In my opinion, the largest difference the current generation of children has as compared to past generations is the influence of the internet. No generation has ever before been bombarded with information and social pressures as they are today. No generation of children has ever before carried phones in their pockets, constantly attached to.
Children and adolescents have much less free, unstructured, unsupervised time than their predecessors did. Parents are putting their kids much more into adult-structured, adult-supervised activities than they did in the past. The geographical range of childhood and youth has contracted over time.
