November 19th, 2008
DEAR STRAIGHT TALK: Every morning I drive my granddaughter to high school and sit there in traffic observing all the kids: backpacks slung over shoulders, every hand gripping a cell phone. I’ve been in the newspaper business 46 years, starting right out of high school, and I’d like to ask what young people today read. I know they’re on the Internet, but are they surfing, or actually reading? Or is it mainly social networking? And, apart from school assignments, do they read newspapers, magazines, and books?
Barbara Hale, Features Editor, Merced Sun-Star, Merced CA
Shelby, 16, Auburn CA
I don’t read. I just don’t like it. Even Harry Potter I skipped. Sometimes on MySpace, I read a “fun fact” or gossip, but I’m not into politics or business. I have better things to do, and between homework, sports, and my social life, there’s no time.
Taylor, 19, Placerville CA
I don’t usually read. I wasn’t a good reader through school so I got turned off. I didn’t even read Harry Potter. On rare occasions I read magazines from the supermarket checkout lines, but news doesn’t interest me because everything is spun and it’s overwhelming not knowing what to believe. Online, I strictly social network and get entertainment via YouTube.
Lara, 17, Fair Oaks CA
Before I became socially obsessed, I read practically a book a day. I was raised without a TV, so books were how I learned and amused myself. I especially love Steinbeck, Dickens, and Austen with their good human values. But now with school, sports, and socializing, I prefer personal-development books because you can skip around and still learn. In tenth grade I lived with my dad in Europe and Europeans think Americans are really dumb because we are clueless about world affairs. That motivated me! On the Internet, I social network but I avoid celebrity gossip. I get news from my email home page feed and the ORF, an Austrian site with detailed world news.
Hannah, 17, Auburn CA
I didn’t used to like to read, but recently I started Hemingway’s Farewell to Arms. My mom keeps thinking it’s assigned reading! I don’t read magazines or newspapers at all. On MySpace, I read election news, but generally, I don’t read politics. It’s embarrassing, but my friends and I go to a celebrity website for guilty pleasure. It’s meaningless, but that’s what we do.
Lennon, 22, Fair Oaks CA
Aside from school reading, I spend about 30 minutes a day reading things like Popular Mechanics, Rolling Stone, the Sacramento Bee. I also read regularly for pleasure, more than most of my peers, maybe because I had no TV growing up and still don’t. Right now I’m reading Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. I use the Internet for research and social networking, but I hate reading online; it physically drains me.
Geoff, 23, Redding CA
I, and many of my peers, use http://www.google.com/reader/view/, a customizable news feed that pulls from thousands of newspapers, magazines, and online publications. During college, and now, after work, I come home and see all the day’s politics, economy, technology, philosophy, video game news, etc. It’s like reading 12 newspapers a day.
DEAR BARBARA: There’s a picture for you, although I believe the panel has proportionally more “readers” than American youth in general. This supports a 2007 National Endowment for the Arts compendium study that correlates reading for pleasure, regardless of income, with political activism, cultural participation (such as writing for this column), even regular exercise. The average 15- to 24-year-old, according to the study, spends 2.5 hours per day watching TV and 7 minutes reading. Half the young people between 18 and 24 never read for pleasure, and only a third of high school seniors read at proficiency, the level needed to read the newspaper. The cost to society is enormous.
Comment on this column »
January 4th, 2006
Dear Readers: Last week I wrote about humans having four bodies, a concept I teach in my teen classes. Today, I will continue with gleanings on the remaining three bodies: the mental body, emotional body, and spiritual body.
The mental body: Since it is part of the physical body, if we want our brain to think well, it needs to be fed well. The link between diet and intelligence is a no-brainer.
Likewise, the brain needs mental exercise. Our frontal lobes are the most elite couch potatoes in history. By age 18, the average child has spent more time in front of a TV screen than at school. A recent literacy test of 19,000 college graduates “appalled” researchers in that only 31% could read and extrapolate from a complex text. There hasn’t been this much brain drain since eating lead paint went out of style.
