADHD "patients" grow up to suffer an increase in cocaine and meth addiction problems. Not surprising when you realize that ADD/ADHD medications are speed, so they're just trying to maintain the addiction developed by the educational and medical systems that would rather drug children than deal with the problems.
Re:It's more than just electronic games. (Score:3, Interesting)
[anecdotal evidence]
My 9 year old nephew was visiting recently. He rearranged my DVDs "for me", so he could readily find whichever ones he wanted to watch that day. He can recite the cheat codes for LEGO Star Wars from memory. He knows Nick's TV schedule better than he knows his own back yard ("There's a maple tree out there?"). He had a fit when he realized that the TV I have, circa 1980, doesn't have a remote and he actually had to get up to change the channel (oh the humantity!).
He's never had a baseball glove or a kickball.
His bike has sat in his parents garage so long that it's covered with dust and spiderwebs.
The only time he seems to have any friends is when school's in session.
[/anecdotal evidence]
Re:Growing up too fast? (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, "dangerous, urban environments" are not exactly new. There have been dense, urban, industrialized slums in existence since the early 1800s, and kids have found ways to play in them -- they've even spawned their own games suitable for play in tight spaces, such as stickball [wikipedia.org] in New York City. And plenty of ghetto kids in Europe and South America are avid players of football/soccer. So if there really is a decline in outdoor play among children, it's doubtful that the cause is due to the rise of urbanized environments.
Re:No real programmers either (Score:3, Interesting)
In the spirit of the other jokes:
In my day we had to design our computer, then build it, out of logic chips and wires, THEN program it in byte code... with a screwdriver! Really.
Re:The reason that kids are growing up too quickly (Score:5, Interesting)
I think most people have trouble fitting themselves into their lives. They just don't have enough time to work, socialise, and relax to their own satisfaction. When you add a child on top of that, all kinds of mess comes out of it - and ultimately, your own self-interest carries more weight, so the children often end up on the losing end.
At some point, things need to be reduced and removed to make room. What screws that up is the general inability of most people to make real sacrifices... it's one thing to say you put your child first, but it's quite another to actually do it when you're down to your last few dollars. Even though this level of desperation is rarely an issue for most parents, there are innumerable little ways that parents deprive their children in ways mom and dad might not even notice: you can't afford the $4 bag of cookies your child wants, but you buy an $18 bottle of wine later in the same trip. Could you have perhaps gotten a $12 bottle of wine instead, and used the savings to buy cookies? Of course. The child sees and understands this, even if you don't, and by adolescence there's a massive buildup of frustration from it.
The message we give our children is that as adults, we get to do what we want, and children have to shut up and make do with what we deign to provide them. This doesn't just make our family lives difficult when the kids hit their teenage years, it also raises essentially infantile adults - they've been trained to be selfishly indulgent their whole lives.
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.
Re:Not only that (Score:4, Interesting)
My sister is lucky. Her husband works long hours and they both go with out so she can stay home with their child. She is also a former teacher so she has some major advantages over a lot of people.
I would say that parents don't have to buy PS2s, Gamecubes, or put a TV in every room.
That might be a good start.
When they are little you do have control over what they see and do.
Re:Caligulazation (Score:2, Interesting)
We are not like aristocracy, we are aristocracy. Used to be the aristocrats lived within high walls and the peasants had to fend for themselves outside the walls. Now we have entire nations of aristocrats (thank you, globalisation) and the peasants have to fend for themselves in the third world.
Used to be, on occasion, a peasant would scale the walls and steal from and maybe kill some aristocrats. Now they crash an airplane into an office building.
Aristocracies collapse when they lose touch with the people they are supposed to rule over. "Let them eat cake", "They hate us for our freedom".
Re:Growing up too fast? (Score:5, Interesting)
it has been like that since the first cities were created. good and honest people who could afford it, would live inside the walls of the city, leaving the open fields to the mobs.
this idea of open cities is recent in human history, and apparently a failed idea. what we see today is a return to the old method off small walled comunities where kids can play outside their homes, for as long as they stay inside the walls of their community.
oh, and about the rational/irrational stuff, who's the crackpot who told you our species is rational ? me and my baseball bat would like to have a little chat with him...
