Are We Raising an Overstimulated Generation?

When I was a kid I left school at noon and traveled a long road home on bus number 6, but I always arrived in time for lunch to eat "whatever there was," then off to do homework and after that nothing… improvising activities. I could go out and ride my bike, play ball, or go see my friends on the corner and talk. The rest of the time, figuring out what to do. Weekends were another story, family visits or the occasional party (kids' birthday parties were only organized on weekends in those days), the rest of the time… nothing, free time in my hands.

Sometimes you'd just go out into the street to sit on the curb and wait for something to happen. If you went out with a soccer ball there was a better chance your buddies would show up. If there was no ball we'd climb trees or crack each other up with stories. Digging a hole in the dirt or playing with rocks was never ruled out as an option. In those years I learned to light a fire without matches, to make slingshots with rubber tubes, or to crack open the almond nuts from the trees on the block… we ate them. Some of us even learned to play guitar without anyone signing us up for private lessons. We had no tuner, we learned to tune the guitar "the hard way," listening to the telephone tone. We learned to learn, to be self-taught. It wasn't by choice, there was no other way.

During vacations we went to Huigra—a little railway town in the middle of the Andes; there were no "vacation workshops" back then. Basically you woke up, had breakfast and were free, wild. More time in your hands. The challenge was to see what to do. "Go find something to do," my grandmother would tell me. We'd roam the cobblestone streets of the whole town with a whole gang of friends. When noon approached you could hear the train whistle in the distance and we'd run to the town's train station to watch the sweaty steam locomotive arrive. It was interesting to watch it and that was enough, just seeing that enormous machine arrive was sufficient. Those were real vacations.

I miss those times, I miss that free time in my hands. Did I get bored? Sometimes; but I also learned to deal with boredom. I learned that fun is sometimes in your head. I learned to read books, for example. In an old wardrobe I found my grandfather's incomplete and battered collection of Mecánica Popular magazines. It was almost the only thing there was, so I learned to make little wooden chairs and a boomerang that broke on its first throw. Did I get bored? Sometimes, but not much. Very little.

Sometimes my brother and I would record music on cassettes, fishing for songs between radio stations and putting a wire hook on the antenna so the recording would come out as clear as possible. Sometimes I'd also record songs alone. There was a certain charm to doing it alone, I could record what I liked. I learned to deal with that solitude. Better said, I learned to enjoy my own company. I learned to reflect, to look inward, I learned philosophy involuntarily.

But today things have changed, we parents relentlessly seek out activities for our children. They leave school and go straight to "extracurricular activities," they do karate, languages, etiquette, tennis, dance, singing, acting and much more. If there isn't some children's party during the week or tutoring classes, they arrive home at 4 p.m. exhausted, and from there they grab their parents' computer or phone to frantically play virtual realities. After dinner they're quite tired and sleep. Their day shuts off suddenly, there's not much time left for reflection, for introspection, for reasoning, contemplation.

On weekends we parents rush to organize visits to the zoo, theme parks, movies, fairs, feasts, concerts, sleepovers, ceramics workshops, painting, etc, etc, etc. If we can't think of something more interesting we take them to the mall, just to "do something." During vacations we put them in the now-famous "vacation" workshops and whatever activities we can think of to keep them "busy." The other day my son told me "I don't want to go to the movies, Dad, I want to stay home." I realized the truth. We are OVERSTIMULATING them.

Kids today are no longer interested in contemplating the sky. And why would they? They can play in extraordinary artificial worlds created on computers. They can see explosions or electrifying videos. Kids today think Milky Way is just the name of a chocolate bar. Contemplating reality these days turns out to be boring. Watching how a butterfly harvests nectar from a flower is slow, it has no zoom, no explosions, no surround sound in the background. Admiring a long line of ants carrying bread crumbs to their nest is for "losers." Nobody thinks now to make a circle of water around them to see what they do. Nobody wants to discover anymore, they want someone else to tell them the story, it's more comfortable.

OVERSTIMULATION makes us lose the power to contemplate the beauty that surrounds us.

Many kids today also don't know how to deal with boredom. Just take away the computer or phone and they say "I'm bored out of my mind." They don't know what to do. They haven't been able to develop those skills because of us, the parents. They don't know how to take a string and a piece of wood and make it spin like a top. They don't know that a round rock and a hole in the ground can also be fun. When they grow up, solitude terrifies them.

And no, they haven't had much time in their hands to learn to invent activities, invent games, invent, invent, invent, reflect, conclude, form opinions. We are depriving them of creativity by giving them everything served up, solving 100% of their time.

I increasingly hear comments like "this generation doesn't get excited about anything" and I think, why our eagerness to fill them with stimuli? Why our eagerness to fill the gaps in their day with our plans or ideas? Could it be that we feel like bad parents if we see them on a corner thinking, reasoning, reading, contemplating the sky, the ants? Wouldn't it be better, once in a while, to leave them alone and let them figure out what to do? Could it be that sometimes, letting them "get bored" is an opportunity for them to develop their own skills?… It would be good for all of us to ask ourselves that question sometime. We won't always be there to solve their day for them.