Pete Hamill Quotes

Television has changed the American child from an irresistable force to an immovable object.

I think what's at risk is kids losing touch with being a kid. Being a kid is being defined differently than it was when you didn't have all this stuff you could put in front of your face.

Today's kids aren't taking up arms against their parents; they're too busy texting them.

I don't like games. You're robbing the precious time of children to be children. They need to be in touch with the real world more.

When I grew up, there was no TV, nothing. The guitar could be my whole life. The kids today have Internet and TV and games and all that stuff.

These days young kids don't have any place to form an epic adventure. It's more often in front of the TV screen or a laptop. That's very hard on them. They're being taught daily unsocial skills. Facebook is an unsocial skill. It's so sad.

Kids aren't growing up with a sense of television as the aspirational place for their ideas.

When I was a kid, I would come home from school, throw my bag, go out to play. My daughter comes home from school, throws her bag, goes to play, but sitting in front of the computer because their definition of play has changed. They don't go out to play. They play on the computer with their friends.

I did not, like my children and people today, grow up with television as part of my life.

With everything that you can imagine at our fingertips, many of the social interactions that help tie people together in a community have faded away. Are communities traditionally built on relationships, trust and familiarity a thing of the past?

I had a book of essays out in 1997 in which I talked about the increasing virtuality of our lives. I've always been afraid of that in my own life.

I know when I grew up, it was, if it was daylight outside, get outside. Well, now, with the technological age of computers and everything, everyone's inside virtually going everywhere they want to go, virtually having relationships, virtually traveling across the neighborhood, virtually going to that island.

I don't think children themselves have changed that much. It's the world that has changed.

When I was a boy, there were three influences on children. The school, the family, and the church. Now there is a fourth---television.

Kids are growing up with a bombardment of information through technology.

I think our kids live an extraordinarily different life than what I lived growing up. Pretty much everything about their life is different than mine was.

More and more in today's world, the opportunity to imagine and play with friends is compromised by the passive consumption of digital media and the limitations inherent in structured computer games.

If we could have seen through the televisions, we would probably have seen many a child grow up.

It's easy to look at kids sitting around a campfire looking at their phones and to think, 'What a shame.' But I think they're going to be more advanced in terms of communication than my generation.

The '80s were a really different time for kids.Technology has changed so much of how we stay in touch and keep tabs on people.

My oldest grew up on Disney, but my youngest is all about Snapchat and YouTube.

Lunchtime and recess, that was a big part for me growing up. I think it's important for kids to have that.

The kids have got their iPads, but they prefer to get out climbing trees and coming out with me. That's the kind of learning I want them to have: experiences.

I feel like kids are getting more and more used to communicating through a glass screen than they are face-to-face, and that worries me a little.

Do I think technology is bad? No. I think it's wonderful that the world is so connected now. But I think, as a result, childhood ends a little earlier.