Kids dropping/outgrowing hobbies ... gradual or all at once?

[JStarStar]

I outgrew many of the hobbies I had as a much younger kid, but MOST of them I kind of just gradually drifted out of.

A common story among BARs is that when they discovered girls, rockets tended to get left in the basement. I know in my teen years, I slid bit by bit out of rocketry from ages about 13-16. I started making more money on part-time jobs, but also finding more things to spend the money on. I did have a brief semi-renaissance into rocketry when I turned 16 and could start borrowing the family car to drive to launch rockets. But that was short-lived.

However I have noticed "kids these days" in many cases dropping hobbies virtually overnight. My nephew was bigtime into LEGOs for several years -- has a few sets worth several hundred bucks -- but in the last 4-6 months, now that he is in high school, he has pretty much dropped it.

Anybody else seen anything similar?

 

[TopRamen]

Most Kids these days don't even know what a Hobby is.

 

[JPVegh]

My son got out of rockets about freshman year of HS but he never out grew video games. Now he's in his thirties and he still plays video games. I don't really get it, I guess it's a generational thing. I bought him some rockets a few years ago hoping he'd get into it again, he never built them.

Myself I traded rockets for mini bikes at about 12. Learned a lot about small engine repair and performance. Then got into motorcycles at 15. By 18 I was married with a kid and hobbies took a back seat for a few years.

 

[CarVac]

I dropped video games, and picked up hobbies.

 

[JeromeK99]

I think a lot of it has to do with over-stimulation. Too much input. TV (1000 channels, dvds, bluerays, netflix), video games, computers, cell phones (texting), iPods etc... that and parents trying to micromanage there children's time with too many activities, sports, lessons, groups etc... Kids these days don't have time for hobbies let alone what idle or free time is. And yet we wonder why there is so much ADD/ADHD going around.

Jerome

 

[luke strawwalker]

I dropped video games, and picked up hobbies.

I had a buddy in middle/high school who was a video game freak-- this was the mid-late 80's, back in the "infancy" of video games when the hottest thing going was the Atari 2600 and Colecovision...
I got an Atari 5200 about the time I graduated...

Played a few years, used to enjoy it, but I enjoyed rockets as much if not more... back in about 86 or 87 I bought the first VCR our family owned, and within a few months my parents basically wore it out... they'd rent movies and come over to my grandmother's (where I lived with her) and watch movies to the wee hours of the morning, when I was trying to get some sleep for school... (Dad worked a rotating shift and was often off on weekdays or weeknights as well as weekends as the rotation wore on). How my lil brother and sister ever made it to school I don't know-- I guess they just conked out and slept on the floor in the living room while they were watching movies...

In the very late 80's or early 90's the 'console wars' began and video games started taking quantum leaps. Of course the price did too, and at the time I was very busy, running two farms 100 miles apart, going to mechanic's school, and all the other stuff guys do in their early 20's... no time for rockets or video games. Did get started fiddling with computers and a new fangled thing called the internet a few years later though... never got very good at it (just like video games-- my buddy could play rings around me but he lived, ate, and breathed video games night and day, all day, every day... I was never that "into it" like he was). I SURE wasn't going to drop a couple hundred bucks on a game console that would be outdated in a year or two... computers were bad enough on that score (which is what kept me from buying a computer until around 2002... until then I just went over to my mom's and borrowed her computer-- we'd gone partners to the tune of $500 each for a Tandy 1000 back in the early 90's, and she replaced it with like a $700 machine a few years later with a modem so she could get dialup internet... back in the old whopping 14.4 bps modem days when it would take 10 minutes to download a single picture in wallet size! I remember shopping for computers a time or two and considering buying one, but I'd look at the new models, say a 286 machine with a hard drive or dual floppies, compared to our old 8086 machine running on 5.25 inch disks (back before windows) and just be amazed, but couldn't afford it... IIRC those old machines were "lightning fast" at a whopping 20 MHz compared to our old 8086 Tandy running at 8 MHz... then the 486 machines came out with math coprocessors running at like 80 MHz... heck that old Tandy had 512 k of onboard memory... that's a little "k", not GIGABYTES like now... heck I remember when a 8 MEGABYTE hard drive was a BIG DEAL... now it's a bad joke... LOL

