I spent the last few days visiting my older brother who lives in Culver City California. When he first moved there, more than fifty years ago, it was a quiet town, known mostly for its MGM movie lots. I recall, as a boy, driving down Culver Blvd and recognizing the sets for many of the westerns I had watched on the screen. The town and the movie business have undergone a metamorphosis since then. Sony now owns the movie lots and the art deco Culver movie house is now the Kirk Douglas Theatre. Where once there was little more than a Chinese restaurant, and a pizza parlor, Culver Blvd is now home to a variety of upscale restaurants, shops and boutiques. It has become a very hip place and in the evening the restaurants, with their outdoor eating areas, are packed and the parking lots are full.

My brother takes a nap in the afternoon and it gives me a chance to walk around the neighborhood. The houses are relatively small, stucco affairs, and almost completely fill the tiny lots. The houses were mainly built after WWII. They are all well kept and many families have added second stories. My brother paid $12,000 for his and it is now worth more that $800.000. What struck me as I walked through the streets on a beautiful, warm sunny day was that I saw no children playing on any of the streets. While some of the homes, like my brothers, are still lived in by the original tenants, probably the majority have been sold and resold. I am sure there were children living in some of the houses; the Culver City schools are full to the overflowing.

Yet there were no children playing on the postage stamp lawns or the quiet streets. It is the summer vacation period so the children were not in school. Yet I saw no children riding bikes, on skate boards, or playing catch or just hanging out. I had to suppose that the children were indoors watching television or involved in computer games. Of course some children may have been away at day camp, but surely many children were still at home. It is true that living in Southern California, or other similar areas, you get accustomed to having warm sunny days all year round. It was a desert and has a desert climate. In addition, one of the real bonuses of the desert climate is that there are no mosquitoes. Even with this plus, in all the time I was there, I saw only one boy on a skate board.

This is yet another example, of how childhood has moved indoors. The effects are becoming increasingly obvious. Most serious perhaps is the rise of obesity in children (from watching television and eating junk food) and of Type II diabetes which is directly related to diet. Equally serious is what Richard Louv (Louv 2005) calls, “Nature Deficit Disorder,” the failure to know and appreciate the natural world.

Certainly the virtual world is a new and exciting one. But it is not going to go away. Children need to know about the real world before the virtual one. It is not an either or, but rather a question of sequence.

We are better prepared to learn about the natural world as children, when our thinking is still concrete and here and now, than when we are adults and tend to think and indeed, see, in more general abstract terms.

Maybe we should install school bells in our homes and ring them when it is time for children to turn off the television and computer and go out of doors.

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Louv, R. (2005). Last Child in the Woods. Chapel Hill, NC, Algonquin Press.