In mid-century America, childhood was defined by innocence and unstructured wonder, walking to school, playing outside until dinner, fixing a bike chain, and sharing a soda with friends on a summer afternoon. A child’s world was small, human-scaled, and rooted in family, neighborhood, and daily ritual. Parents worried about scraped knees, not screen time. Teachers talked to children, not algorithms.
Fast-forward to today, and that world has vanished swept away in a tide of digitalization, hyper-sexualized marketing, and nonstop social pressure. The new American childhood is a strange simulation of adulthood, where kids are plugged into global networks but detached from their own communities.
The smartphone has become the new pacifier, the new playground, and, tragically, the new prison. According to Common Sense Media, the average American teenager now spends more than seven hours a day on screens not for school, but for entertainment and social media. Even children as young as 8 are scrolling through algorithm-driven feeds designed to mold their thinking, shorten their attention spans, and addict them to validation loops disguised as “likes” and “hearts.”
https://samueleburns.substack.com/p/let-kids-be-kids-again-the-vanishing
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