Peer Pressure

A recent survey of 14 year olds in the United Kingdom revealed that they spend an average of 8 hours in every day in front of a screen, be it a computer, smart phone or video gaming.

I think back to when I was that age.

Of course, there were no computers in 1977 or at least nothing smaller than a large warehouse and with laptops and PC's but a germ of an idea in the research and development back rooms of companies that, frankly, may not even have been thought of themselves.

It would be a few more years before a few geeky types at my school were showing off their Sinclair ZX Spectrums which it is amazing to think now were amongst the first mainstream home computers.

As for phones, well my parents had quite a modern looking slimline land line one in the home hallway.

It was a drab, dark green wedge shaped thing with what we thought was a futuristic tone at the time. It was nothing exciting except when initially innocent lifting of the receiver allowed a bit of clandestine listening in to a party line conversation.

There was no roaming about with the handset which was well and truly connected by a stringy, curly cable and we were often jealous of the United States TV shows where the equivalent communication device had the longest of long cords giving a walkabout  capability through the house and garden.

It would, as with computing, be many years before the availability of a mobile phone or at least a truly portable one without a burgeoning shoulder carried battery pack.

In 1977 I just had use of the family phone but cannot recall now if anyone rang it to speak to me.

Video Gaming. Well, my earliest recollection is of a clunky table tennis or ping pong game from the early 1970's in barely two dimensions. On the black and white television we had there was no real colour stimulation and that was also the case for the actual on-screen action involving shaded in cursors which could move only up and down to bat back and forth a dot representing a ball. It was a case of getting quickly bored or having to give up with a pounding headache.

I had an idyllic childhood in a large, loving and active family and found my own entertainment not in front of screens but out and about in the neighbourhood, the green fields, in muddy stickleback teeming streams, gadding about on bikes or cobbled together go-karts or building elaborate dens in the boughs of trees or using materials pilfered from building sites or whatever just happened to be lying around.

I feel a bit sorry for today's early teens, all of that pressure to peer into a screen and for what must be no fun at all.