Saturday mornings still remind me of cartoons. Yes, even though I am a grown woman, I still wake up on Saturday mornings and want to run straight to the TV. When I was a kid, I remember being so proud of the fact that I was born on a Saturday morning. At 8:07am. I would exclaim, “I was born during Super Friends!,” since that is what I ALWAYS watched during the 8 o’clock hour EVERY Saturday on ABC. (Actually, now that I google it, the show didn’t start until 1973 and I was born in 1972 so…I must dispel the whole lore of my birth…damn…)
We are always trying to figure out what makes “kids these days” so much more…well, you fill in the blank…entitled; unfocused; fat…than we were as kids. Well, the answer is this: Kids simply work to adapt to the culture that they are growing up in. That’s their job. That’s what kids have done since the beginning of forever. So, if we provide them an entitled, unfocused, and fat culture, that is what our kids will adapt to.
What does this have to do with Saturday morning cartoons? This morning, I am having one of those…”Back when I was kid…” kinda super-reflective-super-judgmental moments about the state of children’s television today and how it reflects the differences between “my day” and “kids these days.”
What it comes down to is this: In “My Day,” we had fewer choices. “Kids These Days” have so many choices that it is mind boggling. Social science research now shows us that too many choices make us all less happy. Being able to watch whatever we want, whenever we want, on any device we want, definitely has something to do with our kids being “entitled; unfocused; fat.” Dontcha think?
What if we reclaimed the magic of Saturday mornings? What if we limited our kids screen time to these magic few hours, once a week, between when we first wake up and when it’s time to eat breakfast, get dressed, and go DO something? Is this possible for “kids these days?” Or are Saturday mornings just a thing of the past?
Here’s a little old school Saturday morning magic for you…
Lynn Johnson 
That’s a tough one! Can we reclaim the magic of “what was”? Our children have their own version of Saturday mornings. Is it detrimental to let them have their own? Then again, it may be wise to reclaim the simpler things or at least…..go out do something! Happy medium is probably the best.
Hey Gary…thanks for your comment! You have a great point. I definitely don’t feel the need to have kids experience the same exact things I did. I do believe in change and feel like culture needs to evolve. I just feel like some level of simplicity is always and forever crucial for all of us humans. Being so plugged in is tough for all of us. I think it’s especially hard on kids.
I agree, Saturday mornings used to be a beautiful thing, now it just doesn’t matter. I’ve taught kindergarten and have seen kids with iPhones. Maybe you can’t limit cartoons to Saturday mornings but I do think kids should have a less plugged in life, at least for the sake of creating attention spans longer than 3-5 seconds
Wow. Kindergarteners with cell phones is quite a scary image to me. What do we do about that?