Childhood Warzone

Childhood is a war. A war between the child, and
the rest of the world. There are two main factions in this war however; on one side we have the child and on the other - the parents. It’s a war that has many battles, but one which will have no definitive outcome. It’s a war which has been going on for decades, if not centuries, one which has seen many eras and one which is likely to see many more. Most importantly though, it’s a war that always changes, but always stays the same.

Let’s face it, the relationship between a parent and a child is a strong one, a very strong one, but not one without its flaws. Both parent and child will see eye to eye on many occasions, but both will disagree on countless more. These disagreements will escalate with growing years, either until the child becomes a fully fledged ‘adult’ or leaves to start a life of their own, possibly even both (of course I’m not saying for a moment that the arguments stop completely!). We all know for a fact however that the hardest time of all for these ‘battles’ is of course the teenage years. These years are the toughest childhood years in terms of physical, mental and hormonal changes, but when you throw on top of that social, school and exam pressures coupled with the imminent discovery and attraction of the opposite sex, and the newly found pressure and/or temptation of alcohol and drugs, is it any wonder that parents and teenagers find it difficult to see eye to eye? It’s a weird sort of relationship during these years if you think about it; Co-existing, but leading so very different lives. This leaves the field wide open for the age old battle; The parents assuming they’ve been there and done it all before, and the teenager adamant that times have changed, and that todays childhood no longer resembles anything or their parents one.

Both sides have their points, but whether it’s because I’m still a teenager or not, I agree more with the ‘teenage’ way of thinking. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying our parents had a childhood unimaginably different from our own, but what I am saying is that the world is changing… and it’s changing fast. It wasn’t too long ago that children should be ‘seen and not heard’, these times yielded, however, to the ever growing rebellion of the youth of the 60’s 70’s and 80’s. The likes of the Hippies with their ability to be rather ‘laid-back’ yet very politically active and opinionated and the Punks with their anarchistic approach to, well… everything. So what about the youth of today... What are we?

The persecuted, bubble-wrapped generation. That’s what we are. The generation that is damned if we do and damned if we don’t. On one hand, we are scorned for being a generation that is obese and unfit, sitting in front of our games consoles, computers and T.V’s. Yet, at the same time our parents are too scared to let us out into a world filled with theft, murder and knife-crimes galore - something that we’re also blamed for. I challenge you to find a report on knife crime that doesn’t have a rather large section dedicated to youths (or one looking back before the mid nineties). I challenge you to find a news channel without an independent, scientific or government report on something negative about us. Even more so, I challenge you to find a news channel with more positive to say than negative about our generation - even one positive story would surprise me. The media are all to fond of churning out the negatives about the minorities among us - those minorities that have existed in all previous generations but haven’t been publicised to the same degree. They are also rather prone to try to scare our parents into believing that each and every one of us is at permanent risk the minute we leave our front doors. It’s sad, that todays media are so desperate for a throw away story that they think it’s right to damn the youth of today to a life in which they have to decide whether they want to stay inside, ‘safe’ with their own families, or go outside, only to be enticed by ‘gang warfare’, drugs and alcohol, and then receive bad press either way. The fear that the media has created has eliminated the middle ground, or at least alienated it. Shopping centers, street corners, high streets, parks… to name but a few places that groups of youths will be ‘moved on’ or dispersed when found by the police. It would be nice, if the whole country didn’t fear todays youth. It would be nice if people would realise that not all of us run around with knives or guns in our pockets, ready to kill the first person we meet. It would be nice if they remembered that the majority want to meet in the park for a game of football, or in the town just to hang out and see each other outside of school. But that’s not likely to happen any time soon.

Let me hit you with some statistics from the England and Wales crime summary from 2006/7.

- Nearly one in five people think anti-social behaviour is a problem in their area.

- Of the seven strands of anti-social behaviour that make up the overall Home Office measure, the most common type of perceived anti-social behaviour was teenagers hanging around, with a third saying it was a problem in their local area.

- Abandoned cars and noisy neighbours were least common.

- Other types of anti-social behaviour that people reported as being a problem included illegally parked cars, fireworks being set off and being pestered or intimidated.

- Even though crime has fallen since 1995, people believe that crime is rising. Around two in three people believe that crime nationally has increased in the last two years.

I never realised that a group of friends hanging out together was considered ‘anti-social’. Let alone more anti-social than noisy neighbours, or actually being intimidated by someone.

I could talk about this all day, but I do want to move on to an area that I haven’t covered yet - the internet. I’m sure everyone is sick to death hearing about that, and parents arguing with their children about it. It is however important to put it in to perspective. There aren’t as many dangers out there as yet again the media say there are… I mean lets face it, todays adults have fallen victim to a far greater percentage of internet crimes than any of our children. I’m not saying that the likes of internet paedophilia is harmless, far from it, but it’s not as widespread as the media likes to perceive. The fear of todays children falling victim to online crimes like these terrifies our parents, for perfectly rational reasons… it’s just the scale of the problem that’s irrational. Because of this, some parents will limit their children's use of instant messaging and social networking, others won’t, and some will stop their children using it all together… at least until they reach an ‘acceptable’ age. There are a couple of things I don’t particularly like about this, the first being that it’s mainly media driven, and the second falls straight in to line to the rest of this post. If todays youth are going to be kept inside, ‘safe’, from the rather cruel world outside and away from their friends, then why is it fair that there are once again restrictions placed on one of the few opportunities they get to communicate with their friends?

