We had it all and on top of that we had a massive back-garden and if you were a "cheeky little bastard!!", like I was, you could hedge-hop all the way to the top of the street.

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So I got a clip around the ear and sent to my room, so what?! I'm an 80's child and we never get bored. However, being confined to my room left me unable to contact my friends and that's what really made me consider behaving in a little less of an anti-social way. I mean I loved my toys and Wonderboy could keep me occupied for a long time, but it was still just me on my own, or maybe my elder brother was there too and this would inevitably descend into a brotherly scrap.

No head-shots allowed and first one to cry-out to mummy loses

No contact with my friends was torture and technology still had a soulless robotic voice that didn't encourage any kind of fondness or obsessive attention.

My computer never "pinged" me to remind me how many points I was missing out on and it hadn't yet learned how to hijack the telephone-lines. A computer was a computer and nothing more, it didn't pretend to be my friend and it didn't try to steal my time. I controlled the technology around me even at such a young age and it didn't pretend to be my friend, my teacher, my Mum, or my Dad. Technology was just an emotionless collection of switches usually encased in plastic and it always came with on "off" switch.

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Today's technology is the evil twin of 80's tech and while we were all having cheap, shiny, tat rammed down our throats, tech's evil-twin was being enhanced in the laboratory...

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This is what makes modern technology so much more poisonous to youthful minds than its primitive predecessor and not only does it mimic life itself, it also demands attention.

Fomo's a bitch!

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I am told on a regular basis that I am "uncool" and "Embarrassing" by my wonderful daughter but I am cool enough to know what FOMO stands for.

Well, no it wasn't... and our parents were no-less concerned for our safety. By the time I was allowed to go out with my friends all day long I had been taught to know right from wrong. These lessons were quite simple and, as I mentioned earlier, could have painful consequences if I didn't learn from them. After you get caught garden-hoping for the 50th time and hauled in-front of your dad, for the 50th ear-bashing, the penny does begin to drop.

So when I did manage to get to my friends in time and lose myself in the woods, without any form of contact, my parents didn't threat. They knew we had respect for the rules and we also had enough respect leftover to know that our parents knew better(as much as we hated to admit it).

It's this mutual respect between young and old that nurtures and encourages itself, bringing out many other positive side-effects too. If we got in a scrape while we were out and about we had to deal with it ourselves and sometimes things didn't go my way. In these unfortunate instances one would go home to lick the wounds and often end up confiding in a close family member. Advice would be given and it would be from the most trusted of sources, your own flesh and blood.
After being consoled by one or more of my loving family I may decide to stay in the security of my own home, just for a couple of days while I regain some confidence. This means there will be a little more TV time and when my big-bro hogged the Commodore I was left with only 4 TV channels to choose from. There wasn't an abundance of kids TV back then but I still had some favourites.

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I now realise why TV shows are also called "Programs" and when I think back to the type of programming I was subjected to it was all just as primitive as the technology was. My TV role models were characters like Michael Knight, BA Barracus and Brutus 'The Barber' Beefcake. All completely bonkers in their own way but still encouraging a similar moral code to what I was used to at home.

• Protect the vulnerable.
• Do the right thing.
• Stick up for your mates.
• Fight with honour and dignity
• NEVER HIT A LADY
• Don't be no FOOL or no SUCKA!!

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How times have changed

So we now fast-forward to the present day and I want us to spend a little time comparing what influences I have just described from the 80's to the influences and TV "heroes" of the present day. You see the Hulk turned out to be pumping more steroids than he was iron and while BA maintains he "ain't no sucka!" we are all forced to sit idly and pretend we aren't being licked by the government every day. Nevertheless the parts these actors have played lent itself to a society struggling to acknowledge where we were heading. It was easier to look away and be swept off our feet with the glorification of both violence and technology.

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Michael knight's talking car was my first taste of autonomous vehicles and Kits soft English accent made me fall in love with motor vehicles and the possibilities of the future. As much as we don't like to admit it these TV shows had an impact and in these early days it was only the TV that had the ability to keep up a coherent, although still somewhat basic, dialog with its audience. This was programming on a very basic level and the only reason for it not lobotomizing our generation was because we weren't saturated with it. Before the UK adopted the US mode of television it was 4 hrs of TV-world per week.

And this is where I come to my real concern about children today and the way they are purposely prized away from better things. Also, I would like to make comment about the content of the programs kids watch and in particular the shift in narrative. It seems to me that these modern TV shows no longer instill an unconditional respect for ones elders and they conveniently forgets to inform the viewers about the importance of the real-world.

In-fact these new talking heads aren't even classed as TV stars, they are now called "YouTube" sensations and the TV shows that the kids seem to be interested in are supposed to be aimed at adults. I assume the producers of "love Island" feel that nobody should miss out on their thought-provoking show and therefore make sure that they air a edited version of events that is deemed suitable for the younger audience. I mean the show doesn't change and it is still about who is going to sleep with who and why some guy has already slept with 75% of the cast, but still manages to appeal to the brainless actresses on-screen. As much as people like to think that this is all about "girl-power" and that the boyish behaviour represents some form of empowerment it simply is not so.

But let's not just take my word on this, lets see what you all think this is supposed to promote...

