Keep in mind, childhoods are a lot different now because you are exposed to a lot of information and people you never would have had a chance to meet when you were a child. As a kid in the 90's, my parents gave my brothers and I a choice: cable TV, or DSL once DSL came to our area of the city.

We chose DSL, and definitely the Internet experience I had growing up was way different than every other kid at school since it was actually feasible to download a few small movies or games at the time, and to talk on chat apps/message boards at a very early age. All the online activities became part of my childhood along with my friends who lived locally and my other activities, and turned out, I enjoyed those a lot more than the in person activities which I mostly just _could_ do, as opposed to wanting to do them. So I had a pretty good balance I felt between physical activities, meeting with friends locally for bike rides or playing games, and the online social life also.

Edited addition: One of the most positive parts about this was that it was so new that my parents had very little to say because they did not understand it; if I wanted to join a message board or crack a game, my parents and teachers and other authority figures in my life absolutely could not say anything about it in a reasonable way; it was brand new, there were no guides or playbooks, I had to learn this all on my own. While I was a very independent child, it was mostly stuff in a familiar scope for my parents. They "knew" that if I went on a bike ride with friends, probably we were up to some mischief, because that's what happened when they were kids. Same with if I went to a friends house to play games, to the park, etc. The Internet was (and still is) completely out of their scope along with all the tech and knowledge required to use it at the time, so it was a major point of growth for me to learn this new world and how to survive in it. That felt really nice as a child, as I'd slowly start to learn the skills that helped me succeed as an adult.

I think that the current childhood experience probably would be what most of us would have had as online is now a normal aspect of kids lives, whether it's games or various chats/message boards, etc.

When you write:

>It's like there is an entire part of the children/teen population that have such a blend [sic] life they feel good while watching somebody else living it.

(I assume you mean "bland")

I'm not sure it's about a bland life. There is a lot of social interaction, just in a different form. Some people have trouble with understanding that online light interactions don't have the same weight as in real life impersonal interactions, but that's pretty normal I think. Most adults from the previous generation still have troubles with communication in my opinion (at least a fair amount of persons from businesses I work with have weaker communication skills that most children I know), so I'm not sure it's that these children are missing anything or have a "bland" life, it's just different. A lot of my younger friends are often in shock at my childhood pastimes before I had a nice computer and access to the Internet, cause man my friends and I used to get into a ton of trouble and do really dangerous/mean stuff to each other sometimes. We meant it in good fun, but in retrospect, I think that I'd rather my children were doing social stuff and learning/reading like I did when I got Internet as opposed to the stuff I used to do as a kid, which frankly speaking, was petty vandalism at times even just because we were so bored and wanted something "fun".

So it's not really that one is worse than the other or that modern life is bland, it's just different. There are lots of videos you can watch about early 2000's and 2010's internet culture, and it's really interesting for me because it wasn't the Internet I experienced as a kid; stuff like virtual worlds or alternate reality games that pop up on message boards seem like they were a lot of fun, and looks to have sparked a ton of creativity in the kids participating. I don't think this is a bad or bland life at all; just different.