Anyway, got back into rockets about 9 years ago or so now... still fun. My brother gave us his old PSII-- I've played on it some, enjoyed some Star Wars game where you fly a Naboo starfighter, but I've played it maybe TWICE in the 2-3 years it's been sitting here... it mainly collects dust... LOL

Now that I have a 9 year old, we let her play games on the phone, SOME... thankfully not messing with the game console, she hasn't gotten an interest in it. We let her play educational-type games on the computer SOME, but since we're not into online gaming either, she's not developed a taste for that either. My 5th grade nephew on the other hand-- and his brother who's Keira's age... now those two strictly live, eat, and breathe computers and computer games, Wii, and all that... those boys don't do ANYTHING but shuffle between the refrigerator and the computer/game console, and they look it. VERY sad, but what can you do?? My sister doesn't listen to me about ANYTHING... especially when it comes to her kids...

Anyway, I've TRIED to get the boys interested in flying rockets, or stuff like that... if it's not electronic, they're not interested. At least we have Keira in softball, swimming, and gymnastics, and she likes to do kids triathalons with the running, swimming, and biking. Those boys have bicycles but never learned how to ride. Keira helps me on the farm and in the shop, chases cows, been teaching her about shop tools, welding, how to operate a blowtorch, how to drive a tractor (and let her take the wheel), let her drive the farm truck around the farm with me riding shotgun, she's helped me with electrical wiring, plumbing, water well repair, drain repairs, etc... tried teaching the boys and getting them involved at the same time, but they couldn't stand the heat, didn't know how to work a shovel, and were so weak and winded they were crying to go sit in the car with their grandparents (and play video games on the Gameboys or whatever they're called now, PCP or whatever it is they have). It's sad... We got Keira started in archery too in 4H, and she's training her dog for the dog show (oh brother!). Keira likes to build rockets too, sometimes...

Anyway, sadly I think there are a LOT more kids out there like Keira's cousins than like Keira nowdays... I mean heck, my own cousin is like 19 going on 20, and doesn't even have a driver's license... he relies on his mom and dad to drive him to and from work. His sister is 21 or 22 in college 4 hours away and she doesn't drive either (not sure if she has a license-- don't think she does but I could be wrong). Her Dad has to drive up and get her every time she wants or needs to come home from college... Heck my BIL's nephew is the same way-- 19 going on 20 and no driver's license-- can't go anywhere unless someone carries him around... his 17 year old sister on the other hand, got her license and drives herself to school and stuff...

I just don't understand kids today... my brother (I'm about to turn 43, and he's just turned 34) doesn't either... Heck we were driving the farm truck around at 14 and breaking in the bulkheads to get that license (learners permit or whatever they call it now)... COULDN'T WAIT... the idea of being 20 years old and not having a license was just unthinkable... now kids could care less it seems... Heck even my brothers wife, who's 23, grew up driving farm equipment and had her license at 16 when she quit riding the school bus I used to drive a few years back... I remember watching her family pick cotton and she was running a module builder, a machine basically the size of a semi-truck that packs cotton into huge "loaves" that are picked up by truck and hauled to town to be ginned later... I was baling hay in a field across the road, and stopped to get a drink of water and take a break, and I walked across the road and climbed up on the module builder and watched her operate it for about five minutes or so... module builders were fairly new to our part of cotton country at the time, and I was interested in seeing one operate... never expected to find a 13-14 year old girl at the controls at the time!

Tsk, tsk, tsk... guess I'm showing my age...

