Childhood Memories: Then and Now

We've made a short video that visually encapsulates how our childhood memories are nothing like what kids are experiencing now. It shows how time and place changes children's memories and experiences of growing up, and how our childhood's aren't very relatable to what kids go through these days. We hope you enjoy it (:

Environment of future generation

They say childhood of the past, presence and future are all different, yet everchanging.
Here I am guessing what childhood of the future would be like.
Alreday, we have young children highly advanced with technology such as smart phones, iPads, Tablets etc etc.
When these children grow and create another generation, wouldnt there be more diverse development in life? Totally different environment is expected! Hologram classroom? May be something like in movie Wall-E, where children are taught of alphabets in virtual classrooms with robots? Smart-phone may be replaced by another mobile service. We might even not need to use recording device to learn? Children making friends could be more or less physical and social than now? And we might say like the old blokes out there "back in the days when I was your age..."
Potentials are diverse. However as important these potentials would be, I suppose we would still have balance in life. I may sound conservative with that line. But still now we live in highly technologically advanced than ever before, yet we manage to live with traditional schemes and traditional way of living. May be this is not as traditional as thousands of years ago but we still use different aspects of our sense and skills/talents to survive.

Australia = great place to call home

I think Australia is a wonderful country to grow up in and we’re very lucky to call Australia home. The lifestyle here is great for families with enough space and time to enjoy the beautiful beaches, national parks, forests, parks + much more.

Shelly Beach, NSW

The culture of multiculturalism is instilled from a young age, where children grow up in a classroom with many kids with diverse backgrounds. Children don’t discriminate others for their race or where they come from, they learn about different cultures at school (e.g Australian Day, Multicultural Day, Harmony Day), play and get along with one another from a young age.  

Aussie kids have the time and space to try out different sports at home, school or the local park or pool to suit their interests. Australia is a very sporty country, there is a huge variety of sport available for every size, age and skill levels – volleyball, cricket, bin cricket, hand ball, tennis, badminton and how could we forget swimming!

Aussie kids have fun learning about the unique flora and fauna in Australia – Kookaburras, Blue Tongue Lizards and other furry animals visit your yard (and yes there are some interesting deadly creatures too so be aware and look out!)

Kookaburra 

Omg! Texting is ruining grammar skills

A new study confirms what many parents suspect; the more kids send and receive texts, the worse their grammar skills become.

With "the culture of mobile communication — quick back and forth — inevitably, there are compromises on traditional, cultural writing," said S. Shyam Sundar, professor of communications and co-director of Pennsylvania State University's Media Effects Research Laboratory, which conducted the study.

"Techspeak," as Sundar and his research partner Drew P. Cingel call it, has become so routine and prevalent among young users that it's eroding their foundation of basic grammar.

"Routine use of textual adaptations by current and future generations of 13-to-17-year-olds may serve to create the impression that this is normal and accepted use of the language and rob this age group of a fundamental understanding of standard English grammar," they said in their published findings.

Basically, kids aren't able to "code switch" — shift between standard grammar and the abbreviations used in text messages. Those abbreviations have essentially become the words for them.

Adults not raised on text-friendly abbreviations in their formative years are able to shift between formal and informal language, whereas kids consuming a steady diet of "textual adaptations" aren't.

Results show broad support for a general negative relationship between the use of techspeak in text messages and scores on a grammar assessment. Linguists aren't particularly disturbed by the trend, Sundar said. "The linguists will tell you the language is very dynamic."

True, words that were once dismissed as just catchy lyrics among certain demographics have made it into the mainstream — and into the dictionary.

The researchers had kids ages 10 to 14 take a grammar test. And it turned out those who sent or received texts recently performed worse on the exam.

