Modern life poisons kids

Via the Sun

KIDS are depressed because they eat too much fast food, play too many computer games and school is too competitive.

More than 100 teachers, psychologists, children's authors and experts have today written a letter to curb the 'death of childhood'.

They are asking the government and parents to start talking about ways to improve children's development.

The group, which includes author Philip Pullman and children's laureate Jacqueline Wilson, say young brains cannot adapt to the effects of rapid technological and cultural change the way adults can.

The signatories say it is clear the mental health of many kids has been affected leading to the rise of drug use, violence and self-harm.

Research by professor Michael Shayer at King's College, London, shows that during cognitive tests 11-year-olds were on average between two and three years behind where they were 15 years ago.

The anxious authors write: "They still need what developing human beings have always needed, including real food (as opposed to processed 'junk'), real play (as opposed to sedentary, screen-based entertainment), first-hand experience of the world they live in, and regular interaction with the real-life, significant adults in their lives.

They also need time. In a fast-moving, hyper-competitive culture, today's children are expected to cope with an ever earlier start to formal schoolwork and an overly academic test-driven primary curriculum.

They are pushed by market forces to act and dress like mini-adults and exposed via the electronic media to material that would have been considered unsuitable for children even in the very recent past."

Jacqueline Wilson said: "We are not valuing childhood. I speak to children at book signings and they ask me how I go through the process of writing and I say, 'Oh you know, it's just like then you play imaginary games and you simply write it all down'.

All I get is blank faces. I don't think children use their imaginations anymore."