Later! OL JR

 

[ThirstyBarbarian]

Kids' interests can change rapidly. I got my nephew a rocket starter set a year ago for his 12th birthday. For most of the year, he was all about the rockets, and we would launch almost every Friday afternoon. I didn't see him much through the summer, and by the fall, he didn't have much more interest in rockets. Now he has an iPad and an iPhone, and some kind of video gaming system at home, and that is his main interest. He was never really into the hands-on aspects of rocketry, like building kits. He liked RTF or E2X type kits, and putting in the biggest motor possible, and pushing the button. I'm not really surprised he dropped out of the hobby. But I'm really glad I got him the starter set, because it got ME back into rocketry as a BAR. I'm really enjoying it!

 

[CarVac]

For me, what happened is that I learned I need to be solving engineering problems, or I am eternally bored. So I program for fun, I design (I don't often build) rockets.

And then there is piano playing and photography which don't exactly fit the mold.

 

[conman13]

Well I am 15 and don't plan on dropping it any time soon. I have never liked video games and have never played them. No one at school knows a thing about myself and rocketry except for a few teachers. I am also into woodworking and programming.


Sent from my iPhone using Rocketry Forum

 

[Verna]

There are so many things now to take a child's attention that many of us never saw at that age. During the midteen years most people begin to date, get their first jobs, school and other activities take most of your time.

In the 80's video games came along and that put a huge dent in what had always been the traditional hobby markets. Today RC activities are attracting a lot of kids. Kids today just go with the flow and what their friends are doing and few have the patience to sit and build anything.

Verna
www.vernarockets.com
https://www.facebook.com/RocketBabeDustStorm

 

[NAR29996]

This is another way that I'm just wierd. When I discovered girls, I would take her to go flying. When we got married, the first thing that went into the U-Haul was the rocketry gear. 35 years later, and she still goes flying with me (although she doesn't usually fly anything).

 

[rocketjet787]

I'm still in my first 20 years and there is no way that I'm dropping rocketry it's what I wake up to do everyday I love the engineering aspect of building and the excitement of watching what I built fly off the pad at speed it's just awesome.

 

[blackbrandt]

Hobbies? I don't have any hobbies... I just shoot glorified pipes in the air on weekends...:rofl:

 

[goldlizard]

Does anybody remember "PONG"? That was my video game. It was so boring that I never would sit for more than 20 minutes before I had to do something else. I am a only child, my parents both worked, by the age of 10 I was a latchkey kid. I took up rockets, building model cars, planes and ships. When my dad was in town we would do control line planes, and go four wheeling.

I really never got out of rockets until I joined the Navy. I did them with my kids, they liked it, but never got interested. So I am back a third time with my grand kids. I took it up with them after their father was murdered, to help bond with them and take their minds off of what happened to their dad.

We have a video game machine, but that is backseat to other activities, like bike riding, and skateboarding. I do most of the building, but my oldest loads his own rockets. We do it as a family, my wife has her own rockets, and she loads and launches them also. I only have one grandchild that is not into rockets, but that is only because he is 3 months old, but he goes to the launches, so it is just a matter of time.

 

[Cyril's Scribe]

I was big into video games as a teen, but unlike some others I got out of it ,and while I still play occasionally, I don't play nearly as much as some of my peers. There is a lot larger drive today than there was in the 50s, 60, 70s, or even 80s to get a college education. Looking at the data in my stats class just for WPI, we increased from 6,284 to 8,578 applicants just from 2009 to 20014 and that has been the trend around the country. This means more preparation courses, more "educational" summer camps, more after school tutoring and so on. I got really lucky in that my family allowed me to go to New Mexico for a month in the summer to backpack as a junior in High School, that is a fairly unusual thing now. This means less time for rockets, video games, or whatever else, it really is not "kids today" so much as "society today".

 

[mcderek]

How dare somebody choose to stop doing something we like. There must be something wrong with them and their generation!...