The End of Play

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Long gone are the days of playing kickball and flying kites in the park on a Saturday afternoon. Children of today's society would most likely prefer staying inside playing Guitar Hero on their Xboxes or watching the latest episodes of their favorite television show during their free time. The time for imaginative and physical play is slowly being pushed to the side as the years pass by, and room is being made for empty, redundant television shows and video games. The essence of childhood play is gradually diminishing as today's society encourages the idea of growing up as quickly as possible. In the process of allowing children to indulge in as much television and video games as they please, the problem of childhood obesity is introduced since outdoor play and physical activities are not of great importance to today's children anymore. Children should have a restricted amount of time on how much they are allowed to watch television or play video games so that they learn the important benefits of outdoor and imaginative play, ultimately resulting to a healthier lifestyle.

In Marie Winn's article titled “The End of Play”, she discusses the topic of how children today are seeming to lose the sense of being a child. Compared to children of previous generations, the children of today's society have parallel interests and occupations of modern day adults. (Winn 1). They seem to be losing touch with their inner child and skipping straight to adulthood. A child a couple of decades ago would be easily distinguished from an adult due to their interests, but since then television and video games have replaced the imaginative play that children once enjoyed. (Winn 2). In Winn's article, a parent of two school-age children mentions that s...

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... relationships to be shaped effectively. (Winn 29).

The issues of losing the essence of being a child, the encouragement of obesity and the inability to function socially have one common factor that ties them together. They are all negatively influenced by the presence of television and video games. The regulation of television and video games has not been brought to attention until recently, but is it too late to reverse the effects it is having on the present generation of children? Not much can be done to undo the leniency society has allowed for the past couple decades except to educate the children and implement more restrictions on what is being broadcasted and marketed towards their age group. The children are a very important fundamental to society because they are, after all, the ones who will run our future and generations after the next.

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