Alright, let me take you back in time a little bit. It’s the year 2011, your mom just took you to a salon to get feathers put in your hair. Maybe you had one or two, you know, keeping it low-key. Or maybe you had seven, like me. “LMFAO” was your favorite music group (you could shuffle like nobody’s business) and you knew every word to “Rolling in the Deep,” “We Found Love,” and “Born This Way.”
You rocked the shorts with tights look and you had a dozen boxy t-shirts that you got at Forever21. Your biggest worry was how hideous you looked in your bright red, school-distributed gym shorts, and how you STILL weren’t allowed to shave your legs.
We grew up learning with “LeapFrog,” “Hooked on Phonics,” the “Magic Treehouse,” and “Harry Potter.” We made laptops and cell phones out of paper, played house, built forts, and played capture the flag with the neighbor boys. We made fairy houses out of mushrooms. We went to the YMCA for summer camp and swim lessons. My younger brother and I earned computer time, and we were not allowed to go on YouTube or even watch TV during the week.
This allowed us to grow strong relationships with each other and establish a family dynamic.
The only phone I ever had was my grandma's old, broken flip phone that didn’t have service. When I got into sixth grade, I finally got a slide phone with the ‘QWERTY’ keyboard and I was over the moon about it.
Fast forward to 2018 and it seems like the world is completely overtaken by social media. We see posts comparing us at thirteen, to thirteen-year-olds now, and they seriously look like they’re twenty! With apps like Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat, social media, and smartphones in general, the opportunity for "kids to be kids" and grow up without the pressure and unrealistic standards presented by social media, is becoming scarce.
Instead of being kept busy with books and crafts, kids are being plugged into movies and smartphones on trips as small as the ones to school. With this, they are losing precious bonding time with their loved ones, their brains are turning to mush, they’re not building strong imaginations and critical thinking skills.
They begin acting out and looking for attention at school because they are not getting what they need at home.
My mom works at an elementary school, and apparently it is well known that the kids become less well behaved with each passing year. This could be due to a societal shift in parental priorities, the rise of social media and technology, or an increase of mental and physical health problems in young people, among many other reasons.
When our generation, the generation of “LMFAO,” the “Magic Treehouse," and feather hair extensions, gets a whiff of the seventh-grade classic perfume, Viva La Juicy, it takes us back to a place of nostalgia and innocence and authenticity, not a place over-consumed by the media. When we have kids (which I know many of us are already at that place in our lives) we have a chance to give our children a (somewhat) media-less childhood, similar to what we got to experience.
We have the chance to learn from our parent’s mistakes and just let our kids be kids.
Although media is only going to grow and flourish in a way that is undeniable and inevitable, we can give our kids (somewhat) media-free childhoods at home by not plugging them in the second they get bored, being aware of the media they are consuming, making sure they are using their imaginations and playing with other kids, and maybe not letting them have Instagram’s or smartphones when they’re in fricken sixth grade!
Our generation is the first one in a while that has the opportunity, as a whole, to give our kids what they deserve, so they can grow to become leaders, visionaries, creators, and the absolute best versions of themselves.