Re:Sad Sight (Score:3, Interesting)
"I have to drive 40 minutes each way on Wednesdays. My kid won't SHUT UP! So I bought her a gameboy. Now she doesn't talk to me at all and it's GREAT!"
I think that is more common than anybody is willing to admit and I think THAT is what's sick, and not videogames and technology themselves. A good parent shows a kid that real life is cooler than any video game possible. You can do ANYTHING you want in RL, you have limitations in games. Muscles burning coming down a ski slope, warmth of lovemaking, tenderness of a hug, rush of flying a glider, smell of the Amazonian Jungle, icy feel of cliff diving. Parents are too closed minded to think of these things because Chukee Cheessy or videogame arcades or TV is easier.
Doing nothing bug gaming will tunnel-visionize a kid. It rests on parents' shoulders to show their kids the awesome things in this world.
Re:Caligulazation (Score:4, Interesting)
Unless we also have a way to suppress millions of years of mammalian (in general) and advanced primate (specifically) evolution, some kid born three or four generations from now that still has his pointy eye-teeth, predator's senses and sensibilities, and pack-protecting urges - but who has no outlet for any of that - is going to do exactly what I think a lot of them are doing today: go slightly crazy. You can't take every (or even most) adolescent's nearly superhuman gusto for life and channel it entirely into art, research, or even mountain climbing. I suppose that challenging, competitive sports area good outlet (or would be, if we weren't squashing them into one big "everyone is special, everyone's the best" festival right at the ages when actually striving against some fairly low-risk adversity is hugely helpful, developmentally).
Essentially: unless you change human nature (biologically, I'm talking - behavior and perception as heavily influenced by our DNA), making the world like one big nursery/playground for adults is going to produce ever more sociopathic human BSODs. I wouldn't rant about it, but I think, with a little perspective, now, I actually see it happening. The challenge, in the scenario you describe, is to generate sufficient adventure and adversity to scratch all of those primal itches without needing to fend off religious fanatics or killer luddites in hijacked planes in order to flex that bit of deep-seated programming.
Has ANYONE Read the His Dark Materials trilogy? (Score:2, Interesting)
Not fast enough! (Score:5, Interesting)
I lied about my age and joined the Army back in the '60's, and two months later had an Army GED. The State of Alaska granted me an actual Diploma when I turned 18. People used to laugh at people with GED's, but now you have to take a GED test before they will let you graduate (in Texas they call it TAKS), and it's not even as hard as the one I took back in the '60's! But if some kid showed up for his Freshman year of High School and passed the TAKS, do you think they'd let him graduate and get a job? NO! He still has to serve the rest of his sentence!
Just wait. The population of the US is getting older. It won't be too long before they lower the age at which young people can go to work to support the old folks on Social Security.
Check this out: http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/multimedia/jtgsoun
Re:Childhood's End (Score:3, Interesting)
I still think those made me into the engineer I am today.
Do some math (Score:1, Interesting)
TV is a huge hypnosis device. Look at people when they watch TV. Zombies. Not just kids, adults too.
We used to have all 2000 channels. I watched tv all of the time, along with my wife. WE grew into overweight zombies......
Then we had a daughter. We got rid of the 2000 channels around the time she was 1 1/2, and was zombified by the big glowy thing. Now we have 22 channels (Very basic cable).
Since we made the move, we both have lost weight, and talk more to each other.
TV is a treat now. Not a way of life. You can build around a non-tech entertainment lifestyle, it takes a lot of work.
Interact with your kids > TV.
It's the parents (duh) (Score:3, Interesting)
- Age: 11 (starting 6th grade)
- Number of months in his life, total, with TV in the house: 24 (last two years)
- Number of months in his life, total, with cable TV: 1 (I just got cable to watch CNN)
- Number of videogame systems (PS, XBox, etc) in the house: 0
- Number of computers in the house: 2
- Average number of different sports teams he plays on in one year: 5
- Average number of books checked out of the library at any given time: 3
It's not that he's technologically deficient - he has his iPod and as well as a cell phone. He uses the computer to check his email, do homework, and play games on Miniclip.com. When homework is done, we're outside playing catch (football, baseball, etc), or talking a walk in the park with his mother, or snowball fights when it's cold.When it comes to his friends, I encourage them to do outside activities. Since my son gets bored with TV and video games, he's chosen his friends (obviously) who have similar interests.
