Bridget+P’s+Final+AmEx+2013+Speech

=Title of Speech=

Your Childhood is Precious

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The more I think about it, the more I realize how precious ones childhood is. Your childhood shapes you into the person you are today and what you dream of becoming. However as I look at society today I realize that as children are being brought up in a world surrounded by technology, materialism, and constant media advertising, traits like imagination, creativeness, and the freedom to act as they will are lost.

Growing up, my parents would take my siblings and I on constant camping trips, to getaway weekends in Kernville, and day trips to the beach in our family suburban known at the Hunka Bunka. Although it was tacky coral red and beige car I knew it was always another adventure to some unknown place. However with the chaos of today and the overpowerment of technology on family ties, I see less and less of these family adventures.

Which brings me to my next topic of how children are glued to these new fancy gadgets. In our generation the big technology was tamagotchi’s, walkmans, and the game boy. Nowadays you have the iphone, ipads, and the Wii or Xbox. Does a ten year old really need an iphone? Honestly how will that help them get through the third grade. The only thing technology does to an elementary school child is corrupt their minds and melt their brains into a puddle. I remember my siblings and I making up a new game almost every week, like the dinosaur game, which I hated but didn’t want to be left out so joined in on the “fun.” However we were actually using our brains and imagination to come up with new creative games rather than the app on a iphone.

What used to be expanding our imagination and furthering our knowledge, children are now sitting on a couch playing video games these days. Now I’m not saying that our generation didn’t have video games. However we didn’t have the Xbox360 and the Wii growing up, we had the simple Nintendo Mario Kart with the controller that actually plugged into the game console. With the constant advertising of the next big games and childrens eyes being drawn to the tv screen for hours, their creative mind and imagination is being lost.

Now to the pressure of media increasing and targeting to younger children. Are you really finding out who you are as a person if you are just listening to what the media tells you? No, you are just becoming robot and another puzzle piece to the norm of society. Middle School was known as the dark ages for me and maybe for some of you. It was when you had to fit yourself to the cookie cutter mold of what was considered “cool” at the time. However I’ve noticed in today’s society this cookie cutter mold is starting to form by second or third grade. Elementary school for us was a time where you did whatever the hell you wanted to, you could wear bright purple neon pants with an orange tie dye shirt and your so swag sketcher shoes. Nobody cared. However children these days are so focused on the media and what is considered cool at such an early age, that I feel their innocence is being taken away. One’s childhood shouldn’t be filled with the pressure to fit in at such an early age, it should be a time where they act as crazy and energetic as they want, without having to conform to the so called “plastics”, for lack of a better word.

In the America I grow old in I wish to see my grandkids not being pressured to fit in with the popular crowd. I wish too see my grandkids going camping in an actual tent and not in a big fancy motor home with a flat screen tv. I wish to see children using their imaginations to keep them preoccupied rather than a videogame that will only turn their brain to mush. I want America to stop poisoning childhoods with technology and next big thing and rather fill it will family adventures at the beach, national parks, and the zoo. After all your childhood is what you look back on when you’re old and shouldn’t you be able to talk about the crazy and fun things you did as a kid, like stealing the Declaration of Independence. Thank you!

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