Have Phones Replaced Toys?

It was a Saturday night, right before dinner was served, my family went to Jersey to visit my 5 year old cousin, on his special day.

“Talk to me kid,” *no response*

“Hello?” *no response*

Why do children in this day and age get an iPad or an iPhone instead of a doll, or even a mini oven to bake slightly tasteful cakes? My childhood was surrounded by millions of TY babies and the aroma of easy-bake treats.

Almost every Saturday, my mother and I baked a mini cake in the Easy-Bake Oven. Lack of communication and or family time, as a child, can turn into a child having little or no social skills. Social skills stem from, simply, playing with dolls. Consisting of bringing your dolls to a fake party, having them talk to each other by switching up your tone. Staging dialogue between two characters, practicing conversations and communication, that is the start of one’s intelligence.

Is it that societal standards, made it almost impossible for a child to be fulfilled with receiving something as simple as a doll? As a child, dolls were not considered to be simple, it was the ultimate gift to get. The ultimate gift now is the biggest Apple screen you can get for your child.  

“Parents tend to provide their kids with technology as a distraction. There were multiple occasions when I was on the train and I’ve seen parents give their kids their phones to stop them from crying. This is unacceptable, discipline your kids,” exclaimed Khris Jasper, an art major at Frank Sinatra School of the Arts (FSSA).

I can’t imagine having a phone at five years old. Every time I was upset, my mom would sing me a song. Children now go on their iPads until they go to sleep. Every night my mom would sing me a song, and till this day I remember the sweet monotone of her voice calming me down, putting me in a deep slumder. This unforgettable memory will stay with me forever, as it greatly affected my life.

“Conversations now, in my generation stem from our past, so many good memories with certain details about dolls, toys, and tv shows we all had incommon. In the future people will have nothing to look back at,” said Evthoxia Zamagias an FSSA film major.

Most children spend a great amount of time on their iPads, causing them zero interaction with actual toys. Generations of various popular toys will eventually die down because kids aren’t using them anymore.

“The internet is scary, there are so many things that children should not see. They are exposed to various amounts of bad influential components. The internet has a way of becoming apart of your life, and this shouldn’t happen until you have matured,” says Cyndia Moesly an art major at FSSA.

As an example, Youtube is an unsafe website for many kids because once a child click’s on one video it leads them to the next, safe content can turn inappropriate in the matter of two videos. There should be restrictions on the internet when it is being used by a child.

Norburto Formonte, a college student living in Brooklyn, NY, has a very strong opinion on children that own iPads.

“Most children from my generation did there homework and then went outside to play, now they are lazy, less active, and drained from being on there screens all day long,” explained Norburto.

Most children that are glued to their screens develop mental health problems such as anxiety, depression, and loneliness and according to Alex Delmar-Morgan, a journalist whoe writes for the Independent, health advisors have even started to warn parents. It’s time to get serious.

– by Ally Montana ’19