Arrested Adolescence
Well, perhaps not quite arrested adolescence. Perhaps it's more like re-discovered adolescence.
The growing proclivity, identified by what has been termed 'the latest market intelligence', revealing that grey-haired adults well into their dotage have discovered once again what fun it is to let it all hang loose, and feel like a kid again. Not that adults ever lose certain childish behaviours; we're petulant, pleasure-seeking, self-absorbed, and fret about our appearance, just like adolescents do.
We're simply more discreet about these emotions, tamp them down, and just let them rise to the fore on occasion. That used to be the way it was exercised. Evidently it no longer is. People old enough to be someone's grandparent now exercise juvenile options to extend their enjoyment of life, it would appear. And people in their mid-30s and upwards are contending with kids for their traditional recreational games and playthings.
A study, it would appear, by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (what's up with that, one wonders?) appears to indicate that the average age of video-gamers is now 35. The addiction to video games is termed by them "digital self-medication". Really? Medicating ourselves, as it were, against boredom, as children are wont to do? The kind of endless boredom that kids wail about, searching for relief?
Serving themselves up helpings of electronic diversions from the sameness of everyday life?
The study also reveals that (gag me with a cucumber) Wii stations are now common sights in seniors' centres. Wheelchairs and walkers won't stop the elderly from their fun and games, evidently. Migod, is that not sad? Whatever happened with the leisurely pursuit of socializing and spirited, intelligent discussions? And card-playing, and simply tucking oneself away in a nice quiet spot, and reading to one's heart's content?
Wii stations? Sad waste!
"The boundaries between childhood and adulthood have become increasingly blurred", according to sociologist Barbara Mitchell, professor of gerontology at Simon Fraser University, in British Columbia. Well, in a sense, there's nothing startlingly new about that apprehension. Isn't it often held that children and the elderly have much in common, and understand one another quite well?
As adolescents slide forward into their future adulthood, the elderly slip back to their childish past, assuming some of the emotional characteristics of childhood, never quite forgotten, nor laid away for permanent rest. Now this little factoid is quite painful: One third of SpongeBob Squarepants' audiences is comprised of people 18 and older.
Ugh, and more ugh! Rock-paper scissors, double-Dutch, Frisbee, Kickball and dodge ball have bred adult leagues. Downtown Toronto boasts an adult fun park. To heal the hurt of adulthood, no doubt.
A San Diego-held Comic-Con convention had a sold-out crowd of 125,000 with adults in superhero costumes - the better to engage in the funtime fantasy of childhood.
Forty-one percent of children in their twenties now opt to live at home, according to Statistics Canada. I'd call that a successful sales job, all of it.
As much as electronic messaging has infiltrated children's consciousness fitting them out to be ardent consumers of all manner of products, in a market economy that strives to grow and grow and grow, adults too have been assailed with the marketing of youth.
And so, many adults have succumbed to the allure of believing that they are maturing into youthful playtime, not staid adulthood. The medium of moderation has been converted to the radicalization of maturity, refusing to accept the long journey into end-of-life.
Instead, embracing agelessness and the kind of longevity that the search for a magical elixir that would extend life indefinitely once enraptured an earlier society with its possibilities. Ah, the Fountain of Youth is attainable!
We've become impulse-driven, youth worshipping, pleasure-seeking drones of tamped-down desperation.
The growing proclivity, identified by what has been termed 'the latest market intelligence', revealing that grey-haired adults well into their dotage have discovered once again what fun it is to let it all hang loose, and feel like a kid again. Not that adults ever lose certain childish behaviours; we're petulant, pleasure-seeking, self-absorbed, and fret about our appearance, just like adolescents do.
We're simply more discreet about these emotions, tamp them down, and just let them rise to the fore on occasion. That used to be the way it was exercised. Evidently it no longer is. People old enough to be someone's grandparent now exercise juvenile options to extend their enjoyment of life, it would appear. And people in their mid-30s and upwards are contending with kids for their traditional recreational games and playthings.
A study, it would appear, by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (what's up with that, one wonders?) appears to indicate that the average age of video-gamers is now 35. The addiction to video games is termed by them "digital self-medication". Really? Medicating ourselves, as it were, against boredom, as children are wont to do? The kind of endless boredom that kids wail about, searching for relief?
Serving themselves up helpings of electronic diversions from the sameness of everyday life?
The study also reveals that (gag me with a cucumber) Wii stations are now common sights in seniors' centres. Wheelchairs and walkers won't stop the elderly from their fun and games, evidently. Migod, is that not sad? Whatever happened with the leisurely pursuit of socializing and spirited, intelligent discussions? And card-playing, and simply tucking oneself away in a nice quiet spot, and reading to one's heart's content?
Wii stations? Sad waste!
"The boundaries between childhood and adulthood have become increasingly blurred", according to sociologist Barbara Mitchell, professor of gerontology at Simon Fraser University, in British Columbia. Well, in a sense, there's nothing startlingly new about that apprehension. Isn't it often held that children and the elderly have much in common, and understand one another quite well?
As adolescents slide forward into their future adulthood, the elderly slip back to their childish past, assuming some of the emotional characteristics of childhood, never quite forgotten, nor laid away for permanent rest. Now this little factoid is quite painful: One third of SpongeBob Squarepants' audiences is comprised of people 18 and older.
Ugh, and more ugh! Rock-paper scissors, double-Dutch, Frisbee, Kickball and dodge ball have bred adult leagues. Downtown Toronto boasts an adult fun park. To heal the hurt of adulthood, no doubt.
A San Diego-held Comic-Con convention had a sold-out crowd of 125,000 with adults in superhero costumes - the better to engage in the funtime fantasy of childhood.
Forty-one percent of children in their twenties now opt to live at home, according to Statistics Canada. I'd call that a successful sales job, all of it.
As much as electronic messaging has infiltrated children's consciousness fitting them out to be ardent consumers of all manner of products, in a market economy that strives to grow and grow and grow, adults too have been assailed with the marketing of youth.
And so, many adults have succumbed to the allure of believing that they are maturing into youthful playtime, not staid adulthood. The medium of moderation has been converted to the radicalization of maturity, refusing to accept the long journey into end-of-life.
Instead, embracing agelessness and the kind of longevity that the search for a magical elixir that would extend life indefinitely once enraptured an earlier society with its possibilities. Ah, the Fountain of Youth is attainable!
We've become impulse-driven, youth worshipping, pleasure-seeking drones of tamped-down desperation.
Labels: Health, Human Relations, Social-Cultural Deviations
posted by Pieface @ 6:15 PM
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