Personal Narrative: Where Have All The Children Gone

Where Have All The Children Gone

Socialization amongst the young has been severely damaged by technology and online media such as Facebook and Twitter. Alleys and parks that once contained multiple groups of children now seem quiet and often dissolute. Even at home children have less peer interaction, they get their social impute through text messages and the internet. The games they play together are often done from separate households. Game rooms, ice-cream parlors, bowling alleys, and gyms are often lacking the youth who used to seek each other out in the past. This will decay the health of socialization of our youth, and even weaken us as a society, if allowed to continue.

I am particularly fond of alleys. I grew up playing football in the alley, or just meeting with my friends there. My first love was initiated in an alley. I remember old women meeting for coffee in the alleys. When driving through the alleys of my rural hometown recently, I got a very lonely feeling. They were quiet and desolate. The parks were the same way, a place where we used to play baseball seemed only to have organized sports going on in them. This means that the people playing them, were often adults, and they were paying to play. Alleys joined my community together, and were a safe place for children to meet and play.

Getting out of doors and engaging in physical means of socialization has dropped with the introduction of technology in our children’s lives. I know that our diet has a lot to do with this; however, children of the past engaged in more physical activities. Take away the x-box and other tech dependant activities, and children will find each other for a game of basketball, or