Debate - Is Modern Culture Ruining Childhood?

1st Speaker

A very good morning to Mr. Kalidass and my fellow friends. I’m Khanda as a affirmative speaker and my partner, Sheikh Mohd Norsyafie will be the negative speaker.

The topic for our debate is ‘‘Is modern culture ruining childhood?’’ So, do you know what is modern culture? Modern culture is often used to refer to the latter half of the 20th century through the present, a period during which many major inventions became common household items, such as cars, televisions and computers. In the past, children were worry free and sociable, they didn’t need a fancy toys to play because they had their own imagination. But in the last decades, life has changed.

As the affirmative speaker, I’m convince that this statement is true. In my opinion, I think modern culture is ruining our new generations from day to day.

My first point is modern culture has lead the children to have health problems. In my opinion, I think watching TV is not a good idea when the children become sedentary and they are easily exposed to junk food advertising. According to Malaysia’s National Health Ministry, 76% of the parents confessed feeding their kids with fast food at least once a week. In fact, this is very harmful for children’s health because it can cause several diseases such as heart disease, obesity and diabetes. Thus, modern culture has affects the children to have health problems.

Now to my second point, I think modern culture also causes the children to stop socializing. Although the parents may think it is normal for their children to start using technology at very young age, but in contrast, I think the children will become obsessed with electronic gadgets and they will simply ignore others people. Therefore, this proves that modern culture causes the children to stop socializing.

In conclusion, I think modern culture is ruining childhood.

1st Speaker

Yes Sheikh, it is undeniable that modern culture also have a lots of advantages. One of the greatest advantages of the modern culture is easy to access to information as you had said just now. But in my opinion, this is wrong because I think modern culture will lead the children suffer from stress. By having a huge amount of information makes the children become anxious and worried because of global problems. The world issues make the children have fears and don’t mature as fast. This also making them believe that the world is going to end before they are adults. Thus, modern culture will lead the children suffer from stress.