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

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

#381
post #217
post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not completely unlike saying "drugs can help me focus and boost my creativity". Sure, it can , and a diminishing and statistically insignificant minority use it exclusively for that. As to the rest of us... we're just junkies.

I don't think it's fair to blame phones for most people being near average. 90% of what 90% of people say just doesn't matter. So it doesn't matter if they're staring at their phones instead of talking about their weekend plans or their cousin's weddings, or any other tidbit of nothing that occupies their public vocalizations.

Nobody blames phones for most people being average. Phones are not the problem at all.

The problem is the companies that shape their services provided through the phone to be optimized towards abusing well-documented behavioral characteristics of 'average people'.

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

#382
post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Books and papers are passive - they don't have an agenda (beyond what's in the printed content anyway, but you'd generally have an idea about that beforehand). Digital devices on the other hand push their own agenda - driving engagement, registering ad impressions, and are designed to keep you hooked and coming back - because that's what's profitable. Being in control (with passive reading material) vs not being in c…

Books and papers don't have an agenda?

The agenda of the book/paper writer is to sell you the book/paper. The agenda of the services rendered on the phone is to keep you glued to the service as long as possible so the relatively constant % of your time that they sell to advertisers is increased for the purpose of increased profits.

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

#383
post #4

It's a level-headed article. Parenting, like almost nothing else, turns normal, intelligent, educated people into nutters. A rational, evidence-based conversation about screen time, breastfeeding, pregnancy, birth, education, and diet is increasingly impossible to have, especially with millennial parents. I just got my four year old an iPhone (with a data plan, because she realized she didn't have wifi in the car). I…

You're doing your daughter a disservice.

Taking a swipe at someone's parenting is crossing into personal attack, which we ban accounts for. Would you please err on the side of civility when commenting here? That's basically what we all need to do in order to have a community that's worth anything; the forces of internet degradation are too strong otherwise.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#384
Most people can't think one step ahead. Let alone multiple steps....losers at chess....This has been screwing up humanity for millenia, accelerated with the industrial/digital onslaught.

Thanks for the tech and enjoy your zombie kids.

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

#385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taken literally (I think I can see what you mean), creating boredom will not work on all kids. Rather, providing a creative child with various tools/means/ways to amuse oneself might actually make him/her spend more and more time to use them, instead of going for the usual. One thing my father did for me was to install a small workshop (in our 2-bedroom apartment with 5 persons living, I'll let you imagine the reacti…

Suffering the same problems with technology with my 7 year old as so many other parents. I am inspired by your story to do the same for him. I too am in a 2 bedroom apartment. I would really appreciate if you can give some pointers on how one could go about creating such a workshop and any DYI magazine recommendations.

Hard to give you an immediately applicable advice, it was very, very long time ago. Some points though:

-- try to observe him and determine what his interests are, at least on a very high level. Is he attracted by mechanisms? electronics? architecture? sewing? something else? In my case, it was easy, I started to break toys since I started having them, my parents reprimanded me until they noticed that I don't actually break them but dismount properly. (For that, obviously the toys had to be of the kind allowing that, not all in one piece.)

-- the workshop doesn't have to be big, but

a) it should allow instant access to any tool of the collection, any time. Storing them in a locked box hidden away and taking out for the occasion won't work.

b) you need to have a full set of tools allowing to start and complete a simple operation (and safely at that), i.e., to be able to saw the piece, it needs to be firmly attached, etc. To control the investment, optimize on the number and type of of operations -- think of making something very simple, make sure the child shares your interests, and equip for that, but from as to z. (To illustrate -- a bird's house requires a saw, a hammer and couple of nails, but make sure the child cares about birds getting it.)

c) tools don't have to be expensive and complicated, but they need to be above junk quality. If you yourself have the experience, you should be able to determine the required minimum. If not, ask a friend who has. Some of them simply cannot be of "kid version" (drills, for example), don't buy that. In my case, it was the time when tools were inherited from father to son, and none of them were electrical, but all of them were good, I just had to learn to use them -- at the beginning, this will test the kid's patience, so dose carefully. (At the same time, this is where the bulk of the skill development lies, and the age is right too, so...)

d) try to teach your kid to clean up the mess after they finished for the day, but don't set out with high expectations ... sometimes, they will be just too tired after having fully invested themselves in the process fro several hours.

e) help him to always reach the end of each project, not just drop it because they lost interest. But do not insist. This is the hardest, much harder than d).

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

#386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm ashamed to admit that I like private schools, but wow, have they been good for my kids. Nothing to be ashamed about. You want the best for your children and private schools get more money. The problem is not that private schools are better, but that public schools are so much worse. The people feeling shame should be the politicians who have worked and continue to work to dismantle the public education system (…

>in large part motivated by religious fundamentalists seeking to replace public education with voucher-based religious schools This can't possibly be the reason. Otherwise the bay area would have the best schools in the nation because religion here is borderline illegal.

FWIW Bay Area public high schools are ranked some of the best in the nation.

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

#387
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> sad to me when I see couples at a niceish restaurant and neither person is talking and both are looking at Facebook or Twitter Is that like a Bay Area thing? Sounds really terrible to me (I live in Europe)

For me (in Europe as well) I get the impression that it is shallow, pretty people that engage in that sort of behavior. Nice clothes, they look pretty but not much personality.

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

#388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suffering the same problems with technology with my 7 year old as so many other parents. I am inspired by your story to do the same for him. I too am in a 2 bedroom apartment. I would really appreciate if you can give some pointers on how one could go about creating such a workshop and any DYI magazine recommendations.

Hard to give you an immediately applicable advice, it was very, very long time ago. Some points though: -- try to observe him and determine what his interests are, at least on a very high level. Is he attracted by mechanisms? electronics? architecture? sewing? something else? In my case, it was easy, I started to break toys since I started having them, my parents reprimanded me until they noticed that I don't actuall…

Thanks a lot for putting time into coming up with the suggestions. Its helpful and I really appreciate it!
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