When I was a kid, all of my spare time was spent reading or playing. Winters were spent curled up in front of the fire reading every book I could get my hands on and summers were spent running around outside, practically naked, for every moment of daylight. Stories in my head came alive in make-believe games; everything I did came from my imagination and was brought to life with my bare hands and with whatever I could turn into toys or props to enact my stories. My friends and I made hundreds of miniature fairy villages out of stones, twigs, and leaves, dressed ourselves up as pirates, princes and princesses, and romped through the mud until we became brown mud-monsters that were not allowed anywhere near the white furniture. This was my entire childhood; there was no Internet, no television, and no constant input of media. I was always happy, energetic, and, albeit constantly muddy, healthy.
Now, I look at my ten-year-old sister and how she is growing up. She was introduced to the Internet and television when she was about seven years old. I watched her slowly become more and more addicted to online games, social gaming networks for kids, education software, and Disney TV shows on Youtube. It’s as if her entire daily focal point is on the computer in the living room. She tunes the entire world out for hours everyday and her eyes gloss over as her brain hooks into the world of cyberspace. Getting her to just look up and focus on us when we are talking to her is a struggle.
Instead of using and expanding her imagination by reading and playing, my sister spends the majority of her leisure time online. I worry that all of the media is adversely effecting her development. I am not sure to what extent the constant connection is affecting her neurological responses, but I do know that her personality and reactions to social situations are extremely different from my own personality and reactions when I was her age. She is extremely volatile; after being constantly stimulated by media all day, any extraneous stimulation or stress throws her into a completely over-stimulated state. Temper tantrums are frequent and her real-life friendships suffer as she spends less and less time playing in person with her friends; they all have their own online gaming accounts and choose to spend their time together via the computer.
My experience of endless outdoor playtime and make-believe seems to be a foreign concept to my sister’s generation. In the book After the death of Childhood; Growing up in the Age of Electronic Media, David Buckingham explores this idea of the misplacement or loss of healthy childhoods. He explores the argument that electronic media is causing the disappearance or “death” of the type of childhood I had. Buckingham also touches on the idea that there is an ever-growing gap between different generation’s relationships with media and technology. He points out that the lines of what defines "childhood" are getting progressively fuzzy as the constant influence of media catapults children into pre-mature adulthood.
The thing that is the most disturbing to me is that the amount of time my sister spends online is below the average of all of her friends and other kids her age. Everywhere I look, kids are plugged into their iPads, cell phones, laptops, Wii video games, etc., instead of spending their time actively playing with real-life toys and friends. My question is that is the world of cyberspace forcing healthy, playful childhoods into the backseat, or even destroying them all together? Can children develop properly with the constant stimulation from all of the surrounding media? I worry for the repercussions of this on my sister’s generation.
~Cherise Glodowski
4 comments:
I think you have made a very good point in this blog post, children across the country are beginning to use technology at younger and younger ages, and I too worry about the long-term effects that this will have. I personally did not have access to the internet or any type of video games until I was at least twelve or thirteen years old, while I did know about video games and wish I had them at the time, in hindsight I am very grateful that my parents kept me unplugged. Like you, I spent most of my time growing up playing outside, reading, and using my imagination to keep myself entertained, and I believe these activities were very beneficial to my development. It will be interesting to watch the effects that this early exposure to technology will bring about in future generations.
I personally see these effects on young generations you are talking about on a daily basis. I've been working with kids constantly for the past 5 years both as a tutor and an educator/camp counselor, and I am shocked to witness this technological evolution in kids every single time. Whether they beg me to play with my iPhone, ask me to send a reminder email to their parents to pick them up,or arrange play dates which obviously consist of them playing video games against one another.
I don't know how bad these changes are for the future generations, all I can say is that this evolution is happening, and it's happening fast.
This made me remember a study I read recently relating self-control exercised during childhood and future success (measured by various means). It started in the 70s and followed about a thousand kids as they grew up. They found correlations, but nothing conclusive (As a study it's a bit difficult to replicate). Your story makes me wonder if the new norm of sitting kids in front of educational computer games and television shows to occupy them might result a generation in more effective adults. Certainly they will be proficient with technology, but perhaps the very sedating nature of it will have some effects.
Regardless of whether the correlations of the study are tied to causation, though, I strongly agree that the detriments of the loss of imaginative play among children far overshadows the benefits of producing a generation of highly efficient, tech-savvy people content to work in front of screens their whole lives.
It is true that children these days are not getting the opportunity to experience the "old fashion" forms of play because of technology but I think it is unreasonable to cite over use of technology as the "death" of the old forms of childhood play. A lot of it has to with the increased pressures from society to immerse your child in as much information as possible. Children these days are either attending piano classes, prep courses or going to school. technology provides many opportunities to learn which explains one of the reasons why children use the internet. So as much as technology has taken away outdoor play the underlying reason for it is because of the stress society places on getting ahead early on in life.
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