The play deficit: Without the freedom to play, they will never grow up

The decline in opportunity to play has also been accompanied by a decline in empathy and a rise in narcissism, both of which have been assessed since the late 1970s with standard questionnaires given to normative samples of college students. Empathy refers to the ability and tendency to see from another person’s point of view and experience what that person experiences. Narcissism refers to inflated self-regard, coupled with a lack of concern for others and an inability to connect emotionally with others. A decline of empathy and a rise in narcissism are exactly what we would expect to see in children who have little opportunity to play socially. Children can’t learn these social skills and values in school, because school is an authoritarian, not a democratic setting and nor can they learn these from looking at screens whole day. 

Heroes from the childhood

For a long time (I kept this for eight years of my life) I have wanted to become a Veterinarian practitioner -yes now I know that this had been quite atypical of a child, not changing their future wannabe job thing for that long. I wanted to head to Africa, Serrengeti and Madagascar those wild zones and live in there making friends with animals. I still remember dreaming about this haha. Well, as a result Tippi Degre was like the one of my idol and hero!

A seven year old who play, drink, sleep, eat, talk and basically live with animal friend out in the wild? I remember I envied her so much I even used to begggggg on mum to buy me that book "Tippi- my book of Africa" and i read it over and over again so many times haha. With this I came across an article explaining what shes been upto after her childhood check it out at  http://www.buzzfeed.com/rachelzarrell/the-real-life-cady-heron-who-grew-up-in-africa-tippi-degre?s=mobile#1r6cvbt.
But I also wonder, besides the child animation and movie character, what heroes are children surrounded by? Kpop stars like Psy who sang Gangnam style? Harry potter? The Pope? Yet, till now Idolisation of a subject seems very important building up childhood of a person's life. So tell us, who was your idol?

“We didn’t have those back in the day…”

Dial radio

We’ve all heard our parents or grandparents saying to us, “we didn’t have those back in the day…” they could have been talking about the technology or everyday things we see and use. I vividly remember my parents telling me that televisions simply didn’t exist. When they were kids and people would have gone to restaurants to listen to the radio for news and entertainment as they sipped their tea and enjoyed their meals. I thought that was strange and couldn’t really imagine a world without my daily dose of TV (cartoons, ABC for Kids in the morning and afternoons) at the convenience of my own lounge room – simply enjoying a radio program with sound, music and comedy seem as though it wasn’t enough for me lacking the colour and visual aspect of TV entertainment.

TV from the 90s

It seemed like a foreign idea to me at the time but now? I guess I’m old enough to remember the days when mobile phones simply didn't exist and we all used landline phones and pagers (use landline to call to a number when you leave a message for the person you’re trying to reach) and yes, the public telephone boxes were still very much in use every day. Back in the day, our TVs had colour but they were also very heavy, chunky and small curved screens (about 20”s) were popular. Now we have bigger and thinner TVs with LCD/LED screens and even have Wifi connection.

Pager 

Imagine if you told the kids today, “we didn’t have those back in the day…” – no mobile phones, flat screen TVs or the internet, it may sound like a foreign idea to children these days too. It might already be hard for us to imagine a world without the technology we use nowadays but another decade maybe it’ll be even feel like a distant memory.   

Where did the TV go?

Didn’t television rule people’s lives back in the day? I remember coming home every day from school and rushing to the television so I could watch my favourite show, The Simpsons. Literally, every school day I would go to after school care and when my mum came and picked me up I would tell her to drive faster so we wouldn’t miss the 6 o’clock slot.

But The Simpsons isn’t even on channel 10 anymore. Or any other channel in Sydney.

And the more I look at it, the more I realise, it’s not The Simpsons. It’s TV. TV’s changed. And when I say changed, I mean no one really likes it any more except people who don’t know how to use the Internet. Why would you wait for your specific, favourite show to come on at a certain time that the broadcasting network decides, when you can choose your own time, whenever you like on the Internet? The Internet provides all things a television does, but with much greater convenience. All you really need is a good Wifi signal, and a willingness to download illegal pirated content and not legally purchase any of it. And to be honest, there aren’t many people you’ll find these days who aren’t willing to bend that part of their moral compass. You get it for free, you get to watch it whenever you like, and you pretty much will never get caught for stealing because it’s almost impossible to monitor all of it.

