Updated 12/18/2020 11:51 PM
I have been giving a lot of thought to the children of our community, and to ways to help them cope during the COVID-19 pandemic. Disruptions to daily schedules that provide the structure they need to thrive, the stress that parents and other family members are experiencing, and the sense of loss and isolation caused by the lack of social interaction add up to a heavy burden for our community s children and teens.
I want to call your attention to a tremendous resource provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to support the social, emotional, and mental health of our community s children and young people during these unprecedented times.
have a stat here from paypal saying 20% of people shopped from their dinner table last night. so this is something that people are just doing. they re trying to ignore their family and friends. maybe they re just obsessed with the deals. but this is definitely a trend that s getting deeper and better. ignoring your dinner partner so you can buy them a gift for christmas seems like a terrible idea. i want to stay on walmart though. take us inside the store. because the experience shopping is what s luring people in. walmart, for example, throwing something like 20,000 parties at different stores just to get people there. talk us through this trend. right. so it s all about the experiential shopping. to your point, there are all these parties at walmart. but really you re also seeing cooking demonstrations. you re seeing real life scenarios. influencers come in and take shoppers through, you know, very select shopping experiences.
think of online as taking over. there is something for a lot of people about just going into a store, seeing it, feeling it and maybe it s even part of the experience of standing in line. it s like we heard that woman in the piece. that s kind of a tradition for her. it is, it s absolutely about the experience. to your point, pay pal came out with a study, said 80% of people are now shopping online via their mobile devices so it s online and mobile devices. you also see people going into the stores to have that experiential experience, quote/unquote. they re going to cooking demonstrations. they re seeing raffles. i was at the mall last night and i saw teenagers lining up to get into pak sun in order to be a part of this raffle of a pair of shoes, a yeezy pair of shoes, if you know i don t know what kanye west shoes. they re drawing the kids in. that experience is everything for them. it s easy enough to say, because everybody wants the best
fun. for example, they re going to have some training areas where you can go and train with a professional athlete. a lot of them are from the washington area sports teams. there s going to be some singing and dancing. there s a girl group called fifth harmony, so you can imagine they ll be some moving there. so this is really about kids learning to have fun and make healthy choices. there s also going to be cooking demonstrations. healthy cooking by famous chefs like bobby flay and michael simon. and the kids can go and see what s happening in the white house vegetable garden. and then they re also going to see as you know the president and first lady in addition to the easter egg roll. the president traditionally reads to the kids and then he hits the basketball court. and i think it would be fair to say that he has had mixed results in the past. we ll see how he does this time jose. chris, there are also some keepsake eggs for the souvenir hunters? reporter: yes. tell us about