The disappearance of childhood

This book disrupts the complacent peace that adults have established through indifference, shaping the world in their own image even in its most hidden corners. It addresses perhaps the most consequential cultural colonization effort of our time: the destruction of childhood through neglect or destabilization of its play spaces, its inner narratives, and its specific sense of time. Not only is Postman's thesis provocative—that the idea of childhood is disappearing in Western civilization—but his insightful analysis of electronic media, which he identifies as powerful accelerators of this development, is equally compelling. Postman's critique targets the alliance of commerce, ideology, and thoughtlessness against children's claims to their own, free time: viewing childhood not as a biological phase, but rather as a cultural experience. The imaginative and emotional world of childhood is definitively eradicated when children and adolescents are only capable of adult desires.