The kids and I had a movie night last night. I made them watch one I enjoyed as a kid, Disney's Swiss Family Robinson. They mostly liked it. It has just enough action and adventure to entertain even modern instant-gratification kids. But during a few sequences when the characters would dare to have conversations, the kids' attention would immediately start to drift. I had to tell them to hang on, there's a good part coming up - some animal fun, or explosions, or some pirate will fall off a cliff.
Back in my day we didn't have instant everything. No cell phones or internet. Microwaves were the new thing, but they took longer to cook stuff then. These days we take offense if a web page takes more than 4 seconds to load. TV commercials flash images in strobe-light fashion while blaring fast paced music or voice-overs. I worry sometimes whether my kids will be stuck with the attention span of a gnat. You can try to limit TV, computer, video game time etc., but the cultural influences are all around us. They aren't entertained by things like good old Mr. Rogers re-runs. He sits too still and talks too calmly and peacefully, I guess.
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