The New Generation of Athletics.

Childhood obesity is on the rise in the world today, and it is continuing to grow at an enormous rate. Many people have solutions to this problem and after going into the blogesphere, have found that many believe that it is due to the youth not being involved in any form of an athletic organization or that there is a decrease in activity period. With technology evolving, we have created a sedentary generation of computer lovers and gamers. We now have kids that think the Nintendo Wii is a sport. I come from a generation where we use to shut down streets to play a game. Nowadays, you can’t even play tag, touch football, or dodge ball in schools because they are too dangerous. We might as well just put video game systems on the playground. This week I looked and commented on two articles. One was about giving tax breaks to parents whose kids play organized sports and the other on how the Nintendo Wii is promoting fitness to the gamer generation. My comments are posted below.

A Fitness Tax Credit:
I think that this is a very bad idea. We already have kids that do not like to go out and play sports, so now we are going to have parents go out and force their kids to go play a sport so they can have a tax break. I feel that this will only lead to more kids not wanting to participate in sports. I have played organized sports my whole life and I could tell the kids whose parents made them go out and play vs the ones that wanted to be there. They were the ones that ended up hurt or they ended up quitting. I do feel though that there is some god out of this though ; this is an effort though to make the parents try and get there kids outside instead of being locked in a room playing video games. Like the first person that commented on this I feel like they should be putting the money into the physical education programs instead of giving tax breaks. I know that many P.E. programs are outdated and some are even being cut so we should put some funding in to these programs to help promote fitness.

The Wii and Obesity:
I agree with you about that these kids need to exercise something besides their thumbs. I find the whole thing about the Wii being a good source of exercise, kind of silly. I understand that we have this whole generation of gamers but how can this really compare to real exercise or even just going outside and playing. While I myself find these games fun and amusing I do not see them as a good source of exercise. Whatever happened to the good 'ol days of going and playing basketball, football, hockey or whatever your choice of game was in the street of your neighborhood? I see the Wii as another excuse for our obese children to stay inside instead of going outside and playing. They are missing out on all the fun that my friends and I, as well as many others use to have. As far as being involved emotionally involved in the games as well I think that many of them really need to get a life and go experience something that is real and not hooked up to a TV.