A few weeks ago, a gaggle of 110 academics and professionals wrote a letter to the Daily Telegraph (as a teaser for the DT's "hold onto childhood" campaign) condemning the modern world and its potential effects on the nation's youth. "As professionals and academics from a range of backgrounds, we are deeply concerned at the escalating incidence of childhood depression and children's behavioural and developmental conditions," the letter began. It continued with a bizarre call for action that seems inherently out of step with today's culture.
My first thought about the letter (full text here) was that it demonstrates that these people - authors, researchers, professionals - have fallen into the classic trap: they don't "get" youth. They don't understand youth culture. They don't recognise that youth is a powerful population which has its own rules, regulations and autonomy. The letter-writers call for a dramatic re-think of contemporary society, with its "fast-moving hyper-competitive culture", its "ever more rapid technological and cultural change" and its "market forces", yet is utterly unreflexive in how they - as part of this society - have helped to create it. And how their parents felt the same way.
My second thought was that they condemn the trappings of today's society - fast food, electronic screen-based entertainment, and an over-protective culture of control - yet do they send their children out to play or do they keep them satisfied, responding to the "pester power" people were bemoaning only a few years ago, and request that they stay inside lest they fall prey to a real or imagined external harm?
With regards to the electronic entertainment which they allude to, there is a lack of recognition for the positive mental exercise which games and other interactive pleasures provide, and, as Henry Jenkins at MIT theorises, the escape which players/users experience via these electronic media in a world which doensn't allow them outside the front door in case they meet with an uncontrollable sticky end.
The next day, the DT launched its nominal (propaganda) campaign, and the many comments which readers left were thoughtful and reflected the concerns parents throughout the last centuries have experienced. Many of them considered "respect" to be an issue. Well, youth culture also demands respect.
The deterministic approach which this conglomerate proposes - that culture creates the individual without any agency or self-choice - is a harrowing invective on the world in which these kids, arguably in need of "protection", will grow up.
Sure, stop feeding kids junk, make them go outside and limit their time with mobile phones and computer games. We are responsible for the world which these authors and professionals are so upset by. Instead of passing the buck (and preaching to an audience of the converted, I'm sure), start locally and recognise that this rapidly changing world is exciting, new and full of the possibilities which we enjoyed, when parents were dismayed by the effects of a culture driven mad by the music of the Beatles and corrupted by the messages broadcast by television.