It's not that hard - all it takes is some focus from the parents. Of the time I spend away from my son, I spend >90% of it in front of a computer doing work or surfing the web. I'm much more nerdy that he is. When I was his ago, I had an Atari 2600, then later an Apple IIe, so I had my share of geek toys to play around with. But I also played outside, played with toys (Lego), played sports. My parents enforced some balance to my life, and I try to do the same for him.
My $.02 worth of random commentary (Score:5, Interesting)
He plays outside, paints, draws, runs, jumps, rides his bike, knows basic math (addition and subtraction with numbers less than 20 or so, and I am not sure how high he can count anymore). He knows his letters, and can recognize a bunch of words and is certainly "ready" to read, as the jargon has it. He loves to help me "build". He designed and I constructed a wooden garage for him out of off-cuts, and he got me to buzz round the edges of the roof with my router to give it a nice edge (he knew what the router was for, and could visualize the finished product), and I am trying to find tools he can safely use -- he constructs huge sculptures from offcuts and glue, which he calls "Star Wars things" and then spends several sessions painting them. He goes sledding, swims, jump off the diving board, eats all kinds of foods, and knows that any good breakfast wil have protein, carbs and some fruit.
He also knows Spiderman's real name is Peter Parker, can identify Batman at about 100 yards (as well as Batcat and Batdog, minor deities he and his preschoolmates include in the pantheon on the same footing as Batman himself), and can hum a passable rendition of the Star Wars theme, despite never having been provided with this information by his parents. And he went off to his first day of school with a Superman backpack -- so far as I can see his room has only one other superman, but about four spidermen and a couple of batmen... He can operate a digital camera (he took a lovely shot of his Mum and Boy#2 the other day -- and she tells me that he carefully asked to her to move as he composed the shot on the screen), and work the DVD player.
Bringing up kids is almost always about flexibility and compromise -- in the end, you have to live in your culture and times, even as you try to give your kids the tools they will need to navigate through the world. But a lot of what my son loves to do would not be a part of his life if he spent too much time in front of a screen -- and in the long run, it is much better to experience the natural world first hand than it is to watch it via some electronic simulacrum, as we learn through touch and smell, as well as just sight and sound.
But what I have seen is this. Kids we know with similar backgrounds to us who watch a lot of TV or spend a lot of screen time, are almost always more "jumpy" than kids who don't -- and I am not implying that Boy#1 is any sort of angel (he threw a fit in the supermarket over the weekend that had people turning and staring from a couple of ailses away, and I explained to him that behaving badly wouldn't get him what he wanted -- namely some sugary cereal with a cartoon character on the box), and more likely to initiate violent play -- which my kid will cheefully join in with, at least until he gets hurt.
And if you want to rail against the corruption of modern life, TV is not the only issue -- avoiding shitty convenience food is a huge part of raising happy and healthy kids. I never expected to be a nutrition nazi, but loading kids with sugar does terrible things to their attention span and plays havoc with their emotions as they come down from the rush...
The other thing I have noticed recently is that Boy #1 is completely unable to make a distrinction between a nature program and a commercial (and he certainly does learn from some of the TV he watches) -- he happily told me that "Peanuts is the best video ever" parroting a trai
Re:No real programmers either (Score:3, Interesting)
Okay. Here's another one [mit.edu]. Should I go on?
Re:The reason that kids are growing up too quickly (Score:3, Interesting)
Now I realize that this was too unrealistic for most people, including myself and my wife.
In order to maintain a reasonable standard of living, many couples both have to work now. It wasn't like this before the 70's. Care to guess what happened? Women's lib. Women working put pressure on wages such that now, basically women have to work for the family to have the same standard of living they would have had before with only the man working. This began a slippery slope because the more women worked, the more wages came to only reflect half of a family income, and thus the more other women had to work.
