Here is my essay that I wrote in English:
English 960
Kids Are Getting Lazy
Children are getting lazier every day. You don't see kids outside playing any more. Children are not running around the neighborhood, playing basketball, or riding their bikes. They are driving their motorized scooters, or "Segways". Many times they won’t even go to their friend’s house without getting into their parents nice air conditioned car, or truck, with that nice climate control to make it more comfortable for them. I have a friend who will drive across the street to go to the gym. It would take less time to just walk across the street, than it would take to get into a car, drive across the street, find a parking stall, get out the car, and go inside. That is a perfect example of the kind of laziness that is seen more and more often. Some of the ways that we are getting lazy are with the television, computer, and text messaging.
People watch a ton of television, not only in their cars, but at home too. I think that we all would be very surprised to see how many hours of television are watched by our kids. Homework, chores, reading a book, are all being put onto the back burner to watch the "boob tube" (as my mom calls it). When I grew up we had 2 TV’s in the whole house. Now I see my nieces with a TV in their own room, which is causing one of my nieces to be very anti-social. Usually, when my grandma would come over, or anyone else, we would call the family up to visit; my niece would always say "But my show is on!" which would upset my grandma because she is not able to visit with everyone.
There is no need to leave the house anymore. If you want to go shopping you can just turn on the television to go shopping. You can find just about anything on the television, not just objects but a date too. Some of the shows/channels popular with my friends are the Music Video channels or the Video Game channels. They all watch them constantly to become a better gamer. If you are not able to get enough television because of your busy schedule, you can always watch television from your cell phone. There are a number of channels that are available to watch.
Another option on most cell phones is text messaging. A text message is a written message sent from one cell phone to another; it is a very popular form of communication. Text messaging is causing a problem in schools; students are text messaging answers to tests to each other. "Texting" is happening everywhere, you can not go to the mall without seeing people "texting" back and forth. Many schools and places of business are not allowing cell phones to be turned on during business hours due to the fact that their employees would be watching TV, surfing the web, playing games, or "texting" their friends, when they should be working.
When I was a kid, I was constantly playing outside riding my bike or playing in the oak forest down the street. I would run and play in the park or build a fort. I could play from dusk till dawn and it was always outside. I loved it! Now a days, they have computers to do it all for them by allowing you to live through the computer game.
Many games are role playing games, where you create who you want to be, which has had some huge problems as a side affect. I remember hearing about this group of people who were really good at a game similar to Grand Theft Auto. In the game the more you killed the more points you got, if you killed a police officer you got a lot of points, robbing a bank was even more points, and robbing a bank with a police officer and killing him giving even more points than before. This group got really good at the game and they beat it. So they decided to take the game into the real world and become those characters by putting on masks and really robbing banks, killing people and keeping track of all the points, all of this because of a game. The hours spent to get to the point that your mind can not differ between reality and a game is beyond my imagination. Granted this is an isolated scenario but the fact is that it took hundreds of hours to get to that point. And if computer games are not tantalizing enough for them, youths can surf the World Wide Web all day. Either way, the hours that could be spent outside doing some physical activity are spent sitting on the couch munching on potato chips and playing video games. Even homework is affected you don’t have to remember how to spell words anymore, the computer does it all for you; all you have to use is the spell checker.
With all of these choices we have in front of us, the time spent with our families is dwindling faster than a couch potato trying to answer the phone. I remember watching a movie where the dad had to instant message his kids that it was dinner time instead of just telling them. Even then, I think that the food was a TV dinner. I know many families’s that don’t cook at all, well, at least not in my opinion of cooking. Cooking to me is taking all the ingredients and putting them together to create a delicious dish. Instead, they would go to a fast food place and order a fattening hamburger with French fries and a coke. To make matters worse they would eat it while driving; the problem is that this fast food is not healthy and not good for you. I remember last year I was at work and heard that if Americans continue their eating habits that in about 8 years almost all of America will be obese.
From prepared food to motorized scooters, conveniences do make life easier. But the truth is that these products are also making us lazy. It is almost making life too easy. It is making it so that we don’t leave the couch unless we have to go to the bathroom. We have electronics to do everything for us. Our imaginations are being replaced with video games and our work ethic and imaginations are going down the toilet. No one is perfect, including myself, but I can at least not be afraid to go outside and play. I hope that we will all get out of this hard working drought and start getting off the couch and doing something.
