Imaginations Interrupted

Imaginations Interrupted: Technology vs. Tradition

    What happened to neighborhoods full of children playing together with matchbox cars, green plastic army men, and dress up clothes?  Today's children are more likely to be found sitting on a couch than playing outside and exploring the world in which they live.  They are in trance-like states, their minds filled with images from plastic boxes made with wires, tubes, and computer chips.  Modern technology is threatening to overtake children’s imaginations using television as its catapult.  American society and culture have become the perfect TV commercial spokesperson for our electronically driven world and our children’s imaginations are suffering from lack of encouragement.

    According to the University of North Carolina’s Extension Cooperative website Successful Family, a recent study released by the Harvard School of Public Health found that middle school students averaged approximately 3 hours and 20 minutes per day of TV viewing.  In addition to this study, the website states that American children spend an average of 17 hours per week watching TV, videotapes, and playing video games.  Matchbox cars and plastic army men have been replaced with video games depicting graphic car races and army battles. 

    Gone are the days of making a cardboard box into a rocket ship and using homemade costumes for space suits.  Television and modern technology have brought the spaceship, astronauts, and the trip into outer space directly out of the minds of children and into our living rooms.  Furthermore, once a prized possession in many households, books are no longer being read to children by a nurturing family member.  Instead of feeling the warmth of a loved one's lap, cold plastic and metal provide vivid images and sounds for the viewer.  Mythical creatures from far off lands are not creations of the child’s imagination, but are created in computer animation studios instead. 

    What is even more troubling is how parents are only too eager to allow their children to be pacified by TV.  They are too busy trying to cook dinner, do the laundry, and pay bills after their full day on the job to notice what is happening to their children.  Parents may not actually realize what a detriment TV is to their child’s ever developing brain.  Maybe they are too tired or stressed to know that children’s brains are not equipped to handle such fast-paced media despite their amazement at the sights and sounds television offers

    Children who become addicted to TV will lose their ability to become engrossed in creative and self-directed play.  They will often become bored and lack the concentration to work on tasks given them that do not replicate television or video games.  Their ability to grow and develop intellectually will be stunted.  Yet, TV is not at fault.  It is our use of TV that is to blame.  As adults, we need to take a hard look at how television fits into our lives and how we let it alter our experiences and conceptions of the world around us.  Television and technology can provide wonderful learning benefits, but it is up to us to know how to use it.  Maybe the next time we bring home a TV box it should be empty of everything except for the possibilities held in a child’s imagination.