I find football to be a very good example of how society acts in general to one another.

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The flag waving, the snarling, the thoughtless cheering, the extortionate prices paid by "fans".... The diving, the cheating, the misplaced aggression, the hidden racism, the over-rated and obscenely paid superstars and worse of all, the unappreciative way in which these privileged few behave. To say that these "superstars" can get away with murder isn't far from the truth and as for the way these role-models treat the opposite sex... well, here we do have a major problem and the justice celebrities receive, on the rare occasion they are exposed, is just astonishing to behold. I could go into a massive list of celebrities that have all avoided jail for crimes that would certainly see you or I behind bars, but I won't bother. I have gone on too long now and this last section was only to ask you to consider the children's TV shows of today and the adult characters who are cast in parental roles.

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For an example I would use the Disney show names "Victorious" and bring your attention to the main adult character. His name is Sycowitz and he plays the fool, which coincidentally seems to be the narrative flowing beneath the stream of every other kids TV show...

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Now besides all of the "sensations", the talking heads, click-bait profiles, on-line grooming and subliminal advertising the internet is as safe as it ever was. And while those claiming to take responsibility for safeguarding its customers, have more interest in harvesting and selling our personal data, then we do have a major problem to address. But besides all of this there is one more issue I would like to approach and because this post has already ran on far too long I am going to pose my final point as a question to you all...

I have spoken of celebrity role-models and how in the 80's the narrative was still quite honourable on the surface. Today it seems that the "bad-guy" is more in favour with the audience and violence in every form is glorified. Women are paraded around after being convinced that the skimpy outfits are their-own idea and just a fortunate consequence to the venue.

So who were your heroes and if you have your own children, or even grandchildren, what do they watch on TV? Who are their role-models and how do you think modern media influences them? Who do the girls have to look up to in your country? And how about the boys, what makes your next generation of men tic? I suppose this will depend heavily on your countries governments and the agenda they support. Maybe your local community has a tighter grip or maybe they have already tackled this issue, I would be very interested in hearing how that went.

So I was going to finish this post here but as it has already become bigger than I wanted it to be I may as well carry on, you've probably switched off by now, anyway.

I will leave this post with one last observation I have made through a recent argument I had with my daughter. After becoming annoyed at her constant apathy towards anything other than her phone I snapped and turned off the wifi. This resulted in a giant sulk and threats of running off to Mum's house. While the threats may be hollow, they still hit the mark and I guess many parents hear this kind of back-chat. I don't loose much sleep over it and I know my daughter will see sense soon enough. As the Incredible-Sulk returned to her cave I was left to contemplate the punishment I had just dished out. Some parents would think I am overthinking the issue but if a punishment doesn't fit the crime then it isn't fit for purpose. I have no problem with my daughters phone and I would be happy for her to use it more, if she was in control. But I'm afraid to say that isn't the case and for now it seems that technology and the careless folk who wield it are dictating the plays.

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These phones now include every outlet to facilitate a virtual existence and for children this is quite harmful. But while the UK reports on how parents should be wary and suspicious of the affect of social media, because it does actually strip them of imagination and seriously effects their moods, the same society allows the promotion of such tech. We have allowed it to be woven into our future and permitted our children to become reliant on it for all of their social activities.

So we have a situation were are children are being encouraged to use more and more computer software, which undoubtedly will be most conveniently found on a mobile-phone or tablet. The content available has maximum appeal for children and uses years of study into human behaviour, to trap it audience into a never ending cycle of gormless attention. With a constant narrative that parents are foolishly old fashioned and kids know better, we get to a situation that leads to children having an ingrained disrespect for adults, especially when it came to understanding the new-world. Now when I have no choice but to turn off the internet, it not only means that I will be cutting my daughter off from the bad content, but it also means she will be cut-off from all of her friends and the positive, creative, harmless web-sites that are out there. For me this means the punishment does not fit the crime and my daughter will resent me for the collateral damage. God forbid she misses out on an important kiddy-conference or a call from her boyfriend while on time-out. I don't really have a choice and the guy on the news has just told me I am right to react.

But while the parent are being told one thing the children are told another, and with Mum and Dad going all Robocop on the situation, we come to an "Us" vs "Them" scenario. The parents are now cast as the foolish oppressors and the virtual world offers it all at the click of a button.

I find it more than a suspicious coincidence that while our children are corrupted and set against their parents, via the oldest trick in the book(pun intended), the recommendations coming out of the latest think-tank is that the "Ministry of Education" should take over the young-offenders institutes and their operations. Now while this is a good step away from the military control that our detained-children are subject to, presently, it also opens the door for a brand new arm of the government. This shift in protocol and responsibility will bring new rules and new expectations for what constitutes a "rehabilitated young-offender". The IICSA think-tank has already revealed that many children who have never committed a crime, end up in these "secure units". This is due to the foster care industry stockpiling their assets anywhere they can.

My fear is that we now approach the child-army of George Orwell's 1984 and with the UK government on the cusp of rewriting the rules and rearranging the education system to accommodate youth detention and correction facilities, I think we need to pay closer attention to our roles as parents and re-evaluate what is going around us.

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Thank you all for reading and hope it has given you something to think about.

PTYAY

Written by Rebel-Dan.