DVD players in cars and the implications thereof

In My Humble Opinion
1

The other morning I got in line at the drive-through window at a local breakfast place. There were a couple of cars in front of me, and the suv directly in front of me had two dvd screens in the back seat, one on each side. They were playing some kind of animated movie. There were two children in the back seat.

Given the time of day- about 7:30 am- I’m thinking a parent was driving the kids to school and stopped for some breakfast tacos (some places call them breakfast burritos- flour tortilla wrapped around some combo of eggs, potatoes, bacon, etc. Not relevant to story, but might be a sticking point in narrative).

I live in a small town, pop. ~8,500, and I’m guessing these kids were prolly in the car 15 minutes max. And they had to be watching a movie? A movie they’ve likely seen 100 times already?

Okay, those last comments were not warranted by the evidence. But what I’m wondering is what is so wrong with a kid sitting in the car with nothing to watch, read, listen to for 15-30 minutes? Whatever happened to just staring out the window? Whatever happened to being bored for a while?

I’m disturbed by what seems to be a need among the younger and youngest generations for constant,* and I do mean constant, *input from outside- whether it’s watching some dopey TV series on your phone, continuous texting, or never being without an iPod plugged into your ears.

I get bored- I like to have NPR on the radio during my one-hour one way commute every day. I listen to audio books. I like music on when I’m working or exercising. I love the internet. I check this board on my Blackberry and post from it. I’m not a Luddite. But often I turn everything off and just look around… and THINK about things. Or just wait to see what pops into my head when I’m not supplying input.

I’m 62 and I grew up in a time when it was my job to amuse myself. My parents never considered it their responsibility to entertain me or find something for me to do. I usually managed to come up with something.

But I’m wondering when do kids* use their imaginations without being prompted by or tethered to other people’s creations, electronic or otherwise? I mean that as a perfectly literal, serious question: when do they? Or do they at all?

*kids- definition/age range unspecified… anywhere from age three on up.

2

You should be more concerned about the kids getting fast food for breakfast.

3

Well, you don’t know that they were headed to school- it’s possible they were a family stopping to grab some food on a road trip.

But even if they were watching shows on the way to school, so what? I like to listen to music in the car and if I can’t, I genuinely get grumpy. Should I be able to sit in silence and reflect on my weekly mantras? Perhaps. But hey, I like to sing along with my favorite songs. Same thing for the kids, I imagine.

Of course, I’m 25. So, maybe I’m just a product of society’s obsession with electronics :D.

4

I don’t understand children’s shows that tell kids how to use their imaginations. Kids know how to pretend.

5

This is the kind of response I was NOT looking for and yet I expected. :rolleyes:

A breakfast taco is NOT fast food. It’s bacon and eggs wrapped in a homemade flour tortilla. Sometimes potatoes are included. It’s the same breakfast you would have on a plate at home in your kitchen. This was not McDonald’s- it was a mom & pop restaurant.

No more comments on the menu, please. So NOT the point of my question.

6

No, they really don’t. They have to be taught by their caregivers. There’s lots of research into this area, but it boils down to: children do not engage in spontaneous creative play. *Everything *they do until the age of 3 or 4 is mimicry, and a whole lot of it after that age, as well. When parents see their child doing something “new”, it’s actually something they (or another older person) demonstrated to the child and forgot about.

Anyhow, back to the OP. Yes, it does bother me. It bothers me on the bus, it bothers me in the hallways at school, and it bothers me when people use DVD players in the car for short trips. I’ve come around to accepting and even using them (we don’t have a built in, but we have a small portable DVD player with headphones) for long car trips, because I couldn’t come up with a non-Luddite, non “I suffered and so should you!” reason to forbid them, but otherwise, I agree.

People need some down time without, as you say, “input”. I don’t think anyone gets enough anymore, including me.

7

I agree that kids who are not on a long trip probably don’t benefit from movies (I’m sure there are exceptions, an autistic kid who can’t handle a change in routine, say).

But in general, a kid who is walking along the sidewalk is exploring the world and partaking of it. Kicking the stones and puddles, poking at the dead worm, feeling the sun and the wind and smelling bus exhaust, hearing the teenagers saying cool things, etc. etc. A kid in a car looking out the window is already missing out. Many of the senses are blocked, and s/he’s just passively observing the world rather than interacting. The movie is the final step towards taking away a sense of location in place and time.

8

I agree with just about everything you’ve presented but I find it curious that you lay the blame on the kids.

Granted we’ve no way of knowing but do you think the children were the ones who decided on the DVD feature in the car? And it was their money that was used to purchase the DVD that was on?

I mean if parents believe that their children need an endless stream of electronic media to accompany their kid’s every waking moment then how do you blame them when they’ve been saturated with it since birth?

How can anyone be puzzled that children become what’s damn close to an addiction to IPOD’s, texting, video games and what have you when we’re hard wiring them to turn out that way.

They are nothing more than creations of the society of which they are a part.

9

Minlokwat, sorry if I gave the impression I’m blaming the kids. I’m certainly not. I’m lamenting the situation without actually leveling the blame at anyone specifically. All of us are stuck in electronic world together. It’s just that some of us may still remember the way back.