So no more TV. No more racing home so I don’t miss the 6 o’clock slot. No more excitement to be built up. No more anticipation. The hours spent watching television during my childhood are now just a memory. Do you think there will still be broadcasting stations in the future? Or maybe just monitors where we can download all our favourite shows? Because it seems like that's the only way people are getting their fix of programs these days. 

What did you use on the Internet as a 10 year old?

Social media has changed. The way we communicate online has changed. The platforms we used have changed, and looking back on all the weird stuff we used to talk to each other as kids on the Internet is probably one of the most nostalgic things you could do online. First example: MSN messenger. Being a 10 year old in the 2000-decade means you absolutely had to have MSN messenger so you could talk to your friends about crap that doesn’t even matter or make sense, and make a stupid name for yourself that nobody understands. Like so:

Looking back on this is so horribly embarrassing, because I remember being one of those idiot’s, making a ridiculous name and trying to talk to 20 people at once, but all I was really doing was typing BRB or G2G to all of them and switching between each conversation to make it look like I had so many friends. It was so unbelievably stupid! But we all did it for some reason, and I can take comfort in knowing that every kid in my school did the exact same thing as well.

I don’t think anyone who grew up in the 2000-decade could look at an MSN messenger picture and not cringe horribly in humiliation, but also a somewhat humorous nostalgia.

Public media

Media and children nowadays
one of the good memories of my early youth has been the outdoor play i uses to do with my big brother and our neighbouring friends-from hide and seek to marble games, slap match, tips, you name it and we did it. Playground was fullllll of chn we frequently met new kiddos around the town hah
With today's exposure to child crime-kidnap, pedophile, rape, spam, stalk etc etc as well as violent setting of war, csi, heroic fight and all that in the public media, it seems as though more parents (than those in my childhood) like to keep their kids in the safe zone of 'Play where i can see you' (Helicopter parenting?)
 Of course on top of this there is the law highlighting the responsibility of a guardian to be with the chn all the time as well as game and technology advancement getting them to stay inside more and more. Really? Yet the government is worried of children not exercising enough and having high obesity rate? I dont wanna sound political but to  me it seems like as though there  is not much childlike childhood available to children. Maybe Some may say That new generation have different way of enjoying their childhood but here I leave with a question, why on earth then, are there more worries of today'S children from all than before while all these violence of child crime and war actually did exist from long time?

Has the technology made parents feel proud?

Some might think that children have more opportunities than ever before in todays modern age. Some say," I am proud of the fact that my children have a healthy balance of outdoor play, hobbies and "interest" classes combined with a level of learning and experience that previously would not have been possible, with the advent of iPads, more advanced computers and the level of child-base educational websites that are out there."

The important factor in this is the control and level of encouragement that is levied by parents. If they can afford to, and a child says that they wish to start a new activity; as an example swimming; then they will find a way to enable it.

Where the parents are not in control of this situation canend up with an imbalance, and the child has extended learning and knowledge in a certain area, but is unaware and uneducated in others. For example, I saw a YouTube video about a baby whom was handed a paperback book, and had no idea what to do with it - swiping the pages and trying to zoom in, as if it were an iPad.

And I saw a parent say "My three year old daughter struggles with the concept of a mouse, instead opting to try and point/swipe the screen. We're working on that one ;)"

Obsession with the Internet

What happened to the days when you could just sit in a park with your friends, ride on the swings or sit on the seesaw and hang out? Or when you could just kick a ball around and you’d be satisfied with just doing that? It all seems to have disappeared, and as the older you get, and the more you drift away from your childhood, it seems we start to move indoors and obsess over this thing called the Internet. The Internet’s great for a lot of things, and life has become so much more convenient with it. But it feels like something that crushes our childhood, and turns us into the teenagers, and then the adults we’re meant to be. The Internet just sucks us into reality and the good old days when you didn’t need to know everything that was happening in the world, or everything that your friends are doing on Facebook or Twitter, just seep away, and become just another part of your childhood memories. 

Being a kid is a priceless memory. Cherish it.