I ask todays parents, to try and see past this Iron Curtain, put in place by the media, and give their children a chance to live a life past school and video games. We live in a world that we expect todays generation to save from climate change… at least let them experience what they’re saving. Or if you still see it as too much of a risk, at least give your children a break when they’re using Facebook, or msn messenger to do the things they now can’t meet in the park to do. And I ask the media, to give todays youth a needed break. Stop reporting all the negatives, and stop making us all seem like unfit, obese thugs… and just remember there’s more good than bad out there. The majority of us just want to live a life, and you’re definitely not helping.

The Bass Player.

Photo 1. By Myles Noton on Flickr
Photo 2. By Earthly Images on Flickr
Photo 3. By id-iom on Flickr

Center'd

I got an email a couple of weeks ago from a guy called Mike over at Center’d.com asking if I’d do a review of their site. Now I don’t usually do that sort of thing, but I do always like checking out the sites that are forwarded to me. I must say though that I was rather impressed with Center’d when I took a look… so much so I decided to take the plunge and write a quick post about it!

I suppose it’s best to start by explaining what Center’d is, and for that I’m going to cheat and copy it from their site (There’s a one sentence summary after the italics if you want to skip it);

We just love it when a plan comes together. Unfortunately, that rarely happens without heroic efforts, hundreds of emails, and a fair amount of anxiety.

Who is going, where are we going, when are we going. Easy, right? Well, not so much. In fact, no one has created an experience that combines the best of planning tools with the best of local search. And until someone does, we will either continue to endure, or stop making plans altogether. Sigh.

But wait! At Center'd, we’ve been thinking about how to solve the challenges that exist in making plans. From the smallest get together, where you just can’t decide on where to eat and oh-my-goodness-I-can’t-take-it-anymore-maybe-I’ll-just-stay-home-and-wash-my-cat, to the large fundraisers and school activities that require signups and hundreds of emails and weeks of meticulous planning, one thing is clear: We can help you spend less time planning, and more time enjoying yourself.

We do this by focusing on three categories:

People - Connect to people you trust, and get their opinions and information to help you find that perfect place or make successful that successful plan.

Places - See what the crowds think by seeing ratings and reviews from across the web, or find out what your trusted friends think.

Plans - Easily invite friends, find out where everyone wants to go and when with place and time voting, empower volunteers to sign up for tasks, and stay on top of it with reminders and notifications.

So basically, Center’d gives you a platform to create and manage events with minimal fuss (as large as you like or as small as you like), but within that there is a platform for finding places like bars, coffee shops, halls etc and add the locations to your event. What I like about it is the simple and clean interface, and the overall ease of use… I was able to put together a demo event in a minute or two, which is brilliant for those small meetings or spontaneous events that come up. You can find the demo event here by the way, feel free to mess around and have a tinker.

I have to say, the thing I like most about Center’d though is the fact that you don’t need an account to be a part of an event, and to take part in the organization of it once it’s been created. This really saves time for those who just want to click on an email link and say “yup, I’ll be there”, but also means that those who want to be a little more involved in the event don’t actually need to have an account to do so. Although I had to make an account to create the demo event, it only took the same amount of time to do so as it did to make the demo itself, which again, is another bonus.
Creating events themselves is very stress free, and includes all the things you could need; Event name, description, location, time, whether you want to make it invite only or public etc, whether you want to track RSVP’s and whether you want to be able to ask volunteers to sign up for your event. It even lets you add a little picture for the event, you can choose from the default ones, which are taken from flickr or you can add your own from the web or your desktop. I should also mention that you can choose to have a vote on the time and location on the event.

Once you send out the invites and links to the event page your invitees will see a cool little page that details the time location etc and allows them to vote on these if you have requested a vote. It has a google map to map out the event location(s), an attendees section and also a comments section. Along the top it gives you the options to add tasks for the event, share the event, and send messages (as of yet I’ve only tried the sharing bit).

There’s not much bad to say about Center’d (apart from the fact we spell centered like that in the UK so I’ve had to correct my spelling every time I’ve typed it!), what I will say though is that I had difficulty adding my locations into the event and found I had to type a specific place otherwise it would take an American bias… but apart from that, I love it and as event tools go it’s a very good one. I must also say though that it’s got a lot of potential to be used in a school environment, they even give you templates for typical school events (which can be found here). Overall a very nice little tool for a multitude of situations!

The Bass Player

(p.s. If you think I should do a few more of these please say in the comments)