The modern onslaught against childhood ought to inspire the rest of us to do what we can to preserve or reclaim its essential aspects.
T he human race ceases to exist in one of my favorite works of science fiction — sort of.
In Arthur C. Clarke’s novel Childhood’s End, from 1953, benevolent aliens come to Earth, share their technology with humanity, and guide it into a golden age. In classic sci-fi fashion, however, these aliens have an ulterior motive: to shepherd the human race into communion with the “Overmind,” a universe-spanning collective consciousness. This is the next stage of our evolution, and it’s the end of our childhood as a species.
The transition begins with the children born in Earth’s alien-inaugurated golden age. They display psychic powers that baffle their parents. These powers turn out to be early manifestations of the Overmind, of which they become vessels, leaving their parents, the human race, and (eventually) the planet itself behind.
No such fate is in store for the children growing up in America today, as far as I know. (Not being a vessel for the Overmind, however, my perceptive powers are limited.) But changes in American life just since the time of my own upbringing make me worried that childhood, as it has been understood and experienced for decades, even centuries, is coming to an end. The consequences could be dire — for all of us.
I’m just old enough to have had a youth that, aside from certain surface elements, did not differ all that much from that of prior generations, even of my parents. Summers did have some built-in structure — sports, chores, family vacations – but, to a considerable extent, how I spent the time in between was up to me. I devoted much of it to neighborhood adventures: biking and scootering around with a purpose obvious to us but that outsiders could not possibly discern; blazing trails through the woods and building forts there; and, as evening came, playing capture the flag and roasting s’mores on campfires. Non-summer months couldn’t be quite as exciting but were still as full of unstructured play, largely outdoors, as we could make them.
This kind of lifestyle may still be alive in modern America. But it is waning. In the ’90s of (part of) my childhood, some 20 million kids age 7 to 17 hopped on a bike six or more times a year; today, the number is half that. Kids playing outside today in many places arouse suspicion, annoyance, and even legal action. They’re too loud. And anyway, where are their parents? Social pressures have forced kids at younger and younger ages onto the meritocratic merry-go-round, which has contempt for such frivolous activity. After all, what good is it on a résumé?
The lure of screens and phones takes today’s kids away from the outside world, and even from one another. Tech was already creeping in a little bit to my childhood (my outdoor rompings were not infrequently punctuated by sessions on the PlayStation2, albeit usually with friends). But I was fortunate to be on the way to high school when the iPhone first came to market.
It is easy to be nostalgic about one’s own childhood. And to forget, amid such nostalgia, that changes are constant — and sometimes even for the better. Not-too-distant ancestors of mine would have been surprised how little farmwork featured in my upbringing.
But these modern trends remain objectively worrying. They are forming cohorts of young people who can’t think or act for themselves. Who require external direction and stimulation at virtually every moment. Who know nothing but a world where all the answers they think they need can be summoned forth instantly from some digital source. Who disdain the often-unpredictable frictions of a life fully lived. Who believe that relationships conducted entirely via apps can substitute for those that take place in the real world. Signs are already evident that these poorly conditioned young people cannot rise to the challenge of basic tasks, such as driving (which an increasing number of them have no interest in pursuing) and even reading. Their maladies are, therefore, increasingly those of stasis and inaction — what Yuval Levin called pathologies of passivity.
The modern onslaught against childhood ought to inspire the rest of us to do what we can to preserve or reclaim its essential aspects. Letting (or, if necessary, making) children play outside would be a good start. Limiting device time is a must. It’s also important not to let ourselves succumb to the adult equivalents of the behaviors that are negatively affecting our children. We should not let screens take us away from the real world, or accept digital relationships as substitutes for real ones rather than complements.
In Childhood’s End, the end of the human race occurs with a kind of wistful inevitability that, although accompanied by a sense of loss, made clear it was the proper destiny for the species. But it is not the proper destiny of our species to turn away from reality and from one another. That, however, is what a growing number of our children are doing. Failure to confront the forces that are ending childhood won’t only affect children. It may at times seem improbable, but they eventually become adults.