Kids Today

So I'm walking down the street to my office yesterday and I see an ad on the side of a bus shelter which, I kid you not, is actually aimed at getting kids to play. It says "One Hour a Day. Go Out and Play!" What kind of a country are we running here where kids aren't, of their own volition, going out to play? Isn't that their only job as kids? Isn't there something in the way they are hard wired that causes them to erupt into spontaneous play without prompting from the Ad Council? How did we end up here? Is it the video games which have taken over most every kid and a number of adults and turned them into sort of cyber zombies who live only in the virtual world? The paranoia parents have of letting their kids outside in a world filled with creeps and wackos? Or the chronic over-scheduling of our kids with homework, sports, clubs, lessons, etc. all aimed at getting them into the right pre-school so they can go to Harvard Law some day and then resent the fuck out of you because they really wanted to be a photographer? Perhaps we have a perfect storm which has come together to rob children of their childhoods, of the pure exhilaration of riding their bikes as fast as they can and taking the "Evil Knievel" style jump at the bottom of the hill, of climbing trees and throwing Frisbees, playing football and having snowball fights. I admit I spent more than enough time sitting on my fat little backside playing Barbies, but I did all these things and more and had a ball! Do kids today really need an ad to encourage them to have real fun in the real world? If that's true then it is a sad, sad day for America.