Modern Childhood Quotes

Before we sent kids to computer camps and told them they were having a good time, there was imagination among the human species.

What joy and adventure the youngsters of today are missing as they sit indoors mucking about with computer games and videos!

My kids live in a different environment than I did as a child. They've got privileges I didn't have as a child, but they have disadvantages. They don't see their mum as much. They see the threats that one gets. They live in a house where they've got panic buttons, and I've had to teach them about safety.

When my son, James, was doing homework for school, he would have five or six windows open on his computer, Instant Messenger was flashing continuously, his cell phone was constantly ringing, and he was downloading music and watching the TV over his shoulder. I don’t know if he was doing any homework, but he was running an empire as far as I could see, so I didn’t really care.

Children don't run around outside as much as they did. They sit in front of computer games.

A child of today can detect a lie quicker than the wisest adult of two decades ago. When I want to know what is true, I ask my children.

Childhood in large parts of modern Britain, at any rate, has been replaced by premature adulthood, or rather adolescence. Children grow up very fast but not very far. That is why it is possible for 14 year olds now to establish friendships with 26 year olds - because they know by the age of 14 all they are ever going to know.

Kids today know way more than you think they do, with the Internet and 500 TV channels.

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.

Modern children were considerably less innocent than parents and the larger society supposed, and postmodern children are less competent than their parents and the society as a whole would like to believe. . . . The perception of childhood competence has shifted much of the responsibility for child protection and security from parents and society to children themselves.

Kids don't know what life was like without cell phones.

Many kids, particularly in lower-income families, would actually benefit from more structured activities. Plenty of children, especially teenagers, thrive on a busy schedule. But just as other trappings of modern childhood, from homework to technology, are subject to the law of diminishing returns, there is a danger of overscheduling the young.