A couple of weeks ago my husband was flipping the channels, he settled on Charlie Rose and there were these four middle aged women on. I recognized Leslie Stahl . They were wearing t-shirts with "WOW" and talking about this great thing they had created called "WOW". From the computer I typed in and found the WOW - Women on the Web - web page. WOW is an on-line magazine for women, specifically directed at women over 40 (my guess) and the contributors are mostly white women. Anyway, I saw this title Growing Up, I Was Bored 'Quite Often' ... Today, Nobody Is Bored. I didn't read it at the time, although my mom and I have discussed this idea before.
Tonight as I was perusing the posts related to video games and violence, there was some discussion about the effects of gaming on play and development. I thought of this article and went back and read it. The conversation gets a little wonky in places, but I think it gives a perspective on some of the changes that have occurred in childhood experience over the last 50 years and how boomers are interpreting those changes. Generation gaps are not a new phenomenon, but this is the one we are living, which makes it relevant.
With regards to generation gaps, being in the over 40 crowd, I must say that one aspect that I have enjoyed of this class is learning from my classmates. I feel as though I have been mentored by many of you (many from a younger and perhaps more new media savvy crowd). I have enjoyed and learned from the posts, links and perspectives. Thanks! (It's late, I think I am getting sappy - smiley face - where's the icons on this blog?!)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
I thought it was interesting that Lesley Stahl mentioned that the generation of young people who live this "screen life" might learn and take in new information in ways that are neurally different from past generations.
I don't think it'd be comepletely outrageous to consider, at least on a small scale. I wonder if there are any studies specifically adressing this.
I was interested to see how many people in that group grew up "bored". Don't they know that only a boring person gets bored? (My Mom's maxim). What is interesting, is that I know many a child age 7 - 13 that ARE bored today, despite all the internet access and video games. In fact, they watch TV, play games sheerly out of boredom. They call my son and say, "Can you play? Im bored."
Bored is one of the words I hear kids say often. We arent allowed to use it in our house, of course, because we arent boring!!!
Becca - I have wondered about this, too and half-heartedly looked for some studies with little success. Just like the phonetic sounds we hear as a baby/child affect the brain structure,it seems that the changes in information reception would have similar effects.
Cynthia, We too use the 'being bored is a personal decsion' idea at our house. I think that "bored" in this conversation is used to address the increased amount of external stimuli available to children today vs in the past. Children don't have to rely so much on their own imaginations when they can plug-in.
I remember when I told my mom that I was bored she gave me a laundry list of things I could do. One of them was usually to clean my room. Sunday afternoons were when I was the most "bored" but TV wasn't an option since she was usually watching old Tarzan movies on our only TV and ironing. I usually ended up drawing or playing with legos.
My nephews are 9 and 6 and constantly complaining of being bored after playing video games or watching a movie. They almost seem to transfer to boredom within minutes of finishing whatever they were doing. I often wonder if they are so plugged in that they don't know how to entertain themselves without the TV, computer or games. When my husband suggested they read one of the new books we gave them, they told us, "Reading is boring."
Post a Comment