What the Statuses Say

Two friends posted the following as their Facebook status:

"When I was a kid I didn't have an XBox or Wii, there was this thing called a catapult. My curfew was the street lights and mom didn't call my cell, she yelled "time to come in." I played outside with friends, not online. If I didn't eat what my mom made me then I didn't eat. Social networking happened on the corner with all my friends. Repost if you drank water out of a hose and survived."

Of course there will be variations of this as you say what you had when you were a child, example I had my imagination and my hands to be creative instead of an XBox and Wii. We did have video games but those came later and weren't as great as my imagination.

I don't think it funny the way children are being socialised. I think this method of "socialization" is very anti-social. How many times have you texted, bbmed, skyped, Facebook chat or sent an msn message to someone a few feet away from you or in the same house? Many people prefer virtual interactions to real live ones. We've lost track of how to interact with persons in the flesh and not behind a computer screen.

How many 7 year olds do you know with a cell phone? And the excuse the parents give you are to know where the child was. It's funny when you hear people in their 20s like me talking when I was 7 there was no cell phone to ask where are you? There were instructions given to the child saying after school go to your grandfather's house and wait there until I come from work. Or come to the office after work. I remember when I first moved in with my dad. Unknowingly he noted the time I came into the office on the first day I came to meet him. And for many days after that I came around the same time give or take 2 - 3 minutes. One day I came 10 minutes late (I made a detour through town) and he said how comes it took you longer to get here today? Where did you go? It hadn't clicked that he knew the time I came in, but from then I knew if I made detours I had to run! Okay no, I'm just joking. I knew he had his eye out for me. If I got there late I had a proper excuse and most times I didn't get there late. What ever happened to those days of giving a child instructions and the child knowing that they need to carry those out and in a timely fashion?

I understand that technology is a vital part of our lives but there are so many children that can't live without it. Where's the imagination? How much fun can you have if I gave you a cardboard box? At my (young) age of 23 I can have a lot of fun with a cardboard box. Can you?

What do you think about the status and the way in which people are socialized?