Pokemon Zombies!

There always have been, and always will be, new crazes that will capture a generation of young people the world over. We have had everything from yo-yos to rock and roll, hula hoops to mobile phones, and everything in between! It doesn't matter if it's something simple such as the hula hoop or something as technical as a computer, the young will find it something that they cannot resist, it's the nature of youth.

I cannot remember ever being interested in any crazes when I was young. I loved my sports and fishing, but other than that I wasn't really interested in anything else. I do remember a craze for something which went by the dubious name of 'Clackers' here in Yorkshire. These were implements that would be rejected by the Ministry of Defence as being too dangerous, if they were to make a comeback. They were two hard plastic balls connected by a string, which made a clicking noise if you could get them to smash against each other. This often resulted in the balls shattering and blinding and maiming children. They would have been safer taking up smoking!

I do remember a brief craze at my school for young men to wear Brut aftershave. The problem was that this craze coincided with the girls wearing Charlie perfume! Young people don't understand the concept of dabbing on a bit of perfume, so if you stood down-wind of the average child you could smell them coming from over two miles away! The girls used to put on so much Charlie (which now has a different meaning), that you could go blind in one eye just standing next to them. If you were foolish enough to try to give a girl a love bite you would end up with Bell's Palsy, where one side of your face is paralysed. But most of these phases soon passed and were quickly forgotten, only to be replaced with another something mind numbingly pointless craze!

But about twenty years ago all this changed when technology went mad and everyone had to have a computer. The problem with this technology is that it moves so fast. I remember playing 'Pong' many years ago. This was a computer game where a small dot flashed across the screen and had to be stopped by a simple little line. This was addictive enough, so can you imagine just what it's like for today's generation with all the technology they have! The problem is that they now have access to this 24 hours a day, because everything is on their phones. We seem to have a generation of zombies that would rather email or text than talk. Sit on any mode of public transport and all the carriages are full of people looking at their phones, no interaction.

But now we have a new craze which, like the sat navs, make people turn their brains off when they turn the device on. I remember people having to be rescued from rivers which they had driven into because their sat nav had told them to! I remember someone once driving around a roundabout for an hour because the sat nav wouldn't load up properly! The new craze is called 'Pokemon Go' where people have to find Pokemon and capture them with their phones. This has resulted in people marching into doctors' surgeries while doctors are consulting patients, and even walking down train lines! This game is not a new concept by the way. I remember a few years ago while working in a school in Luxembourg, being introduced to something called Geo boxes, (I think?). A lovely man that picked me up each morning and took me home each night was obsessed with this concept. You had to look up co-ordinations on your phone then see if you could find a box that had been hidden.

But the worst thing about this craze is that young people seem to be left to play on these games as long as they want. I have been told today by a collogue who had a young man attending a course he was offering. The lad was fifteen years old but seemed to be constantly distracted by his phone. This caused lots of problems for my collogue, who asked the young man to try to pay attention. The lad was so tired that he could not concentrate. When asked if there was a problem, he said, “I was up until five this morning playing Pokemon Go, I'm knackered!” What kind of parents let their child do this when they have college the next morning? Why do certain parents blame teachers for all the problems their children experience when really it's down to lazy-arsed parenting?

The problem with today's crazes is that they are designed by companies who make major profits, and they update the product regularly, so the craze never dies, it just becomes more intense for the user. These games can be as addictive as drugs for some young people. They don't seem to be able to function around other people and become more and more reclusive. The only way to sort out this problem is for parents to become just that, parents! Stop pussy-footing around and take control, even if it means taking their computers away from them!

There will always be crazes, but let's not create a generation of zombies that live in a virtual world!