WHEN I think of the many children, mostly boys, who are spending these post-Christmas days almost entirely inside with electronic games, I am reminded of a comment a Polish artist friend of mine once made. My son, who was about 13 at the time, was visiting his son and they were playing some kind of computer game. The father sat down for a minute and observed them. Then he said to my son, in his heavy accent, “If I had spent my days doing this for hours when I was a boy, I would have shot myself.”

Destroy the imagination of children and human beings become the most pliable of creatures. And that’s what spending a childhood with electronic games does. It destroys the imagination. It replaces silence and constructive boredom and annoying social interaction with ceaseless noise and novelty. Children today live in what the writer Anthony Esolen calls the “Kingdom of Noise.”

— Comments —

SJF writes:

Not chez nous. The closest we got to electronics is a laser target for handgun training. Not shown are three scooters and one bike. Our six kids have been outside for hours. Merry Christmas! Remember- the season has only just begun!

Laura writes:

Shocking.

Paul writes:

Yes, times have changed.  In the ’50s and ’60s, we wanted skates, baseball gloves, bats, baseballs, footballs, football helmets, basketballs, archery sets, BB guns, bicycles, weights, model planes and cars to glue together, 22 caliber rifles, cap pistols, holsters, plastic guns, board games, water pistols, slingshots, etc.  It was kid stuff that got you out of the house, which is where you wanted to be, or got you to use your hands rather than just fingers and thumbs.

I recall I was always the first up and out on Saturday mornings using my bicycle looking for someone to play with.  It was usually a fruitless method, but I loved to play with live children like me.  I had to come back home to eat breakfast.  I suspect most youngsters today awaken and immediately dial into some kind of electronic device or media.  It is truly a prison.  You can bet home-schooled children are not bored because they have a lot of time to socialize and to engage in extracurricular activities.  I sorely wish our economic situation would have allowed it.

The traditions seem to have been lost as our children and adults create an inner world with their smartphones.  Are PCs insufficient?  All of your new icons are Greek to me, though I congratulate you on your learning curve.  I have a smartphone for my job, but I never use it except as a cell phone when necessary.  I have a personal cell phone too, but I don’t use it except for receiving doctor calls, making a few random calls, and marathon conversations with close friends who live away.  The constant usage of smartphones is somewhat frightening.

I hope social media is helping youngsters to make social connections that some were not capable of doing in person before social media.

A reader writes:

We greatly restricted TV when my children were young, and the first time I remember one son of mine saying he was bored was the day after he watched some videos he had borrowed. How quickly he forgot his creativity and became a passive consumer of entertainment.

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