Pause for the annual holiday season hand-wringing: our kids are materialistic! But the more troubling part this year is that they don't just want the coolest bikes and the giggleinest Elmos, they want electronics, just like Mom & Dad.

A piece from yesterday's New York Times points out that Amazon's Hottest Toys of 2007 list is loaded with high-tech gadgets like MP3 players, digital cameras, and mini computers. It then pads that observation with anecdotes from parents, tut-tutting from nervous pediatricians, and menacing sound bytes from toy flacks. The gist: our kids want high-tech toys, they won't settle for rounded, plastic facsimiles of the real thing, and they're all going to be fat, lazy, selfish, and get carpal tunnel syndrome because all they do is stare at screens and peck at keyboards.

First of all, I resent that last implication. All I do is stare at screens and peck at keyboards, and I am neither fat nor have carpal tunnel. Second, I distinctly remember wanting a Nintendo more than anything in the world when I was a kid, and you know what my parents did? They held out. They didn't buy one for me until long after all my other friends had one, and I don't think I suffered any lasting mental anguish. Sure, when I finally did get one I played the shit out of it, but I also spent plenty of time outside playing baseball, riding my bike, lighting myself on fire with chemistry sets, etc, because by then I knew there was (almost) more to life than Super Mario Bros and Zelda.

Michael Tiemann from parent.thesis makes a good point in reference to the pre-teen "social networking" sites attached to the Webkinz toys, apparently one of the prime culprits in this high-tech toy assault. "Is that really social networking, or is [it] a generational take-down sponsored by media conglomerates with the complicity of unwitting caregivers?" he writes. Yes, it's terrible that toy makers and media companies are taking advantage of kids' insatiable desire to keep up with the Briannas and Braydens by pushing ever-more expensive gadgets and online services, but when it becomes problematic, all a parent has to do is reach down and turn off the power strip. Done.

And Nicholas Deleon from CrunchGear makes a good point from the other perspective, "If a child is able to set up an IMAP account on my BlackBerry, more power to him. And shame on me for ruining that kid’s life," he said. I'll be excited if my kid shows an interest in technology, because it's been an incredibly enriching part of my own life. It's not such a bad thing that kids are interested in tech gear, just be reasonable about it.

Of course, it's very easy for me to sit on my high horse when he's still in his train phase. I may be completely steamrolled when he starts asking for his own expensive gear. But I like to think that if I did give in and thought he was playing with it too much, I'd have the good sense to turn it off and kick his lazy, selfish, claw-handed butt outside.