Work hard, play hard

Since the 16th of June till the 24th of July, most of our students had nothing to do. We, the younger generation, at first, thought of the holidays as a relief, but after a few days we had nothing to save us from the pain of boredom.
TV has been watched for hundreds of hours over the course of the past month or so, video games have been finished and kept aside, the stack of CDs and movies watched has overtaken our own height, and the number of messages exchanged between people has reached an ultimate new high. The parents started scolding their children for these reasons and shoved books into their faces. Now, you don't have to be a child specialist nor a psychiatrist to understand the fact that this does not work in 99.0 per cent of cases.
The parents, may ask why do we do these things? It is simply because we had no other choice. Truly speaking, I went to Abahani ground one day to play cricket, and while I was there my friend's bag was stolen. Now one may say that my friend should have kept his bag carefully, but we went to the field to play cricket, not safeguard a bag. So it was natural for us to look away from the bag while we were playing. Now, when these things happen, as burning of vehicles and increased kidnapping of minors take place all over Dhaka, parents do not want us to go out.
We, the residents of this country, have very few options for recreation. We neither have community swimming pool, play ground, community library, recreation centre nor a safe and clean park.
Now that our options are limited, do we persist with this behaviour, which involves being glued to electronic screens all day? No.
Although there are good things about the screen-life, such as children can learn many new, interesting facts about current affairs, science, history, etc. and talk to people, the disadvantages still seem to outweigh the advantages. For example, a long-term study conducted by the Millennium Cohort Study published in 2013, found that children who watched more than 3 hours of television, videos, or DVDs a day had a higher chance of conduct problems, emotional symptoms and relationship problems by age 7 than children who did not. Furthermore, an Iowa State University study found that students who stare at a screen for more than two hours a day are twice as likely to be diagnosed with attention problems, which is bloodcurdling, when you consider that the average amount of time a child spends watching television and playing video games is 4.26 hours a day.
To make matters worse, the shows the youngsters (2-12 yrs old) are watching today are not of the same quality of today's teenagers who had grown up with. Disney being banned in our country and Cartoon Network having been turned into Hindi, they can hardly entertain our friends of schools. Unless we want the next generation to speak Hindi instead of Bangla, this will have to change. The days of Chowder, Kim Possible, Pokemonand even Phineas and Ferbare are long gone, and what remain are the Cartoon Network Hindi shows like Haddi Mera Buddy and the Nickelodeon Hindi-dubbed versions of Ninja Hatori and Power Rangers. Our numerous Bengali channels also seem to lack educational and recreational shows for children and whatever they have (if there are any shows except for the repeated bad-influencing episodes of Doraemon) are unattractive.
So what should we, children, do? Well we need a balance of both, I guess; so we have to work hard and play hard? But to play hard we need fields. Now, that is where the government comes in. Firstly, it needs to talk to the opposition to resolve the current crisis, before it gets any worse. And secondly, it should start making a few more playing fields and recreational centres (uncared and insecure parks do not count) where the common people can go to just relax, such as a community library or playground.

The writer can be reached at email: tahseen_cricket@hotmail.com