[robonerd]

> I think kids are just staying inside and playing with electronics more too. But why are they doing that? Is the neighborhood not stimulating enough?

Well, that one is easy: their parents permit it. The rule in my home was simple: if you start a video game, you also start a 30 minute egg timer. If you forgot the timer and got caught, you lost the privilege for a week. The egg timer could be upgraded to an hour if I was getting good grades, but the thought of playing games for several hours a day was almost inconceivable. I only got away with that when I was home alone.

Sometimes when I was feeling mopey and started complaining about being bored my mother would get sick of it and yell at me "GO BE BORED OUTSIDE"