Testimonies of Three Generations Show the Divide in Growing Up with Media
By Tess Farrand, Staff Writer
What did you do to have fun growing up? Was it scootering around the neighborhood? Maybe playing hide and go seek with friends or building a fort in the living room? Whatever your answer might be, children in 2018 have a very different definition of fun.
There’s a video advertisement for the food company Nature Valley that poignantly showcases the vast difference on how generations play. In the video, three generations; grandparents, parents and children, were asked about their childhood. Each person was asked, “When you were a kid, what did you do for fun?”
In the telling three-minute video, viewers hear stark comparisons of leisure activities between the testimonies.
One of the grandparents answered, “We’d go blueberry picking for instance.” Out of the middle generation, one parent responded to the question, “just going out to the field and playing some baseball,” and another reflected on the epic forts she made with companions.
However, when the video zones in on the youngest generation, their answers were quite different. One little girl mentions, “I would die if I didn’t have my tablet,” while another young boy states, “my favorite thing to do in the world is definitely watching videos and playing video games. Those take up so much of my time.”
In the proceeding moments, many children detail their love and obsession with things like email, and binge-watching TV. In response, one mother in the video explains her fears of her son’s behavior. “I feel like he’s missing out on what’s out there in the beautiful world….”
Children today are more concerned with media and digital devices because they’ve never known a world devoid of its influence. While the ad doesn’t tell us anything new about our children’s infatuation with technology, it does a fantastic job of giving viewers insight into the generational divide that we have concerning our engagements with media.
Watch the full video below.
Dr. Ted Baehr highlights this growing problem in his book, The Culture-Wise Family (co-authored by Pat Boone) and urges parents to remain aware of the pitfalls that media may create for upcoming generations. For more resources on topics such a cultivating a media-wise household, click here.
For more articles on similar subjects, click here and here.
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