Dwain Northey (Gen X)

Summer Vacation Then and Now

What strikes me about summer vacation today isn’t that kids get bored. Kids have always gotten bored. That’s practically part of the job description of being a kid.

What has changed is what happens before they get bored.

Back in the 1970s and 1980s, summer wasn’t something your parents organized. Summer was something you and your friends invented.

After breakfast, you’d head outside and see who was around.

Maybe you’d end up at the community pool. Maybe you’d find a pickup basketball game. Maybe somebody brought a bat and ball to an empty lot and suddenly you had a sandlot baseball game. Maybe you’d ride your bike halfway across town for no reason whatsoever.

The point wasn’t the activity. The point was the friends.

We weren’t looking for curated experiences. We were looking for people.

And when we got old enough, we started picking up little jobs. Mowing lawns. Pulling weeds. Delivering newspapers. Washing cars. Whatever the neighborhood would pay us to do.

Not because we were building résumés.

Because we wanted money.

Money meant roller skating. Money meant pizza. Money meant arcade games. Money meant movies. The work wasn’t the point. The freedom was.

Today’s kids seem to live in a completely different universe.

The community pools still exist. The basketball courts still exist. The baseball fields still exist.

But many kids experience them as scheduled activities rather than gathering places.

They’ll go to the pool for a couple of weeks.

Then they’re bored.

They’ll play a sport for a while.

Then they’re bored.

They’ll spend hours on Xbox, PlayStation, YouTube, TikTok, or whatever platform is currently consuming childhood.

Then they’re bored.

What fascinates me is that modern kids have access to more entertainment than any generation in human history.

If you told twelve-year-old me that one day I could have every movie ever made, every song ever recorded, thousands of video games, and instant communication with my friends all sitting in my pocket, I would have assumed boredom had been permanently cured.

Instead, it turns out boredom is undefeated.

Maybe part of the difference is that our generation had to create our own fun. We spent entire afternoons figuring out what to do. The search was part of the adventure.

Now entertainment arrives prepackaged, professionally produced, and instantly available.

And when everything is available all the time, somehow nothing feels special for very long.

So by the first week of July, just as surely as fireworks and sunburns, you’ll hear it.

The kid who has a gaming system worth hundreds of dollars.

The kid with streaming services.

The kid with a smartphone.

The kid with air conditioning, Wi-Fi, and enough entertainment options to keep a medieval king occupied for a thousand years.

Will stand in the middle of the living room and announce:

“I’m bored.”

And every Gen Xer within earshot will have the same thought.

“There’s a basketball court, a swimming pool, a bicycle in the garage, and half a dozen friends within a mile of this house. How exactly did you manage to run out of things to do?”

Some mysteries may never be solved.