Seemingly innocuous, the rubber-band bracelets known as Silly Bandz have so fixated America's youth, it seems, that they're viewed as a distracting menace. Schools in several states, including New York, Texas, Florida, and Massachusetts, have banned the elastic bracelets behind the mega-craze — which a Toledo, OH company has been selling for $5 per pack of 24 at a rate of a million packs per month. Though educators say kids can't stop fiddling with, or trading, Silly Bandz in class, was an all-out ban really necessary? (Watch a local report about the Silly Bandz fad)
Let kids be kids: "I see the teachers' point," says Alexandra Gekas in Woman's Day. But they're fighting a losing battle — forbidding Silly Bandz will either energize the fad, or create a void some other craze will fill. When I was a kid, those ugly troll dolls with the "Don King hair were like crack to me." These kids are just being kids. "Let's try to remember what that was like."
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