BBC NEWS | UK | Children 'damaged' by materialism
It's only one poll of course but it does illustrate one of the major reasons my wife and I decided to leave the UK. Of course, moving to North America doesn't might not be an obvious choice, but it's not actually the children we wanted to leave behind. It was the adults.
The article talks about what childhood should be and how it shouldn't include commercial sales techniques. I agree but would add that, not being a parent myself, what I see is that children are becoming 'adults' at an earlier age. So what is the Children's market? I know there are 'official' opinions of this but for me it's looking like 12 years old is the cut-off.
This dropping in age of course means that children seem to become adults earlier and earlier, which means there are more of those adults I mentioned I wanted to leave behind. More elegant writers can discuss the merits/problems of materialism but for me it's fairly straight forward. If children are growing up to be more and more material there is a huge risk that they will be more and more superficial at the same time.
We live in a complicated world which DOES require adults to think more deeply about what they do, what it means for their families and for wider society. With more and more children becoming less able to do this, the future direction of society becomes more and more worrying. To me this means that those of us who are adults NOW, need to act NOW, take responsibility NOW and give the children a world which might actually be worth protecting when they become adults.
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Tags: materiality, children, commericalism, society
