October CommQuote

Sarah Nardi's comment on the virtual lives of Japanese youth in the November/December (#86) Adbusters on The Virtual/Natural World:

"In his seventh book, Last Child in the Woods, journalist Richard Louv speaks to a young boy who sums up the sentiment of younger generations with one sentence: "I like to play indoors better 'cause that's where all the electrical outlets are." Louv cites several studies-one shows children are better able to identify Japanese cartoon characters than common animals and plants; another reports that the radius from the home which children were able to roam freely was nine times greater in 1970 than today -as evidence of a nature deficit disorder. He argues that disconnecting children from the natural world, through overwrought parenting, urbanization and a reliance on electronic distraction, has resulted in generations of children prone to obesity, depression and attention deficit disorder. Their intellectual, creative and even physical development is stymied by a sedentary existence. Far from striking out into nature and discovering the world and themselves, they are leashed to their home by cords-seemingly as umbilical as they are electrical."--Sarah Nardi