Life on the social curve
THE RULES of the game were quite simple, but in order for the simple rules to be applied, there was a complicated ceremony that preceded it. Everyone would follow the leader who would touch his or her shoe and say: “aaaan”, then touch his knee and say: “kneeee”, the shoulder was next: “keeeey”, and then the hand shot up to the heavens with the cry of “depp!”
It started slowly, but soon picked up momentum – “Aaaan-kneeee-keeeey-depp … aan-knee-keey-depp … an-kne-key-depp … anknekeydep … anikedep!” And when these physical jerks reached its crescendo; at that point when you realised that a human hand was not designed to move from the foot to the sky so rapidly and still remain attached to the body, it was at that point that the slowest was pointed out by the eagle-eyed leader.
But that was just the selection process. The slowpoke now had to chase the rest of the group to see if he could simply touch someone else … anyone else, giving this person the task of tagging someone, and so it went on and on for hours.
And this was the beauty of anikidep – also known as “tag” elsewhere in the world. We had fun just chasing and being chased. We didn’t even realise that we were running for hours on end; and when the game ended, our chests were burning, our cheeks were flushed and sweat was pouring off us. We would often have to form a queue at the garden hose so that we could drink to slake our thirst – back then our city’s tap water was the drink of choice!
The result of all this activity benefited us, even though we never realised it at the time – we were just having fun.
Children generally had good lungs, healthy blood, strong muscles, glowing skin and good posture. And besides all the physical benefits, we had contact with friends, we laughed, screamed at and sometimes even fought with each other, thus we learned how to handle conflict! These days things are different. Games like Candy Crush, Angry Birds and their ilk also provide hours and hours of fun; it’s good too because children are quiet, out of their parents’ hair and safe under the umbrella of a Wi-Fi hotspot – so they could be easy to find.
Social interaction is also different, there are fewer shouting matches because it’s fairly simple to “unfriend” or block someone from your social media circles instead of arguing with them.
Yet, many people are concerned about this new lifestyle and are wondering what its effects will be in the near future. Recently I discovered that personal trainers are adding a series of exercises to their battery of torture rituals to combat something called “forward head posture” or “text-neck”.
Text-neck is a condition where the skull protrudes forward more than 2.5cm over the vertebra in the neck on which the head rests. Due to increased use of cellphones, tablets and laptops, text-neck is now common among many adults and, alarmingly, increasingly amongst teenagers … whose skeletons are still developing.
Looking down at your device is like having a 30kg weight on your neck, according to a spine surgeon. Having that amount of force on your neck and spine isn’t good for your health – and the average person spends two to four hours a day in this position; and here’s the worrying thing – the more your neck bends, the worse it is!
We should realise that the human neck was not designed to crane forward for so long and still support a 5kg lump of bone, brain and nostril hair. Think about it … we can this very day make a decision to put down those devices and live intentionally, and not habitually.