So for a lot of us, when we were kids, it meant long days outside playing with friends, climbing trees, building forts and best of all, interacting in person.
With the digi-age upon us, there are less kids on the real playgrounds and more stuck in front a T.V. with controller playing games until their thumbs hurt, had blisters or they can't stare at the screen any longer...
We are loosing our social interactions to posts, tweets or emotes and i can only wonder how our next generation is going to handle social environments where all they know is hiding behind an avatar chatting with friends a few characters at a time.
A recent article showing the number of kids injured playing computer games is soaring while traditional childhood injuries such as falling out of a tree or hurting yourself biking or skateboarding is dropping.
There has been a 50% drop in youngsters aged 15 and under hurt climbing trees (or falling out). The total was 885 compared to 1,796 seven years ago. As for leisure sports, there has been a 57% drop in injuries for skateboarding, rollerblading, skiing and other skating related accidents.
Now in one way that is good as injuries are reducing, but wait, serious repetitive strain injuries are up 60%! Those strained thumbs are not able to handle the abuse kids these days dish out and i can only assume the lack of outdoor activities increases the chance of injury as they are not exercising or building the correct muscle mass or doing the proper exercises to avoid that strain.
"Doing physically challenging outdoor activities teaches children how to deal with risk - and they learn about their own strengths and weaknesses."
As a parent myself and having a PC, Xbox 360 and Wii, i am at a cross road for this.
Do i ban it completely so he gets more interest in sports and outdoor leisure activities and avoids repetitive stress injuries and live in my basement till he's 30? Not really feasible in this day and age with the onslaught of game advertising everywhere you go.
Currently, i allow my son to play but in moderation but as he gets older, i can see me greatly reducing video game play time and most likely creating a ratio option. For every 3 hours of outdoor time, he gets 30 minutes of console time. This hopefully will reduce him coming home from school and playing games till the sun comes up. Now how many arguments this will generate, only time will tell...
Well, if you've read this far, what do you do to control game time for your kids?
Do you think our next generation of leaders are going to have the social skills required for life?
Are they going to be able to handle challenges without a retry option?
There is no game over, do you want to continue? in life...
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