So many childhood memories with some of those toys. Back when kids really would play outside. Nowadays, well in my country anyway, you won't see a lot kids playing. Well, there are kids but they mostly have their faces on their phones playing Mobile Legends or whatnot.
So many childhood memories with some of those toys. Back when kids really would play outside. Nowadays, well in my country anyway, you won't see a lot kids playing. Well, there are kids but they mostly have their faces on their phones playing Mobile Legends or whatnot.
okay boomer
All joking aside though, I do think it's a real shame that kids don't really play outside as much as they used to, but I don't think that's the fault of the kids, or even the availability of video games - I think our society (at least in the US) has changed in a lot of ways in the past 40 years that actively discourage kids from playing outside. To wit:
*Since wages haven't been keeping pace with inflation, the average family is poorer, so they live in cheaper housing, which means smaller lots or even apartments. Combine that with our infrastructure crisis, and there's simply less outside to play in - smaller (or no) yards and fewer parks. *When you're a poor urban family who can't afford too many mouths to feed (and don't need to breed your own farmhands like a rural family does), you simply have fewer children - one or two at most, if any at all. So there's a lot more only children out there, and a lot less kids with a sibling their own age to play with. *The rise of the "stranger danger" movement has taught kids to be less trusting of new people, which makes it harder to make new friends. More crucially, a lot of parents respond to the threat of "stranger danger" by not letting their kids be out of the house unsupervised at all, and with both parents needing to work to keep the household afloat (due to weaker wages), kids are taught to stay inside where they're "safe", only getting to go out on special occasions when a parent has the time and energy to go with them. *As schools assign larger homework loads and parents sign their kids up for more structured extracurricular activities like dance lessons or sports teams, kids have less free time and less free energy. *A lot of things that kids would actually want to do outside are chastised as disruptive ("no skateboarding", "get off my lawn").
So you have kids with less energy, fewer siblings, and fewer friends, being largely confined to their smaller yards (if they're lucky enough to even have a yard) for their "safety", and half of the things they would do if they did play outside would just get them yelled at. Is it any surprise that thigs turned out the way they have?
