February 2012

Planning, Planning and Planning Some More

What has happened to the spontaneity of childhood?

Something I notice about kids these days and the way they interact is that everything has to be planned. Kids and teens seem to make a lot of firm plans in advance which require their parents and older siblings to drive them to various places. What has happened to the spontaneity of childhood?

I remember as a kid, especially in the warm months, there was no planning. We all just went outside to explore the neighborhood. We would meet up with a friend (who we had to call on the house phone first) or sometimes we would just randomly knock on the person’s door. There was no texting available. Once we had at least one pal in hand we would walk to local parks, schools and pizza shops and see who was around.

Old-fashioned tobacco advertisements

Stanford's correlation between smoking ads and behavior.

I’ve been watching a lot of Mad Men, and on the show, one of the ad men’s most persistent tasks has been making cigarette smoking seem innocuous. You know that everyone understood that putting a burning stick into their mouths was probably not great for their health long before the Surgeon General started issuing those nasty warnings on the packages. In fact, one of the most common ads for cigarettes were statements from doctors saying that they also smoked Lucky Strikes or Camels, and they were doing just fine.