Today's Children Denied Cultural Cues

An excerpt from my coming book about how the music & media century converged in the sixties. One of the quietest but most profound cultural changes of the early twenty-first century is the disappearance of what might be called "accidental" cultural encounters. During the broadcast era, children were constantly exposed to forms of art they had not consciously chosen. With only a few television channels and widely shared programming, a child sitting down to watch one thing would inevitably see many others. A boy might tune in for a comedy show or sports segment and suddenly find himself watching a ballet excerpt, a Broadway dance number, a symphony orchestra, or an opera singer appearing on a variety program or public television special. These moments were not sought out; they simply appeared in the flow of shared programming. Yet they quietly widened a child’s sense of the world.

A boy might never become a dancer, but he had seen that men could move with extraordinary grace and discipline. He might not learn an instrument, but he had glimpsed orchestras, jazz bands, and theatrical performers. Such experiences created a broad cultural backdrop that made many forms of artistic expression feel natural parts of life.

Streaming culture has largely eliminated those accidents of discovery. Media now arrives through highly individualized feeds shaped by algorithms that reinforce existing interests. A child who clicks on gaming videos receives more gaming videos; one who watches sports is served endless sports clips. The likelihood that a ballet performance, chamber ensemble, or theatrical dance sequence will suddenly appear in that stream is extremely small. Culture has not disappeared—more of it exists online than ever—but the shared pathways that once brought diverse art forms casually into millions of living rooms have faded.

Our children are suffering the loss and no one is noticing. Now we are seeing the consequences...

Mikhail Baryshnikov