All these new fangled digital devices not only put ‘new pressure’ on youth but on the United States and democracy itself, says the President.
”With iPods and iPads; Xboxes and PlayStations – none of which I know how to work – information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation,” Obama said at an event on Hampton University campus, Virginia, reports Yahoo! News.
”All of this is not only putting new pressures on you. It is putting new pressures on our country and on our democracy,” he continued, stressing the vital importance of education so that we can adapt to ”a period of breathtaking change.”
Naturally this kind of talk can be applied to other mediums like TV, film, music and even comic books. This isn’t the first time President Obama has taken a shot at the videogames cult we’re rapidly submerging ourselves in generation by generation.
Last year in a speech to the American Medical Association, Obama said games were a ”health concern”, adding we should be ”going for a run or hitting the gym, and raising our children to step away from the videogames and spend more time playing outside.”
Recently top US Generals were arguing that childhood obesity should be declared a national state of emergency because it was crippling the future pool of US youth for service in the military - which is a touch ironic…
…it’s not okay to suffer diabetes and waddle to class on campus but it’s fine to be fighting fit and shipped off to get fragged in the desert in the name of democracy. I think we see why so many prefer those ‘distracting’ videogame consoles…