A couch potato is a good analogy for the body, but for the brain, it’s more accurately a bombing range. Kaboom! Boom! Boom! Having difficulty concentrating? It is essential that we get a grip on “infomania”, the abuse of “always-on” technology. A recent study by the Institute of Psychiatry showed that subjects who were “always on” (texting, phoning, emailing, gaming, wired to music, internet, TV) had a drop in IQ more than double that of subjects stoned on pot.
This is your brain on drugs. ADD and ADHD are the tip of the iceberg.
Advice: Use technology wisely. Keep the young as unplugged as possible.
The emotional body: My gleaning in this realm is what I call the “missing parent syndrome”. In working with teens, the most troubled generally have at least one missing parent. It’s one of those sad things you can practically bet on. Missing parents fall in many categories: the parent has died, the parent gave the child up for adoption, the parent left the scene prior to the child’s birth, the parent was there but is now somewhere (you’re pretty sure he’s alive), the parent lives in a known location but rarely makes contact, the parent is chronically ill or disabled, the parent is in prison, the parent is “checked out” due to drugs or alcohol, the parent is almost never home, the parent is sperm #20576 (really, really not home).
Whether the missing parent can be blamed for their absence is beside the point, what matters is they are missing.
Divorce is not the crime Dr. Laura makes it out to be. Indeed, it’s horrible for kids, and should be a last resort, but it’s nowhere close to the chronic trauma of having a missing parent. If, after divorcing, both parents continue to be present in the lives of their children, there is not a missing parent issue.
You want to keep your kids intact? Stay in their lives. Regardless of your faults or how bad you think you screwed up, stay with them—or stay in regular contact with them. No matter what your story is, there’s something about you they need.
The spiritual body: Now recovered, a woman in her early twenties came to me for help with depression and thoughts of suicide. When I asked her why she wanted to take her life she said, “If all there is to life is what you’re ordering at Starbucks and what kind of jeans you’re buying at the mall, what’s the point?” This woman was experiencing a massive spiritual crisis. Among her peers, all she saw was rampant materialism which left her empty and cold.
We are a society of work addicts. Work, spend, sleep; work, spend, sleep. (Try saying that three times real fast…)
There is a reason every culture had their Sabbath or holy day. The spiritual body needs its own day to regenerate and reconnect.
Spiritual connection comes in many shapes and colors: it can be through nature, church, family, friends, a true love, it could be from service, athletics, music, art, caring for a yard or garden. It can come from rest, prayer, and contemplation.
Be a good workaholic and schedule it in. That’s right. It’s your new job.
Comment on this column »
June 15th, 2005
Dear Straight Talk: I read your column a couple weeks ago where you said that the easiest way to raise children is to get rid of the television. I’m grateful to hear someone speak so frankly about such a touchy subject and I have a story that supports your claim.
A few years ago, when my friends’ only child, “Alex”, was 13, he became completely unmanageable. He wouldn’t obey the house rules, his grades fell, his deportment was deplorable, and he isolated himself—mainly in front of the television. My friends felt the TV was responsible for his lax ways and since they weren’t addicted to it themselves, they gave Alex a daily TV time limit. When he couldn’t stick to it, they pulled the plug.
Within three months, this kid was entirely different. Where once was a sullen, indoor boy, there was now a social and adventurous person. It reminded me of Tom Sawyer the way he got interested in the outdoors. If more parents would give TV the boot, they would make life so much simpler for themselves. It was amazing to witness because all they did was get rid of the TV. They made no other changes.—V.C.F., Davis, CA
Dear V.C.F.: Thank you for writing. Nothing gets the point across better than experience. I have a friend who uses the term “NDD”—nature deficit disorder—to describe what happens when kids spend too much time in front of a screen. I’m glad Alex got the opportunity to overcome NDD and I commend his parents for following their instincts. It takes a lot of guts to do what they did.
Comment on this column »
