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When Boys Stop Reading, Something Else Fills the Void
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this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2026
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My parents did not allow a TV in our home until I was 8 or maybe 9. And even then I was only allowed very short viewing times during the week days and week-ends. I had books and comics, toys, board games and actual friends to play with, at home or, brace yourself, outside and without any adult supervision.
Sure that happened many decades ago, in the previous century. But it did not kill me, far from it.
edit: The key thing is that my parents too had other activities than watching a screen. Things I watched them doing and that I naturally tried to imitate.
The issue today, is that
is a luxury many don't have, at least not the way it was.
The other kids have devices, internet, etc and that's how they connect, so if you aren't meeting them there you're getting left out.
I don't say this to suggest you throw up your hands and give up, but it's a real complication to abstinence only plans.
My kid is just entering this stage and it's really tough.
I understand your point but friendship was never a luxury, it was the one thing that was available to all, no matter their social status and income.
What it was the repetition of actually meeting other people and spending enough time with them, learning to know them. That was also what helped us all learn to... socialize outside of the 'close family bound'.
At least as important, and obviously in such short supply nowadays, it also taught us to accept as something OK that our friends needed not to be perfect, and neither did we had to be perfect.
The exact things screens seem to have taken away from younger gens. A real shit deal for those kids, in my humble opinion
I think we agree! My point is that if all the other kids are burried in screens and social media, it doesn't matter if you/your kid are not, because the opportunity to connect is much smaller.
Sire there's other kids that aren't lost in screens, and that's great, but they are becoming a endangered species. As a parent it's hard to put your kid into that place.
I think education and parenting is the right solution, teaching kids how to use these things safely and effectively, but with limits. Movements like the no phones until 18 or whatever only work if everyone is bought in and that isn't going to happen.
We do, 100%. This is indeed a real huge issue. But as an adult I still think each kid should be given the opportunity to get enough time off screen (not all the time, but at least as much as they spend in front of a screen), even doing that will have a real/true/painful cost for them, and for the parents. Those kids get one chance to be kids and to use that time to grew in an as... balanced/well rounded manner as possible (sorry, I'm not a native English speaker).
As for being one of the few kids doing that and being isolated... obviously, I have no ready-made solution, beside maybe looking for similarly worried parents (and they all should be) and to get to know one another, in order to let the kids spend time together.
There's a recent documentary about this - Toy Story 5 🙃
I lost touch with that franchise after the first movie, but I'll check it out. Sounds like an interesting concept to be working through in a movie setting.
The problem is see, especially in my area, is that all of the places I used to go as a kid have been paved over and developed. Now they're constantly bitching about all these kids on ebikes, as if we weren't tearing up the woods and farm fields on dirtbikes when we were their age. We built a world hostile to children and somehow expect the children to be content living in safety bubbles.
100%. Which is a tragedy>. All of us adults, not just the parents, are ruining the kids childhood (and therefore deeply damaging their soon to be adulthood) under the umbrella of protecting their safety.