While this may not sound that surprising, it was pointed out to me recently there are large parts of the human experience that escape daily acknowledgement. The topic that was being discussed was children and it occurred to me I have no idea what it’s like for kids who are growing up in the modern age. Looking at the world, I feel like things must be different for kids now than it was a decade ago.
For one thing, parents seem to get increasingly more paranoid about their children’s safety with each passing year. I got a cell phone from my parents when I was 14. I didn’t use it that much, and the main reason I got it was because Hurricane Katrina had blown through and my parents worried about the family staying in touch. Now the rule seems to be that if kids are old enough to operate a phone, then they should have one. The reason given for this is safety. The safety of knowing where your child is at any given time, and being able to communicate with them.
Not that the kids will be going far from home. The trend now is that kids are playing outdoors less and less.
And when parents do send their children out of the house they are armed with sunscreen, wet wipes and hand sanitizer.
The question that concerns me, though, is about toys. More specifically, action figures, which is something I grew up with and feel is important. My actual question is this: Do kids still play with action figures? What I’m being told by most people is “No.” Kids are not still playing with action figures. They are being replaced by video games.
Now, I love video games, and I played video games when I was a kid but, and this is where the concern comes in, video games are not toys. I consider video games another form of media, like television or movies, and while parents hopefully wouldn’t let kids spend all their free time watching television, it makes sense that they would treat video games in much the same way.
The importance of toys is that they stimulate children’s imaginations through play. While television and video games can inspire imagination in children they leave little room for creative play since the kids are just playing around in a world that someone else created. When kids play with toys (dolls, action figures, LEGOs, etc.), they are creating their own worlds, their own stories, populated with characters they created.
While I don’t quite remember what was going on, I know that when I was a kid the T-Rex had sinister political machinations and was trying to take the presidency from Superman, who, being president, was in no position to handle the situation himself. Superboy, on the other hand, could act as a free agent with impunity. The GI Joes and the Power Rangers were on the side of Superman, while the Silver Surfer and the X-Men had thrown their lots in with the T-Rex. The GI Joes had the obvious advantage because they came with weapons that actually shot little darts if you turned the wheel on the back. Spiderman remained neutral. Batman never entered into it at all because I knew if Batman showed up he would be smart enough to figure out how to solve everything singlehandedly and that would just be boring.
Childhood is the only time in life when imagination is allowed to run free and there are no expectations of it. We are still allowed imagination as adults but it becomes practical.
We are supposed to imagine creative solutions to problems, imagine our lives the way we want it to be in order to have something to strive for.
We are only allowed practical, functional fantasies.
If kids are missing out on the experience of creating stories like the one above because the high tech distractions of this decade are so much more enticing then I feel sorry for them.
I don’t blame the parents, the kids or society for this but I hope we remember the value of creative play for future generations.
Zack Bouis is a junior majoring in psychology. He can be contacted at [email protected].