The future of childhood

• childhood is disappearing (postman 1994)

  • points to the trend towards giving children the same rights at adults, the disappearance of children's traditional unsupervised games, the growing similarity of adults and children's clothing and even to cases of children committing 'adult' crimes like murder
  • the cause firstly lies in the rise and fall of print culture and its replacement by television culture
  • media - violence without understanding
  • more access to mobile things e.g. phones and ipods
• childhood is becoming toxic (palmer 2015)

  • mental health decrease
  • technology is a distraction
  • believes parents should be more disciplined
• paranoid parenting (furedi 2001)

  • media exaggerates and causes paranoia
  • viewed as vulnerable
  • believe we live in a risk society so it is seen as unsafe
  • children do not enjoy childhood
  • children unable to make mistakes and learn
  • the anxiety from parents rubs onto their children
• evaluation of postmans theory

  • Opie 1993 argues that childhood is not disappearing as she argues that there is strong evidence of the continued existence of a separate children's culture of many years
  • his study is valuable in showing how different types of communication technology can influence the way in which childhood is constructed
  • he over-emphasises a single cause at the expense of other factors that impact childhood