GONE are the GOOD OLD DAYS

The way prices are rising, the good old days are last week- Les Dawson

If you are confused when you hear people talk about playing with marbles, Top’s, Tazo’s, , gaining grounds, or staying up all night playing sonic the hedgehog, defeating M.Bison on street fighter, then unfortunately you were not born in the early 90’s or you just have a bad memory.

There are countless studies that confirm that the 21^st century child is spending more time indoors than outdoors. There are so many, that we as a society do not know which one to believe, but one thing I can say, is that from my observation and ( at this time you can agree) that we hardly see children playing on the streets anymore.    

There may be many underlying causes for this. Personally I think it can be blamed on Globalisation, if fingers must be pointed. Please don’t get me wrong, I embraced Globalisation with both hands (without it, you wouldn’t be reading this).  As much as Globalisation has made the world a much better (arguable), easier and more connected place, it came with its problems. In my country (South Africa) a lot of the children from the early 90’s can agree with me when I say, we don’t see kids riding bikes to a friend’s house, playing a variety of games with the tennis ball, taking a walk to the local supermarket to just buy a couple of Chappies bubble gum  to read the “did you know inside”.

I remember growing up, being outside for the whole day on weekends and after school until sunset on week days. I remember tripping and colliding with the road face first playing gaining grounds (really painful!), to putting a plastic bottle on my bike tyre to make it sound like a motorbike when riding it. Gone are the good old days. As much as some of activities that I participated in hurt when looking back, I appreciate I had that childhood. It feels like yesterday I was playing Sega mega cast (a video game console which uses cartridges) playing into the night and having to switch it off to let the adapter cool down. Even with the introduction of the internet in my household, the internet was so slow that loading Google took so long on my 56k modem that I went outside to play anyway. I acknowledge that we all had different childhoods, and being brought up, but I just can’t imagine having the same smile saying remember in Grade 5 when we Facebook stalked that girl/guy.

I recently read an article that a 5 year old kid, is now seeing a psychologist after his Ipad was taken away. I was honestly speechless when I read that article. Another article revealed that if your child is awake, he/she is probably online. I generally have a problem young and old  people being on their phones if you are at the dinner table, whether at home or at a restaurant. Another matter of concern that has come to my attention is that generally people of today do activities so that they can post a status rather than their own self fulfillment  So before I get carried away on that topic, back to the children of today

In my recent trip to Brazil, I really appreciated the culture, sense of togetherness and the importance of family time in Brazil, something we hardly see in any country. Every weekend without fail, at the Lagoon, Botanical Garden or local parks, there are families playing with kites, canoeing or sitting having a picnic among many things.  I’m not sure if this is a 1^st world problem or the whole world entirely, but just seeing the family and kids spending time with each other brought so much peace and happiness to me, something I had not seen in my country. Hey maybe you totally disagree with me, maybe you’d rather spend time impressing your friends digitally, being on your phone typing LOL or LMAO when you didn’t even crack a smile,  then spending time with family and friends. You are after all entitled to your opinion, who am I to tell you what will make you happy.

Please don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining, and in a way it is very hard to revert back to those days, and most likely there’s nothing we could do either way. This brings me to my next point into why it’s changed.

Globalisation brought Facebook, smartphones, faster internet connection speeds, video games that do not need cooling down, HD viewing (which I’m in love with) and many other things. The reason I state that we cannot help ourselves, is that

·         It’s in our human nature to not fall behind and to know what’s trending or not, so we can stay relevant. We need to have email access in our pockets, as today time is money. What today is about is how many friends you have on Facebook to how many followers you have on twitter. The way technology is advancing it is becoming harder to invent something new, and if you blink you might just fall behind and not be relevant anymore.  We are so caught up into this digital age, that as we become more social we become more antisocial (My opinion).

·         Crime is on a whole new level with child kidnappings, basically the streets are not safe for our children to play on anymore

·         Children are generally online way more, so even if you wanted to play on the streets there would be no one to play with

There are many more other reasons as to why the world is what it is today, but before I end, just to put a spanner in the works. Is it really that important to know all the trends?  Is being on social networks really making us more social? Is cybercrime not an issue? There are many child kidnappings, but there is also child depression and teenage suicide because of social networks nowadays.

So, as much as the good old days are gone, the 21^st century has its many advantages and disadvantages as well, so as a society where do we find the balance. Do we need balance in the first place? these are the many questions that still remained to be answered.