The Second Silent Spring

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson was an alarming look into the environmental landscape of the early 1960’s that set the environmental movement on fire, resulting in environmental activism and regulations put into place to protect our natural resource. She documented the spring when the birds stopped singing and the silence that replaced it. I see a second coming of this silent spring, this time it is not the birds that have stopped singing in the parks, but our children. It is not pesticides and pollution stopping the laughter in the park, but the tablets and phones we put in front of them. I take my kids to the park, and I do not see kids running around. I see a cute little girl setting in a swing, motionless. As I wonder if she is in a comma, I see her trance like state briefly interrupted by a sudden flurry of movement as her thumbs dance across the screen of her tablet.