TV’s in Cars and Kids

When I was growing up we would take long trips to places we hadn't been to before and some we had been to before.  We only had black and white TVs at home and had to go to the movies to see color.  Of course we had a radio in the car so we could listen to music.  As we rode along we played games that mom would come up with.  Sometimes we watched the fantastic panoramas that flashed by us.  We missed nothing on those trips.  We also were awed by people we would see.  We had a rich source of entertainment surrounding us. It was a wonderful world we loved back then.  Each season played it's act out before us.  The wonders of the landscape always awed us.  There wasn't anything lovelier for us to see.  Todays children don't get that opportunity because they have miniature TV's tucked into the head rests of the seats in front of them.  A parent has slipped a DVD into the player up front and the kids have plugged their headphones in.  In effect they are tuning out the world.  The parents do this so they don't have to hear the child asking if they're there yet.  Or maybe they don't have the intelligence to encourage the children to get out of the cocoon they have trapped the kid in at home. 

The television is the new nanny for many kids and parents.  They place a child in front of the TV and leave them there for the whole day as they do adult things.  These children are being short changed. They are not getting the chance to explore or be amazed by something as simple as a herd of deer standing in a meadow near the road.  The ability to understand the world is not being given to them. 

They are living in a video bubble created by the fear of the parents that the kid might actually learn something about the world.  The beauty of the world is ignored and the fake world of the video generation is made to look real.  What we are turning out is video idiots who don't know the difference between what video and reality is.