Last night I couldn’t sleep and managed to flip through about two hundred and fifty channels to surprisingly find that there was “nothing on TV.” Of course I remembered the “good ole days” back in rural southern Arkansas that if the antenna was turned just right we could watch three channels, although one was a bit fuzzy. In a last attempt to fight sleep I turned on “On Demand” station to look for a funny movie. Immediately I found a preview of an old Scooby Doo cartoon that was running on one of the kid categories. Ok I admit it, I am forty-something years old and I am a Scooby Doo addict!
I laughed and flipped over to find a nice array of old cartoons that we were forced to get up at dawn to watch on Saturday mornings when I was a kid. Now this was a particularly good episode… the one about the “green ghosts” which was one of the early ones before that annoying Scrappy Doo joined the crew and all the chase scenes featured that goovy background music that only a LSD addict could appreciate. As I turned out the light, and carefully checking under my bed for green ghosts… I thought Tim (my best friend growing up) and I would have been in hog heaven if we would have watched our favorite cartoons anytime we wanted… ok I admit this was before in invent of VCRs.
Today kids have it quite different. The last time I forced myself up early enough to checkthere is nothing fun any more about Saturday mornings! There was just a bunch a strange looking Japanese characters and darn if I could figure out which ones were the good guys?? Of course these kiddos have all sorts of technology to keep them entertained throughout the day. As previously mentioned the new teenage binky is the cell phone. I just bought one that not only shows me the name of who is calling me, but I can play games, MP3s, watch TV or movies, beeps at me when I am late and tells me exactly where the rush hour traffic is backed up. And when I don’t feel like talking, I can use a needle-head size keyboard to type messages to my friends. “Who would have thunk it”?
When they are not attached to their phones or I-Pods, you can usually find most kids behind a computer screen playing games. Now I am guilty as the next one about wasting my life with these silly games but a teenager recently told me that I wasn’t playing “real” games. What has mesmerized this generation isn’t your simple game of Texas Hold Em, but cyber worlds which transforms them into characters in virtual realities. One of this teenager's favorite games is named, War Craft where you can assume the avatar (virtual character) of demonic beings that would terrify John Milton. Because of my age I temporarily forgot the name of this game and searched online where I found titles such as Assain, Drug Runner, and of course Grand Theft Auto. Now the last title, in which has the characters shoot policemen, spurred another named “Cop Killer” where gamers shoot police and use civilians as “human shields.” Anyone else have a concern here?
Now I am not saying that all video games are evil, heck I wish I were smart enough to be winner of Guitar Hero. However, we have now lost the battle over violent music and we have moved into the arena of shielding our kids from a violent alternative reality. Given their continual diet of cyber blood, is it any wonder that our children have become more violent? Before I left school Friday, we informed our brothers and sisters in blue about a planned fight in a kids back yard in which they are going to charge $2 admission and post it on “YouTube.com” with all the other teenage fights and nonsense. We had a fight on campus last week, and before we could get the fighters to the office it had be taped via cell phone and emailed to seven kids!
I am ranting about all of this because I am terrified that we are raising a generation of kids with NO EMPATHY! Every evening before bedtime they have witnessed not only their own schoolyard fights, but also violence from schoolyards across the country via the Internet. And if our kids can't get their fix of violence that way, they can always jump into some virtual world and kill a couple of cops or innocent by-standards without ever turning on those TV shows with the new parental warnings. Is it any wonder that we are seeing an increase in not only gang violence but also juvenile crime in general? Our society is teaching kids to deny empathy because that cyber person you just murdered is not real. Personally I think this is why our kids find it so interesting to upload their own violent acts on the Internet… they have associated themselves with the “painless” cyber world where there are no broken bones, no grieving families or kids left without fathers to play ball with them.
Have we bred a generation of cyborgs without feelings or emotion? This year I have been simply appalled at the students who have no sense of remorse after they are suspended for fighting on campus. Perhaps it is time to use the 1st Amendment for it’s intended purpose and “CENSOR” what we are feeding our children. And, for all of you that reply "Parents should make these decisions." The problem with that logic, is the ones that need to protect their children... won't do it! So, the rest of us live in fear of the actions of the bad apples on this new heroin. Note to self, when they begin building arenas so that they can watch the lions eat Christians… move to Mars.
