181–190 of 388 posts
I have a 14 yr old and a 16 yr old step kids. They both live with their phones in their hands. I took them camping this past weekend. Fishing (caught 4 lake trout!), tubing, camp fire .. it was a blast. Even though their was no cell and no wifi neither of them could bare to put their phone down AND CHECK IT. They had fun, but the second they weren't stimulated they were asking to take a 40 minute boat ride (45mph!) t…
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I spent a lot of the decade of the 90s having the best times of my life immersing myself in video games and the Internet, and looking back it seems to me like I'm the better for it. I think it should rightfully be heartbreaking to deny that to a kid who would have it.
> I think it should rightfully be heartbreaking to deny that to a kid who would have it. I'm going to assume you haven't seen the steaming piles that are today's kid's shows and apps. There's no way that crap is as mentally stimulating as content from the 90s (or before). It's optimized for addiction. And I'm not saying to cut it off entirely. I'm just saying the new stuff is universally terrible.
Commercial children's content has been optimized to be an addictive tool to sell toys since well before the 1990s; OTOH, there's plenty of quality content now, too, it's just that, as an adult, you are more likely to seethe difficulty of separating he wheat from the chaff.
Plus, people have been decrying the moral decline of society compared to their own childhood for, based on historical evidence, as far back as we have historical evidence. And it's probably much older.
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This is just nostalgia talking. Most of 80's and 90's kid programming was trash, too.
Just with less sophisticated algorithms for maximizeing "engagement", whatever that's worth.
I can confidently say that screen addiction is kind of a thing for many kids. They can't bear to be without it. I notice my baby stares at the glowing screens, the phones, the computers. He also stares at fires. Brightness is attractive, apparently.
But something my wife and I are very set about: Mr. Baby will have to be able to bear being without a phone. Not that we'll be hovering or super limiting, but we expect Mr. Baby to be able to psychologically handle not having a phone glued to himself at all waking hours, and we will adjust our own phone usage if it becomes apparent we have issues.
Most entertainment and many non-entertainment phone apps are designed to be attention-grabbing machines, and that's worrisome. Kids don't have that armor to be able to drop out into a focus world. It is a very hot media, by McLuhan's classification, and I think that's worrisome.
Anyway. Unexpected effects happen, we're spinning faster than we ever have, and we have to ride the wave.
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But cellphones and these endless scrolling social apps that get our attention aren't really the same thing as books or even newspapers. They just seem to suck your ability to focus out of you and don't really give you back anything.
Sorry, that's not true at all. My phone provides the same services to me digitally that the analog world provided. It just does it more efficiently. I can read a book, keep in touch, learn a new skill, or research a topic all from the same device. That's an insane amount of value and I won't panic over using it because we didn't in the old days.
and this one for IOS: TeenSafe https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/teensafe-parental-control/id...
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All my family's meals are device-free. My kids don't even question it: they turn the TV off themselves when we call them. We have one TV in the house and it can't be turned on in the morning. The kids don't seem to suffer at all.
My house is the same way, but I think you have to realize that we're in the vast minority though. Whenever I'm visiting with family in the US, their TV is usually on. It's constantly on. The kids run around with devices with very little oversight or limits. It's absolutely terrible, but's also super common. Sigh.
I often see kids as young as 2 or 3 with iPhones in their hands while being pushed in their stroller on a walk, or at a restaurant at dinner.
We allow our 3 year old boy a small amount of screen time each day, as he spends the whole day (9-6) at day care and it helps him unwind a bit to watch Sesame Street, and gives us a chance to prepare dinner uninterrupted. But it's always under our control, we do not hand him the remote or device. Nor do we use it when we go out to eat.
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I think this is the one thing about technology I'm old fashioned about (I roll my eyes hard when people say stuff like "You should delete your Facebook account, you'll be better off."). If I'm eating food with someone else the phone goes away. The only exception is if in the course of conversation an easily googleable question is asked and both the other person/people and I are actually interested in the answer inste…
>(I roll my eyes hard when people say stuff like "You should delete your Facebook account, you'll be better off.") Your mortgage might be more expensive than it should be because of your facebook account. https://www.ft.com/content/e8ccd7b8-6459-11e6-a08a-c7ac04ef0... If the cost of your home increases by $10,000 in extra interest over the lifespan of the mortgage due to things your friends post on your facebook wall…
"As its use has proliferated, so has its effects... ...the interviewer, apparently, asks young people (age 18 to 22 years old) the following: whether men with the (device hidden) are human or not; whether they are losing contact with reality; whether the relation between eyes and ears is changing radically, whether they are psychotic or schizophrenic; whether they are worried about the fate of humanity." Can you gues…
No, we have just moved on to the next device, which ends up absorbing even more time. It's not more of the same, it's an increase at every step.
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There's something really sinister about watching a toddler utterly engrossed in someone unwrapping Kinder eggs, for hours . In the 90's, the internet involved more than just slapping your palm against a screen and not blinking for the rest of the afternoon, and TV was in limited supply. Today, you never have to take a break if someone isn't there to teach you how, or even that you should.
In the 90s we watched crap literally engineered to sell toys. http://www.retrodomination.com/master-of-your-universe-the-s...
When we were children we had to wait till weekends to watch those special weekend shows. We had to wake up early to watch all of them. Hell we even had to pee or make a snack in the 3 minutes of commercials lest we miss the next segment!
Nowadays you see kids watching all that crap all the time. Morning, noon, and night. Parents justify it as "educational content" or they just want some quiet time. But you have children literally sitting on the shitter for an hour watching an iPhone.
I'm not expert on raising kids and I'm not saying my generation was perfect (far from it!), but that can't be good.