Psychology of Childhood and Adolescence in an Urban Context

Throughout my life I myself have noticed drastic changes in childhood.  I have witnessed these changes first hand since I have four younger siblings ages 9, 13, 16, and 18.  I’ve watched them develop and have seen that there is quite the amount of differences from when I was their age.  I’ve noticed that a great deal of their influences come from their god, the television.  In my household you actually sadly have time slots for when you’re allowed to use it.  When I was growing up my mom would watch her shows and yes I would get upset and want to watch mine but I wouldn’t start having a fit.  I sure didn’t have a “time slot.”  I would just find something else to do.  I was always good at finding something to do and using my imagination to do so.  I remember once I was having a stressful day and asked to watch the television.  I didn’t think it would honestly be a problem especially since I would rarely ask to watch it but my little brother aged 9 actually started crying about how I would be cutting into his time.  I couldn’t believe it at the time but is it really abnormal that my brother actually went to the extreme of crying about me cutting into his time?  After reading the article, “Technology is Destroying Our Children” by Vancouver Son and how kids are suffering psychologically I can understand why taking the television away from my brother would upset him. Kids are far too dependent on the television.  They watch and learn from it instead of what I did as a child.  Don’t get me wrong I learned a great deal of negative and positive things from the television but I also learned from reading and actually going out.  These kids just stare in front of the television.  They don’t go out and learn things on their own or through reading books.  I told my brother aged 9 to go read a book and I was astonished to hear him say I already read today in school.

So, what is the status of childhood today?  Honestly it’s disappearing.  My dad recently was talking to my mom and said, “David (my little brother age of 9) doesn’t have a childhood.  Diane (my mother) when was the last time you saw him actually pick up a toy rather than the remote?”  It’s true when I was a child I would play with the silliest of toys and make such wonderful and great adventures with them.  Technology is really taking over.  I’ve noticed as the years have gone by the more kids have been staying in instead of playing in the fresh air.  I used to come home late from school since I had dance practice and I would see my siblings outside.  As the years have passed I noticed they’ve been outside less and less and now rarely at all.  I as a child never cared about the cold but why go out in the cold when you can sit in front of a television all warm and play a character that is outside in the cold?

Recently I watched a movie, “Surrogate” starring Bruce Willis where the people have their surrogate robots go outside for them.  They would lie down in bed all day and just have their robots do their everyday activities.  No longer were they experiencing anything themselves.  They let technology take over their minds and in the end Bruce Willis is given the choice to have people continue being robots or finally getting their lives back.  This is just it.  Technology has stolen the lives of children.  I believe that having a childhood is having the opportunity to go outside, run wild and play freely.  They should make up silly games instead of playing one someone made up for them.  What happened to this stage?  How did it seem to just disappear?  When I think of television or using the television I honestly think of teenagers.  In my opinion toys where you have to use your imagination are for children and television shows and video games are more for teenagers.  It seems that children are skipping over this child stage of playing with toys and just going straight to the teenage stage.

Kids don’t go out and learn from mistakes instead they just watch them on television.  It’s sad to say that kids one day might only know that falling hurts because they’ve seen it in a video game where some of their health bar disappears instead of knowing it from actually falling.  I know this seems to be an extreme but this is honestly where the world seems to be going.  Technology is definitely destroying childhood.