No more kidding

“I tell you — if that boy watches any more TV, I will disconnect all three in the house,” said my very disgruntled friend, glaring at her 12-year-old flipping through various channels and then finally settling on a very violent action series. I looked around the medium-sized apartment and wondered why they had three television sets in the first place.

“Why don’t you encourage him to go out and play?” I offered, very, I repeat, very, meekly. “WHERE?” she whined. Okay, so I have been told that the children of the new age don’t grow up the way we did. They have a different rate of metabolism and they work on the triple tempo mechanism. Whatever we did, they do it thrice as faster and thrice as earlier.

A few people that I know, who do have kids, ranging from zero to 15, are of the opinion that their children will never know the joys of a real childhood and it’s all because of the virtual distractions that rule their lives. There are cartoon shows, reality shows, movies, video games and now Facebook and Justin Bieber. In comparison, hopscotch is an endangered phenomenon.

Gone are the days when we played I Spy or Ludo and other street games and then came home at sundown to do our homework. Street games are of course out of the question because there are no ‘safe’ streets anymore, which is why parents find it easier to go out and buy a PlayStation to keep their child and his/her friends entertained.

However, I am beginning to believe that television, computers and social networking sites have very little to do with the way these kids’ lives have turned out. The fault is ours. We took Tintin out of their hands and put a remote control into those tiny palms. And we showed the tots off when they became computer geniuses. We pushed them into this.

In a more intellectually reticent society, virtual compensations found it easier to invade our lives. When we have forgotten the folk tales we grew up on, how can we pass on that information to a six-year-old who will never understand the moral behind the story where a crow fills up a cracked vase with stones to drink water on a very hot summer’s day? It’s the mineral water generation anyway. Kids are kids only as long as they’re babies — today, they just zoom from young adults to adults. I met a 12-year-old boy recently who is on a ‘diet’ because he understands that he won’t be as popular with the girls if he were not lean.

No more Famous Five, Aesop’s Fables or such like — ironically, a few old-school TV channels tried to bring back stories of the past with the help of animation or real life series. But I am quite certain that only a handful of kids actually watch them.

A good question was put to me this morning. If we had learnt what these kids know today, 30 years ago, would we have been as advanced? I hope not.