The Indoor Generation
Number Two Pencil
I'm as pro-technology as the next person, but this doesn't strike me as a change for the better:
The fundamental nature of American childhood has changed in a single generation. The unstructured outdoor childhood — days of pick-up baseball games, treehouses and "be home for dinner" — has all but vanished.
Today, childhood is spent mostly indoors, watching television, playing video games and working the Internet. When children do go outside, it tends to be for scheduled events — soccer camp or a fishing derby — held under the watch of adults...
The shift to an indoor childhood has accelerated in the past decade, with huge declines in spontaneous outdoor activities such as bike riding, swimming and touch football, according to separate studies by the National Sporting Goods Association, a trade group, and American Sports Data, a research firm. Bike riding alone is down 31% since 1995.
A child is six times more likely to play a video game on a typical day than to ride a bike, according to surveys by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the CDC. Dakota Howell says his favorite video game —Tony Hawk's Pro Skater— is more fun than actual skateboarding.
In the more rural areas where my nieces and nephews are growing up, the lure of the cell phone and the Internet only occasionally outweighs the desire for four-wheeling, overnight camping in the woods, fishing on the lake, etc. But even I've noticed how much more time they spend indoors - or interacting with electronic gadgets - than I did as a kid. And, at least where they live, the issue isn't safety.
Also, I wonder if the constant push on students, from college age on down, to be aware of the "environment" and to vote/act ecologically will have much effect on kids who are going through school without experiencing much of that environment. Perhaps the class of 2015 won't be quite so concerned about global warming and rainforests."
kimberlyswygert.com |
