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Let Children Get Bored Again

nytimes.com

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Re: Let Children Get Bored Again

#31

Post by ddebernardy »

Pharmakon wrote: post #15
tarr11 wrote: post #4

The parade of concerned parents writing these kinds of articles have conveniently forgotten how much TV and video games many of us consumed in 1980s and 1990s. This stuff reads like satire: “Rather than teach them to absorb material that is slower, duller and decidedly two-dimensional, like a lot of worthwhile information is, schools cave in to what they say children expect: fun. ” The kids are going to be alright.

My memory of those years was that a lot of TV was shit by any standard, and most of it wasn’t aimed at kids. Sure, you had Saturday morning cartoons, and endless reruns, but it was painfully easy to be bored in front of the TV. Games were fun if you had them, but the lack of complexity and depth, alongside limited supply of them meant they got boring too. I don’t think comparing the TV most people had in the 80’s and…

I'm not sure I agree with you about the lack of complexity and depth thing. Perhaps I was too young to notice. But I don't recollect ever getting bored, as a kid, with computer games in the 80s and early 90s. Heck, I still play 80s and early 90s classics every so often when I've too much time on my hands. Mid-90s and later games are a different story -- good titles seem rare. (Perhaps you're older than me and snapped out of games before I did.)

Re: Let Children Get Bored Again

#32

Post by deltron3030 »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #9
cortesoft wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it is also interesting how they categorize the activities... apparently reading a book doesn’t count as “avoiding boredom”, but playing a video game does... why? Both are using something to entertain yourself, and it seems pretty arbitrary to distinguish between them. In fact, I am pretty sure there has been times on our history where reading fiction was treated the same way we treat watching YouTube videos tod…

I think there's some truth to that, though. As a former video game addict, I look back on my time spent gaming as largely a waste. Most of it was a compulsion, like staying up until 4am re-queuing in Dota. Or grinding some armor piece. But I don't look back with regret on any of my time spent reading. I think most people here know what I'm talking about. Why is that? I can think of a few guesses. Books aren't in the…

My theory is that what matters is the level of anticipation as a skill, or the distance between action and reaction that you're aware of. If you're impulsive like a kid, this distance has to be short, so you're either obedient to your parents and do what's good for you long term, or you're screwed if nobody cares.

But as an adult you can actually understand how things relate, like a mental timeline, how the things you're doing now and your decisions might play out at a later stage.

Re: Let Children Get Bored Again

#33

Post by kurthr »

twic wrote: post #7
tarr11 wrote: post #4

The parade of concerned parents writing these kinds of articles have conveniently forgotten how much TV and video games many of us consumed in 1980s and 1990s. This stuff reads like satire: “Rather than teach them to absorb material that is slower, duller and decidedly two-dimensional, like a lot of worthwhile information is, schools cave in to what they say children expect: fun. ” The kids are going to be alright.

> The parade of concerned parents writing these kinds of articles have conveniently forgotten how much TV and video games many of us consumed in 1980s and 1990s. One of the great things about growing up in the UK in the '80s is that there were only four television channels, and they were all a bit rubbish (we got a fraction of the cartoons the US did, and our local children's programmes were often extremely dull). I…

Unless you were in a big media area like NY/LA most of the country had 4-5 stations (CBS, ABC, NBC, PBS, then Fox) of varying reception quality.

Cable's (and satellite TV in more remote regions) 40, then 100, then 100s of channels were the boom in channel surfing. When you can flip between all the channels in <15sec there's not a lot of reason (dopamine boost) to keep flipping. Commercial breaks were shorter and more simultaneous as well.

Re: Let Children Get Bored Again

#34

Post by sandworm101 »

tarr11 wrote: post #4

The parade of concerned parents writing these kinds of articles have conveniently forgotten how much TV and video games many of us consumed in 1980s and 1990s. This stuff reads like satire: “Rather than teach them to absorb material that is slower, duller and decidedly two-dimensional, like a lot of worthwhile information is, schools cave in to what they say children expect: fun. ” The kids are going to be alright.

Shakespeare. Hamlet. Remarks are made about both Hamlet and Ophelia reading books. Ophelia is driven insane. Hamlet has his issues too. The reading of too many books was seen as something that could lead to madness, at least something that looked very strange to others who did not read.

Re: Let Children Get Bored Again

#35

Post by beobab »

Pharmakon wrote: post #15
tarr11 wrote: post #4

The parade of concerned parents writing these kinds of articles have conveniently forgotten how much TV and video games many of us consumed in 1980s and 1990s. This stuff reads like satire: “Rather than teach them to absorb material that is slower, duller and decidedly two-dimensional, like a lot of worthwhile information is, schools cave in to what they say children expect: fun. ” The kids are going to be alright.

