If a carefree childhood is a goal, Western society seems to be failing miserably. And the media isn’t helping, some suggest. A trio of new surveys indicates kids are worried about modern problems and fearing things that weren’t even in youngsters’ vocabularies in generations past. And an alarming number appear to be bored to death. A survey of 500 U.S. children aged 6 to 11 found that one-third fear Earth won’t exist when they grow up. And 56 percent believe the planet will not be as good a place to live. (The truth: Earth may indeed become less hospitable in the next few decades as the climate warms and seas rise, but barring a surprise cosmic catastrophe -with odds that are astronomically long - the planet will be around for a few billion years. Feel free to share that with your kids.) The study was conducted by Opinion Research for Habitat Heroes, an environmental charity, and a report on it by Treehugger.com has been widely cited. It should be noted that the findings suggest the questions had an environmental bent that might have influenced the answers in a manner that is not representative of kids in […]