Needless to say, this puts a strain on everyone, and leaves little time or energy for playing with and supervising the kids. Without a social stigma attached to working women, the market will force most families to have both parents work. The only way out is a movement pushing married people to have one spouse of the two stay at home, which I don't see happening.
Re:Childhood's End (Score:3, Interesting)
The author of the paper claimed that in the past, peoples thought processes and opinions and personalities would become fixed. The author went on to claim that as a byproduct of the rate of change of the world, this fixing process is not occuring in younger people.
Re:A childless adult's observation (Score:4, Interesting)
Fifty years ago, when my father was 9 years old, he and his friends would hop on their bike and ride 3 miles down to the lake. This was along side of an old highway that occassionally saw OTR truckers. They would leave home at noon with instructions "be home before dinner".
Sometimes HIS dad would walk down there to check on them and toss them in the water a few times. Then, they would ride their bikes home when the sun got low.
When I was 11 years old, my father grugingly allowed me to ride my bike 1 mile to a nearby shopping mall with several friends, but gave me a bag of quarters and instructed me to call every hour.
My youngest brother is 13 and is still not allowed out of the "neighborhood" on his own and my mother was horrified at the thought that he "take the bus" to soccer practice, rather than having me drive across town to come pick him up and drive him the 12 blocks over there.
What's the difference?
Statistical rates of violence, bodily harm and child abduction (outside the family) are all at record lows right now. Why are we afraid? Fifty years ago, it was more dangerous to ride your bike down to the lake than it is now.
Why are we afraid?
We, as a society need to ask ourselves this question and come to the conclusion that it is irrational.
Good post.
Stew
The US has created a culture of fear (Score:3, Interesting)
This form of communal parenting is not even close to acceptable in the United States. For over two years I've been walking my dog, twice a day, in some fields next to my house. A neighbor of mine has sent her young grandchildren to play in that same area (after I cleaned up all the broken glass). That neighbor wanted me to stop walking there now that her grandkids play there because I am a "stranger". When it was clear I wasn't going to stop walking my dog, she forbid her grandkids from speaking to me.
I talked with the grandmother and even gave her my card so she would know my name, address, and phone number in case, god forbid, something happened to her grandkids and she was worried I was somehow involved. My intent was not to convince her I was not a pederast ("I am not a liar") but to ease some of her fears since I sure wasn't going to stop walking my dog just for her.
I much prefer not being bothered with interacting with those kids when I'm out walking but I'm struck by the extremely different attitudes toward raising children I've seen in Europe and America.
Legalize it. (Score:2, Interesting)
All of you blowhards spouting off about "shoot 'em, who needs crack heads anyways?" should go rent the DVD of City of God. It's about these exact same problems in Brazil, in the worst cocaine-fueled gun-filled neighborhoods. But don't bother watching the movie (well, okay, it's a good movie, but it's just entertainment). Instead, watch the documentary under the extras menu. I know, I know, all those subtitles are just such a burden, pause it and you can keep up.
They interview and tell the stories of a street cop, various kids/drug dealers (of which there are an infinite amount), and the chief of police for the city. He plainly states that after his years of watching this problem from both the street side and the political side, the whole reason drugs are illegal is to keep the poor under control. No other reason at all.
Re:The Simple Life... (Score:3, Interesting)
I wouldn't say that this is true of every kid, many kids are raised by the state because both of their parents are work-a-holics, and if you're in the lower economic bracket it's just as bad as living the "simple life" in the past.
There are positive and negative trade-offs you must take into account. For instance some children need more intensive parenting then others, you can't make broad brush generalizations that kids today "have it so good", when I was growing up I didn't think I had it "good" being forced to go to school everyday for the next 13 years, and then to finally get out and be only able to earn a little above minimum wage at most jobs unless one takes on a more difficult and demanding job in terms of physical labor that's harder for companies to pay people less for.
Next the amount of stress on kids today is probably just as comparable to if not worse in some cases then the past due to peer pressure to compete in schools to finally compete in the market. All ones time is absorbed working just preparing to work in the world. Despite how good kids "have it" they still work most of their waking hours, even despite what some people might consider "gross" waste of their time.