Children’s Pastimes Today And Yesterday

By Author: Jason Taylor
Total Articles: 2
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For centuries if not millennia the children of the world were playing the same things – ragdolls, a ball, or just running on the streets chasing one another. This pastime evolution was more of less steady and very slow. Playtime activities did not change their form or essence much through time. However, at some point in history, an evolution occurred in the way children entertain themselves. Arguably, the key force that changed children’s pastime is technology. Technology divided the history of children’s pastime into yesterday and today. Roughly, this dividing line can be drawn on the decade when digital innovations became a public domain and entered personal use. When the era of personal computers and mobile devices started, the era of material playthings came to a decline. Hence, while yesterday children were playing with each other and real toys, now the main toy that substitutes all others is a digital gadget.
The digital revolution divided the world into yesterday and today. The pre-digital era can be hereby regarded as “yesterday.” Yesterday, children liked to play outside. A street – be it a busy city ...
... street or a dusty village road – was once an alley of childhood activities. It was noisy from the child laughter and shouting as the children were playing touch-and-run or other physically interactive games. They played with wooden, plastic and stuffed toys. Also, yesterday, the young minds liked to talk to each other, sharing interests and secrets, playing verbal games, and discussing school or boys/girls. In contrast, “today” is the era of virtual reality and, respectively, virtual pastimes for children. The pioneer of the virtual gaming was a Tetris. Children stopped wanting to assemble Lego and preferred the falling building “blocks” on the little screen. Yet, that was the very beginning of playtime digitalization. The more developed and accessible technologies became, the more they attracted children into the ever growing world of the virtual reality. Soon – instantly, in evolutionary terms – children started talking to each other in chat rooms and then through video calls on their phones. They stopped going outdoors as often as the previous generation used to, and preferred to sit in their rooms, with gadgets in their hands. In the 2010s, tablets topped the rating of the presents most wanted by children. Technologization also changed other toys and pastimes children used to like. For example, instead of a plush puppy of yesterday, modern children prefer Teksta Puppy. Rather than passing their time taking care of a real goldfish in a tank, children today opt for the ‘Robo Fish’. Instead of riding a bicycle, children now operate digital game cars. In lieu of playing football with each other, boys play FIFA virtually (Curtis). The list may go on. The bottom line is that technology has brought many physical activities into the virtual realm, be it for better or for worse.
Now it would be insightful to try and locate what changed, what remained the same, and what changed only the form while the essence remained the same, or vice versa. The same is children’s interest in playing with things. If gadgets can be viewed as toys, then one may say nothing changed in the children’s pastime, in the most general understanding, as children keep seeking entertaining activities. Perhaps the most evident change is the time spent indoors versus outdoors. Children do spend more time at home today than yesterday. Even if their parents stimulate their interest in the outdoors pastime, the children often end up sitting on a park bench or play yard wholly consumed by their gadgets. In other words, even while being outside, the child does not interact with the outer world or other children and is still absorbed in the virtual reality. In this compromise between the childhood habits the parents had and those their child wants, the only benefit is that the latter can have some fresh air. As for social interaction or interaction with nature or urban spaces, it is almost impossible if a child goes out with his or her gadget. There is also something that remained yet changed its essence. Children now have hundreds of “friends” in the social media compared to a few real ones yesterday. Analyzing this trend, one may argue that quantity overpowered and substituted quality. Even though children have hundreds of online friends, they may not know what friendship means or how to be a real friend. Friendship is degraded to a number on a social network profile and devalued in terms of essence. A child is unable even to memorize the online “friends’” names let alone knowing their interests or spending time with them (Alexander). Thus, even though modern children can connect with or “befriend” anyone, not many if any of those can be called real friends.
Some technologies attempt to bridge the digital divide that opened up between the children of yesterday and those of today. One of the examples is Chromville. Chromville is an app that connects the “21st century tech and the old school popular children’s pastime” (“21st Century Tech”). By “tech” the authors of the article mean first and foremost the tablet, and by the “old school” pastime they mean the coloring book. Indeed, children of the past used to like the activity of choosing color pencils to fill in the outlined forms of fruits, animals, cartoons, and various scenes from life. Today, the interest towards this “paper” activity has decreased so dramatically that not many children know what a coloring book is, and even fewer want to use it. For modern children, it is no longer fast, interactive, or entertaining enough. Chromville tries to make it appealing again. In a nutshell, Chromville brings coloring images to life via augmented reality. For entertaining purposes, the app also has a story that aims to stimulate children to take pencils into their hands. Allegedly, in the Chromville world, the inhabitants are losing power because their colors drained. Thus, children play saviors by coloring them. The article authors state: “It looks like the old colouring books may see a comeback with a little help from modern technology. As technology is known for making the old obsolete, it’s nice to see it taking the old with it this time” (“21st Century Tech”). Yet, the reasonable fears exist that even in this activity children do the drawings on paper only because without them the app would not work.
In conclusion, while yesterday children were playing with each other and with real toys, the main modern toy that substitutes all others is a mobile device. Even despite the attempts of technology to bridge the divide, there is no coming back to some pastimes. The children of yesterday played in the real world. Today’s children start to forget yesterday’s activities. The children of tomorrow may not even know about them.

The results of studying operations research and mathematical programming, their models and methods for substantiating management decisions and mathematical modeling of economic processes from Jason Taylor, a software engineer at the Faculty of Academic Sciences and Cybernetics and developer of https://qualityessay.com/

The activity Qualityessay.com is famous in the creation of modern academic writing and its subordinate scientific structures, which laid the foundation for the formation of education and science.