My article on Innocence Lost

As I look back, say some 20 years back, what comes to my mind is a very free flowing hassle free life, caring parents, cartoon network, outdoor games, evening walks; life was full of energy and fun. No action-packed video games, not even mobile phones, and hence no messaging. Lunch breaks in school was about creative brainstorming or playing outdoors. Talking about sex and adult paraphernalia was a big ‘no no’ and having a love affair, a boy friend or girl friend was a big ‘hush hush’. Recitation, essay writing, painting were a part of students life, and we would also take active part in it to hone our creative abilities. Those activities were really engaging and invigorating. Thus, it comes to me as a shock, when I hear kids between the ages of 7-12 years talking about adult issues, displaying ill-timed maturity. I try, but, it seems in vain, to trace even an iota of innocence in today’s children. Yes, Children are growing up too early these days.

Our society is compressing childhood more and more to where children are not children for very long. We only have 18 years in our entire life to be children. And parents struggle to keep their children innocent. But, unfortunately the present state of our society has stolen away even more of our children’s innocence.

Children are growing up too quickly because of modern life. Pressures of modern life are eroding childhood. Children are growing up too quickly because of a combination of early testing in school, advertising, bad childcare and a reliance on computer games and television. Each time a child graduate from one stage to another, (i.e., crawling- walking, high-school –graduation), there seeps in a little bit excitement as well as sadness. Yes, every parent wants their children to grow up, but then they reminisce about ‘good old’ days. These mixed feelings are normal for all of us. But the important question that needs to be asked is “Are the children growing up too fast emotionally and socially?” We cannot stop their physical growth, but we can affect their emotional and social growth.

Today’s children want to watch TV shows designed for teenagers. They want to watch adult TV shows that contain sex and violence. They are growing increasingly impatient and have to be entertained as they often complain to get bored. Children are losing that wonderful ‘childlike’ sense of wonder about the world, as if they just know it all.

Kids are growing up way too fast. Simple as it sounds, it is much more complicated. Kids with one digit ages are playing video games with all the blood and gore of a rated R film. It’s shocking to find that just 12 year old kids are taking interest and involving themselves in sexual activities.

Looking at this present state of society where children are growing way too fast, it would be a good idea to observe a very interesting trend discovered in recent decades by scientists’, which points towards the biological aspects of it. They say that children are maturing physically at younger ages than in past centuries. Though their reasons are not very well understood, but theories include environmental pollutants and toxins, dietary issues such as excessive use of hormones and drugs in foods, and natural evolutionary forces.

Another important fact worth noting is that children are prone to impulsive, sensation-seeking behavior, so kids seek out more mature forms of stimulation even as parts of the brain mature at uneven rates. Thus, in a culture where the media bombard us with product advertisements and encourages rampant consumerism, it is increasingly difficult for the younger lot to say no. Parents, in the meantime, are busier and busier, making it difficult for them to intervene in their children’s lives, which, definitely interferes with a child’s ability to make good choices. This is leaving kids to make decisions that are not always in their best interests.

The late media theorist and cultural critic Neil Postman argued that childhood -- roughly the period between age 7, when spoken language is mastered, and 17, when written language is mastered -- is disappearing because of the corrosive effects of visual media.

In his book "The Disappearance of Childhood," he argued that TV presents undifferentiated information, making no serious distinctions between child and adult. "We may conclude, then, that television erodes the dividing line between childhood and adulthood in three ways ...: first, because it requires no instruction to grasp its form; second, because it does not make complex demands on either mind or behavior; and third, because it does not segregate its audience".

The result, he wrote, is that "electric media find it impossible to withhold any secrets. Without secrets, of course, there can be no such thing as childhood."

Children are subjected to increasing commercial pressures, they begin formal education earlier than the norm, and they spend ever more time indoors with screen-based technology, rather than in outdoor activity.

Our culture pushes children to act and look like adults at younger and younger ages, and then tells them to slow down and stay in adolescence as long as they want. It’s a mixed message of sorts. On the one hand, grow up and be an adult. And then, on the other hand, slow down and stay like a kid. So, what’s a parent to do?

First, we need to allow our kids to be kids. Obviously, this means guiding them through the milieu of media influences on their lives. But there’s more to it than that. We live in a culture that pressures parents to get their children involved in all kinds of extra-curricular activities to keep them busy and keep them on the fast track to success. Consequently, our children are always in a hurry obsessed with competition and productivity. They end up shouldering adult-like responsibilities even before they reach puberty. And then we wonder why so many kids today suffer from depression. They are growing up too fast and too soon.

Now is the time to move from awareness to action. It is not just parents’ or teachers’, but everyone’s responsibility to challenge policy-making and cultural developments that entice children into growing up too quickly – and to protect their right to be healthy and enjoy joyful natural life. There is an urgent need to ensure that children’s outdoor play and connection to nature are encouraged. There needs to be a banning of all forms of marketing directed at children up to at least age seven. Finally one can safely say that, it becomes imperative for everyone concerned with the erosion of childhood to begin a drive to interrupt the process.