10

In the case of my nephews, the original plan was to limit TV intake: none of it for the first three years, then limited amounts.

Then my sister-in-law’s father got ALS; him and his wife (who had previously been offering to “move in to help with the baby” and seen the offer rejected) moved in; gramps kept the TV on all the time. Grandma asked for a TV in the kitchen “to keep her company while she cooked”; it soon started being used to get the kid to open his mouth during feedings.

Then someone gave them a car DVD: my brother will sometimes refuse to switch it on for rides under 15 min, but if his wife is faster, she will switch it on.

The nephew is now 5; his sister is 2; the grandfather is dead; the grandmother still spends most of the time at their house (she spends every second weekend in her own house because she’s afraid someone will notice it’s unoccupied and get her in trouble with the tax people). My niece has been living with the TV on since she was born; this past Christmas, at one point she didn’t want to eat any more (what she had already eaten was more than enough in my book, they feed those kids adult portions - and more often than they feed the adults) and her father’s solution was to stick the DVD player in front of her. I understand that Mom has put her foot down that in her house we don’t eat with the TV on and that includes no DVDs… but seriously, I sometimes wonder how come those kids’ eyes are round and not square!

11

I’m disturbed, too. But you might as well howl at the moon for shining because if you want to start a crusade against the constant barrage of information being thrown at kids these days (with the approval of their parents, of course), you’ll need a huge cultural shift and tons of luck.

Oh, a Twitter account would be helpful, too.

If it’s any consolation, your concerns were undoubtedly raised by the generation that first saw the radio come into mainstream society.

12

Gosh. I’m really mean. Not only do I not have a DVD player in my Hyundai, I’m taking my 6yo on a 12-hour-each-way road trip to Vegas in a few months. Instead, he’ll have no other choice but to talk to me and look out the window.

My BIL told me that I absolutely need to buy a portable DVD player for the boy. No, I really don’t.

13

There are some genuine reasons for concern over the the amount of TV children watch. This study suggests there is a link between excessive watching of TV and psychological difficulties. I read reports like this with a degree of scepticism, but it strikes me as unhealthy to raise children to expect constant stimulation. People need down time too.

14

This drives me crazy! I see nothing wrong with the kid just sitting there and looking out of the window. You could even (gasp!) talk to your kid, or play games like “I’m going to Zanzibar”.

The thing about it is that by pushing their attention to the screen, they miss out on all kinds of things that spark the imagination and start discussions. We road trip every year, and I never run out of things to look at and think about.

And if you let your kid watch TV, they will miss out on that experience. Thinking and imagination takes practice, and they grow up into dull adults with limited critical thinking skills.

15

I know some young people just like this, and I love the way you’ve expressed it here! :slight_smile:

16

It just always surprised me that such things didn’t make people carsick. You’re cutting off all external feedback that you are moving.

But, otherwise, I see is as no different than listening to the radio or whatever. And those have been available for quite a while.

17

I totally get where the OP is coming from but when a large amount of (supposed) adults can’t even stand in line at the grocery store without playing with their phones I don’t see why it’s surprising. A similar situation popped into my head the other day whereby I was remembering going out to dinner with a friend and her sixteen year old son. He played with his electronic toy (game boy? hell if I know what) the entire time and I thought A) if you don’t have the social skills by sixteen to be able to stand a couple of hours at a dinner table without playing with your toys perhaps you need to stay home. With a baby sitter. B) Mom, what kind of a wanker have you raised / are you raising? Shit, even my boyfriend’s six year old knows not to bring his toys along when we’re going somewhere to have fun.

18

TV has always been a babysitter for busy parents.

It is kind of sad we can’t even spend a few minutes in the car chatting with our kids. I see a big difference in radio and dvd. Watching a movie takes all your attention. It’s even weirder when the kids are plugged into earbuds. It’s like the kid is wrapped up in an electronic cocoon.

I have no problem with entertainment on trips. I read books in the car. Now, they watch movies. That’s fine. But, once in awhile, shut that crap off and look out the window. Teach the kids the car games we played. Look for that “one” car that keeps popping up. Or license plates from all 50 states. Have some fun.

19

These aren’t a new invention; when I was in high-school, some people had VCRs in their car. My mom used to complain about how decadent they were, and I do sort of agree. I don’t plan to ever get one in my own car, and I certainly don’t approve of playing it for short trips around town.

But OTOH, my friend has 4 hyper kids prone to carsickness, and she takes a lot of long trips. When we’re on a trip with her, I’m grateful for the DVD player! (It’s also fun to snap pictures of the kids all staring slackjawed at the van ceiling, and then poke fun at them later. Heh.)

It’s kind of too bad that you can no longer do what my parents did to us, but the world has changed. (There were 4 of us, and our camping trips involved us lying in the little pickup truck, which had a camper cover, in a sort of nest of sleeping bags and luggage. My unfortunate youngest brother had to lie across our feet. We would each read and listen to our Walkmen for hours. Good times…)

20

On short trips to restaurants or school, my kids listen to their iPods and read. When they were little (car seat little), we had a tape recorder and a bunch of Sesame Street style sing-a-long tapes for entertainment, and later, a DVD player. It kept the peace, because there’s 8 years difference between the two.