Out of the Woods: Today's Kids Can't See the Forest for the MTV

In the column titled "Out of the Woods: Today's Kids Can't see the Forest for the MTV" of the Washington Post, writer Joel Achenbach brings up the idea that today's children "stay indoors too much, are alienated from nature, and are going a little crazy."  With the new technology that has surfaced society, Joel claims that it is hard for parents, or care givers to expect children to want to go outside and be "bored", or stay inside and play with their awesome new Nintendo game. Joel recalls his life as a child and how like most kids we were forced to be outside, simply because there was nothing else to do. He claims that children who grew up before the Internet Phase were more "in tune with nature" than children of the 21st century. Joel makes funny comments regarding how intense some parents can be with trying to get their children to drop their cool new video games and toys and go outside. Joel also says that as parents, "at some point, you'll deliver the entire canned speech how, as a child, you were always building forts, exploring Forrest trails, roasting squirrels over a fire and so on, the classic Huck Finn sort of existence." - when maybe we exaggerate a bit. I believe that Joel does a great job using comedy to explain to parents that it is okay if our children can't or don't enjoy ALL the things we did as children, but also does a horrible job really explaining in depth reasons why children may enjoy staying inside. He also seems to be all fore nature, but makes fun of being outdoors so much that it becomes unclear at times what his stance truly is. Also, he starts the paper off talking about how our children are "going a little crazy" from staying indoors but delivers no facts about perhaps children with attention disorders, or learning disorders from being over exposed to digital media/games/television. I think that with less jokes and more facts, and fully sticking to his argument on why children need nature, this article would have been not only more effective, but not taken as just some lazy guy writing about how he doesn't seem to mind his children sitting on their butts all day. Hopefully Joel will let his children go outdoors and establish some exercise, because their father had a hard time exercising his ability to present a good argument.