Remember when moms used to plop kids on the kitchen floor with a bunch of pots and pans just for fun? When a pile of wet sand provided a toddler with sculpting material? When kids would go outside and play with other children? No more. Today’s kids are more likely to be plopped in front of a computer monitor playing with virtual kitchenware, cyber sand, and fake friends.
The Asbury Park Press recently reported on another version of structured creativity soon to be stifling our country’s little ones. It’s called Disney Fairies Pixie Hollow, an on-line virtual world that will let kids pretend to be fairies and “dress up, fly around, befriend other fairies and help paint lady bugs, teach baby birds to fly or go on other nature-related quests.” A modified version, the website www.disneyfairies.com already exists.
To complement the new, expanded website, kids will be able to buy bracelets and charms called Clickables. When kids “click” their bracelet to a friend’s, their on-line fairy avatars will become buddies in the fake computer world. Disney Online’s Senior VP Steve Parkis explains it like this: “No longer will you be passively watching these famous fairies, who you’ve always had this distant, passive relationship with. You’ll be interacting with them.”
The trouble is, kids will remain be passive. Instead of dressing up as fairies and playing with real children, kids will be stuck in their play clothes, socially isolated. “We’re all working really hard to pay for these electronic things that we think we need,” says child psychologist Stephanie Pratola. “But what I know about kids is that it’s their relationships that help them grow and develop. And it’s not a virtual relationship. It’s a real relationship.”
As far as creativity, the effect will be the opposite of what its designers claim. Instead of encouraging creativity, the virtual world will stifle it. Kids’ imaginations will be limited to whatever the Disney imagineer has concocted for them. ”It’s like everybody using their imagination in a similar way,” Pratola says. “How imaginative is that?”
