It's time to unplug our kids

The street is empty. Even on a balmy winter weekend, exquisite in the way only South Florida days can be at this time of year, the children are nowhere to be seen. There are no bikes, no scooters, no skates, no balls and gloves and pads, none of the toys I've long associated with the first weeks of a beginning year. It's not just my neighborhood bereft of the sounds of children at play, though. Soon after the holidays, a colleague e-mailed me her own lament about her boyfriend's ''kid-intensive working-class neighborhood.'' She wondered where all the wheelie machines of her own youth had gone. ''My theory,'' she wrote, ``is that nobody plays outside anymore and they're all sitting in front of a computer like zombies playing their new video games.''

How true. How sad. Post-Christmas playtime isn't what it used to be. The change, of course, didn't happen overnight. Playtime's move indoors was gradual and maybe, at least initially, imperceptible. But it was also as steady as the spread of kudzu, and now our children are about to become, if they're not already, the generation of muscular thumbs. Tree climbing? Who does that anymore? Hide-and-seek? I can't remember the last time I saw children play what was an all-time favorite game for me when all the cousins got together. Hopscotch, jump rope and stickball -- I suppose these have gone the way of eight-tracks and black-and-white TV shows.

But it's beyond the yard where we notice how childhood is becoming less about collecting worms and skinning knees and more of a sanitized in-front-of-the-screen antechamber into adulthood. Examine the cash register.

TECH'S THE TICKET
The $20.1 billion market for traditional toys -- I'm referring to baby dolls and toy trucks here -- has been eroding while the sale of Everything Electronic has clipped up at a comfortable rate. Mattel, the world's largest toymaker, reports that slumping sales of Barbies have contributed to an overall decline in profits. Hasbro, the No. 2, also missed earnings forecast. Skip across the virtual playground, though, and you'll find a rosier picture. The top 10 online searches for toys are often Microsoft's Xbox 360 video game system, Sony's PlayStation 2 and Nintendo's GameBoy Advance, GameCube and Nintendo DS. But it's more than video games replacing use-your-imagination-and-body toys.

Last year, Toys 'R' Us added MP3 players to its merchandise selection, to go along with the DVD and CD players flying off the shelves. U.S. factory sales of consumer electronics rose to $125.9 billion, an 11 percent increase over 2004, and while this figure includes much more than stuff for children, it remains a good indication of where we're headed. More and more kids want scaled-down versions of adult cell phones, video cameras and digital cameras. No doubt this has the potential to send parents into paroxysms of worry, and for good reason. Hours in front of the screen mean less time in social interaction. Pushing buttons on a control translates into fewer push-ups and exercises. And constant visual stimulation -- well, that can only exacerbate our already short attention spans.

NOT KIDS' FAULT
Overdeveloped thumbs might turn out to be the least of our worries. We may wind up raising unimaginative, asocial, overweight children who don't know how to sustain eye contact. But don't blame the kiddies.

Toys reflect the culture, and we are a juiced-up society that can't unplug itself. We've forgotten how to be quiet. We don't know what it's like to be bored. We hate to be away from the constant stimulus that promises to keep us connected 24-7. And in the end it's that loss, that inability to be alone with ourselves, that should concern us most.

Ana Veciana-Suarez
21 January 2006

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/13668681.htm

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