Remember the days of receiving a "Toys R Us" catalogue in the mail, whipping out a black sharpie, and circling everything we wanted for Christmas or a birthday before handing it back to our parents? Remember walking into a "Toys R Us" store and feeling overwhelmed by it's immensity and chock-full shelves? Well, it appears those instances have not been felt in the same way by today's younger generation.

Last week, "Toys R Us" announced it was filing for bankruptcy. Though the term bankruptcy carries a negative connotation with it, a common misconception is that all "Toys R Us" stores will begin closing their doors from this point forward. However, bankruptcy is more of a public statement made by a business to acknowledge they're inoperable debt in the hopes of forgiveness from their lenders or a potential buy out from another company. Nonetheless, there's still time for a saving grace even though "Toys R Us" sales are on a horrendous decline.

I've seen all this chatter on social media about how this could have happened, and I think the answer to that is pretty clear cut and simple: Due to society's technological advances, today's younger generation do not crave toys in the same way it's predecessors did. Why would a kid ask to be taken to "Toys R Us" for a new board game or action figure when they can download an app straight to a computer, phone, or tablet and even connect with friends through the simplicity of a touch screen right from their own home?

I'm not saying I agree with the use of this generation's free time, but that's a fact that children don't see the desire in toys anymore, and I don't think their parents have helped in this situation either.

The only people using their phones and tablets more are the people raising these home-bodied children. A child doesn't come out of the womb knowing what iPhones and apps are, it's something they're exposed to.

I swear, it's not out of the ordinary these days to see a child - still in a stroller - holding onto one of those pieces of technology. No not a teddy bear, or a Barbie doll, or a toy car, but an immense iPad that requires two hands to hold. What's funny is that the parents don't do anything to stop it, they're actually the ones who place the tablet in the child's hands to begin with and they show them how to use it so the child's focus will be geared toward whatever they're looking at on the screen and they're not nagging their parents.

So as a lesson learned here, parents of younger children: do better. Stop being lazy by handing your child a virtual touch screen at the palm of their hands. Of course, that'll preoccupy them, but that's not an activity they should be engaging in at such a young age. They should be physically involved with dolls, and blocks, and trucks, and making up imaginative scenarios in their heads and acting them out with the brand new toys they just bought from "Toys R Us" and other outlets like it. It's honestly excitement and wonderment that they're missing out on, and this continued deprivation could lead to a more permanent damage with "Toys R Us" going under completely - an irreversible blow to the toy industry.