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I spent my career in tech, but wasn’t prepared for its effect on my kids

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351–360 of 388 posts

Re: I spent my career in tech, but wasn’t prepared for its effect on my kids

#351
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absolute insanity. 4 years old with a data plan? Can Facetime you at work any time? Where the fuck do you work?? Why does your 4 year old need an internet connected device of her own??

Seems pretty great to me. She watches Wild Kratz and corrects me when I say that spiders are insects. She Facetimes me in the car on the way home from school, she Facetimes her grandparents who live 3,000 miles away. She's gotten really good at the Paw Patrol iPhone game. She just figured out how to print stuff to color on. I don't get the screen-time hate in this thread at all . I don't know about you, but I was a n…

Your NES wasn't monitoring your every action to try to figure out how to make itself even more addictive to you. And both it and your computer eventually got boring, and made you seek out something else to do.

Phones are categorically different from the technology we were "glued" to in our 8-bit youth. People aren't hating on generic screen time here, they're hating on always-on fully-connected devices loaded with software that is continually adapting to try and increase your engagement time with them.

Re: I spent my career in tech, but wasn’t prepared for its effect on my kids

#352
post #13
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if kids really want anything be sweets, a toy or more screen time they will beg. That's kid's nature ;) It's the parents job to be firm and establish some limits, making sure they are respected.

I think OP meant to say just like kids beg for chocolates which they crave for, they also beg for Screen time (which seems to be a bad addiction for someone who's a kid) that also shows how much screen time as an addiction or interest has penetration through that age group.

Can't wait to raise my kids in a small village away from all this city/tech/social garbage.

Re: I spent my career in tech, but wasn’t prepared for its effect on my kids

#353
I'm always struck by the arrogance of parents. It never changes through the ages. Why do you think you know what's best for your kids? Do you really have the insight and experience from a single lifetime's perspective to know what's best for kids?

Especially striking are the programmers who grew up on technology. Literally spent all day on a computer as a kid, and now have high paying jobs, and happy lives. And then they say "no tech in the house!" - like it is some bad thing. It's almost like a cult, there is a striking lack of rationality. It's like that protestant ethic - if it feels good, it must be bad.

I have two kids, and I do limit screen time to an extent. But I don't go and brag like I know this is the best thing for them. I have very mixed feelings about it. Certainly when my kids are teenagers, I think an attempt to control them is just going to end up bad for everyone involved.

Re: I spent my career in tech, but wasn’t prepared for its effect on my kids

#354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me it's not even a conscious effort, as it feels rude to be on your phone, when you are having a meal with someone. Is it not rude to start reading a book while you are having a lunch with someone, why is the phone any different. When there is a need to look at your phone (Important message, a call, or even to look up something), I think the polite thing is to excuse yourself, do the thing really quickly, and get…

>Is it not rude to start reading a book while you are having a lunch with someone In my world it is though.

I'm sorry, I'm not a native English speaker, and sometimes I fall into these mistakes. I think what threw you off is my incorrect punctuation, as I should've wrote it as

> Is it not rude to start reading a book while you are having a lunch with someone? Why is the phone any different?

Re: I spent my career in tech, but wasn’t prepared for its effect on my kids

#355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> other times you get calming silence instead I always like that Pulp Fiction line: "That's when you know you've found somebody special. When you can just shut the fuck up for a minute and comfortably enjoy the silence." I don't think a moment of silence is any excuse to pull out the cellphone. In fact, I think this highlights part of the problem we have with cellphones. We expect constant entertainment, action, and…

Phones have indeed allowed people to both need and satisfy that need for constant stimulation. It's pretty sad. I'm the kind of guy in a coffee shop, waiting room, etc. who just stares into space glad that I owe my thoughts to myself and not my phone. But when everyone else has their phones out except for me, people probably think I'm a weirdo. And it's not just phones, mind you. It's televisions , also. I used to go…

> Phones have indeed allowed people to both need and satisfy that need for constant stimulation. It's pretty sad.

Why is it sad? I think it's fantastic. It's the elimination of boredom and the ability to be interested, productive or entertained at any moment. It's not like anyone is forcing you to look at your phone. I'm quite capable of putting my phone away and staring into space if the mood takes me. Your communal TV example is rather more intrusive by comparison.

Re: I spent my career in tech, but wasn’t prepared for its effect on my kids

#356
post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll sign off after this. Your response puts everything on the reader rather than the writer. Yes, the reader should do as you say, but the writer also needs to take into account how the reader could interpret what's been written, not just how you think they should , and try to write in such a way as to minimize misunderstanding. Of course, all of this assumes that karma matters, the writer cares enough to put in the…

Is English not your first language? It's pretty clear that Fogest was asking if the kids get carsick and there was no implication that anyone was lying.

'Fogest was down voted (or so I assume, given 'bashinator's comment). 'bashinator commented "Dunno why you're being downvoted". I speculated as to why. You apparently disagree with the reasons I proposed, which is fine. Do you have an alternative explanation? In the case the down voting was irrational or unreasonable, something caused them to choose to down vote the comment. What was it?

In my experience, questions posed as 'Fogest did ("Do they not get car sick...?") or you did ("Is English not your first language?") carry with them additional information. The neutral, default versions of these are "Do they get carsick?" and "Is English your first language?"

To me, 'Fogest's comment reads differently with only that change:

> Do they get car sick from reading books while driving? I remember as a kid on long car trips I would try and read but I'd always feel sick from it, however I was fine watching movies on a portable DVD player.

Another example is your choosing to interpret "not wholly accurate" as an "implication that [someone] was lying". If I'm misunderstanding where you got that, please do let me know, as it's not my intent to misrepresent you. What I meant by that was the implication that 'soccerdave had left out relevant information, that their kids get sick when they read in the car. As you read it as you did, is it my fault for how I phrased it? Yours for how you interpreted it? I certainly didn't use the word "lying" and "not wholly accurate" is not equivalent to "lying" Both of ours?

I'm purposefully not answering your question whether English is my first language as it's mostly irrelevant. There are people who are able to express themselves in written form in a foreign tongue much better than the vast majority of native speakers (Vladimir Nabokov and Joseph Conrad come to mind), and plenty of native speakers who aren't aware of how they come across or take particular care when they write. And English in one area is not the same as English in others. (Water fountain or bubbler? Soda? Pop? Coke?)

This is getting very far off from the original comment. I often hesitate to chime in when someone comments some variant of "I don't know why you were down voted". I think it's useful to explore possible reasons as it provides an opportunity to look at how we may come across, particularly to those who disagree with us. That said, it's a difficult place to comment because it's almost by definition a place where there's at best a misunderstanding and at worst trolling or otherwise uncharitable interpretations occurring.

Whether or not someone cares about this is another thing. People may not think that it's worth taking the time to think about or that people should always interpret what's being written in the best light possible. For constructive conversation I think this is crucial. At the same time, I think it's important to understand and take into account the context of where it's being said when commenting on an internet forum stripped of every nuance except the words themselves (perhaps tempered by the reputation of the commenter). Regardless of whether they should, not everyone is going interpret comments in a neutral way, giving the commenter the benefit of the doubt. If I want to be be effective and constructive (and avoid down votes, as that's often used as a proxy for effective and constructive), I think I should take these into account and take care in how I express myself in comments. (Thinking about it, one could posit it's an application of Postel's law to human communication.)

This is the last I'm going to comment on this here, as I don't think I've added anything that wasn't already in the thread, and it's not clear to me that your comment was made in the interest of honest, constructive conversation and giving me the benefit of the doubt.

Re: I spent my career in tech, but wasn’t prepared for its effect on my kids

#357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... it can't be turned on in the morning. How are you doing this? I have been for a solution to this for the last few months but nothing really came up. TIA.

You make a rule. This isn't a technology problem.

My kids are the kind with the attitude that "rules are made to be broken", which I like. It's like the hacker's ethos almost.

Re: I spent my career in tech, but wasn’t prepared for its effect on my kids

#358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that these "social" parts of the internet are social in the shallowest sense of the world. E.g., telling people how your life is without actually talking to them. I would agree with above that these devices are adding to (creating?) our social isolation.

I don't know the numbers. But if my intuition isn't completely wrong, and I'm not a total outlier, most seem to spend a lot of time on Messenger (/other IM) talking. Usually talking about content that is social in nature. And quite frankly, most "real-life" interactions seem to be pretty much the same. Just sitting around with phones talking about things you saw on the [social] Internet.

> And quite frankly, most "real-life" interactions seem to be pretty much the same. Just sitting around with phones talking about things you saw on the [social] Internet

This is a bit of a sad statement. What about conversation in a group, or debate in a meeting at work, or communicating with your children, or any other kind of relationship? Not everything can be showing each other videos, as YouTube can already recommend better than humans can.

Re: I spent my career in tech, but wasn’t prepared for its effect on my kids

#359
post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

moral panic gets the attention the author craves. it amazes how THAT is such a constant. even on this site, the comments are rife with people forgetting their sense of perspective, history, and human nature and tying themselves in anxious knots over the threat of from this frankenstein technology.

Reading the thread, my impression is that no one thinks that tech is a Frankenstein. Most are calling for a more balanced use, especially for children. There is strong research showing how getting "sucked" into the internet can have detrimental effects on social skills and child development.

Yes, a much more predictable response to a reasonable article is laughter at nonexistent moral panic. It's part of a crude, mimicked categorisation system that less analytical people sometimes subscribe to.

Re: I spent my career in tech, but wasn’t prepared for its effect on my kids

#360
post #263

I got Internet access in 1990 when I was 12 years old. Completely unfettered, unmonitored, unlimited in any way. And I wouldn't trade it for anything. Certainly many, if not most, kids would end up obsessing over social status and gossip and similar things. That has nothing to do with technology and absolutely everything to do with how they deal with their life in general. They're encouraged to avoid taking an intell…

I really like to believe what you have written, but it sounds way too elitist.

Elitist is not a real criticism here - no one needs to be elite to access "not giving your kids so much time on addictive electronics".
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