My memory of those years was that a lot of TV was shit by any standard, and most of it wasn’t aimed at kids. Sure, you had Saturday morning cartoons, and endless reruns, but it was painfully easy to be bored in front of the TV. Games were fun if you had them, but the lack of complexity and depth, alongside limited supply of them meant they got boring too. I don’t think comparing the TV most people had in the 80’s and…

Have you observed the phenomenon of “being bored with the internet”?

I’m not sure boredom is completely satiated by novelty.

I have experienced “I’m bored” events, where I had plenty of new experiences to try if I wanted.

Re: Let Children Get Bored Again

#37

Post by technofiend »

beobab wrote: post #35
Pharmakon wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My memory of those years was that a lot of TV was shit by any standard, and most of it wasn’t aimed at kids. Sure, you had Saturday morning cartoons, and endless reruns, but it was painfully easy to be bored in front of the TV. Games were fun if you had them, but the lack of complexity and depth, alongside limited supply of them meant they got boring too. I don’t think comparing the TV most people had in the 80’s and…

Have you observed the phenomenon of “being bored with the internet”? I’m not sure boredom is completely satiated by novelty. I have experienced “I’m bored” events, where I had plenty of new experiences to try if I wanted.

Oh heck yeah. I've definitely gotten bored of reading Amazon Kindle Unlimited books, surfing the web and YouTube. That's usually when I turn my hand to creative pursuits. Writing a book is still more entertaining than reading yet another obvious shill or karma whore post.

Re: Let Children Get Bored Again

#38

Post by rjf72 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #26
cortesoft wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it is also interesting how they categorize the activities... apparently reading a book doesn’t count as “avoiding boredom”, but playing a video game does... why? Both are using something to entertain yourself, and it seems pretty arbitrary to distinguish between them. In fact, I am pretty sure there has been times on our history where reading fiction was treated the same way we treat watching YouTube videos tod…

Actually, in the late 19th and even going into earlier 20th centuries, reading books to avoid boredom did count (unless it was the Bible) in many families. Then they were afraid of radio and moving pictures, then TV, video games, etc...now its screen time on mobile devices, tomorrow we won’t worry about that anymore, but start instead worry about our kids being addicted to virtual realities....and so on.

Just because some people may have had concerns about one thing that is not necessarily justified does not then mean that we can extrapolate concerns about new technology going forward to then be defacto unjustified. I'm not sure of the entire psycho-physiological effects that books had on society, but we can see many very real negatives that are very likely causally related with our new technological pursuits. For instance there have been sharp increases in all sorts of psychological disorders, physically people are becoming grossly unfit, fertility rates are plummeting among higher income, well educated, secular individuals.

Less talked about issues are things such as a worldwide reversal of the Flynn Effect [1] in numerous developed nations. The Flynn effect is the observation that real IQ scores were increasing over time. IQ is normalized to always have a 100 mean with a standard deviation of about 15. But what Flynn found is that the mean 100 in e.g. 1920 was substantially higher than the one in e.g. 1900 and similarly moving forward. People were becoming 'smarter' over time, so much as IQ can measure. Sometime in the 1990s this trend began to reverse and quite sharply. IQ scores are dropping around the world by rates up to around 1.5 points per decade. This might not seem like much at first, but remember that a whole standard deviation is only 15 points. Imagine you are one standard deviation (15 points) ahead of the population. That means you are 'smarter' than 84% of people. Drop that just 1.5 points and you're down to only being ahead of 80% of the population. For that scale of change to be happening as a population level event, every decade, is really insane.

It could be that these are all spurious correlations that have nothing at all to do with the rise of the internet, 24/7 digital tech, social media, and so forth. However, I think that the probability of that being the case is something very close to 0%. This will probably be a self correcting problem (many of these issues are going to correlate strongly against successful reproduction) but it'd be much more pleasant if we could resolve this without going full darwin on ourselves.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

Re: Let Children Get Bored Again

#40

Post by wernercd »

semerda wrote: post #28
tarr11 wrote: post #4

The parade of concerned parents writing these kinds of articles have conveniently forgotten how much TV and video games many of us consumed in 1980s and 1990s. This stuff reads like satire: “Rather than teach them to absorb material that is slower, duller and decidedly two-dimensional, like a lot of worthwhile information is, schools cave in to what they say children expect: fun. ” The kids are going to be alright.

TV in the 80s/90s was limited to a handful of channels. Now you have unlimited channels with YouTube, Netflix et al. Also gaming in the 90s was you'd play one game till the end. Today kids (and adults) jump in true adhd style between the ~100 games they got for free from the app store. Rarely finishing a game till the end. As a kid I remember having to create my own games and toys using nature (sticks, stones, etc).…

> Rarely finishing a game till the end.

Today's games don't have an "end". They have a journey.

But seriously... can you blame game companies?

How many millions are made by one-and-done games? Even block busters the likes of Final Fantasy and Zelda?

How many millions are made by never-ending games like Team Fortress, Clash of Clans, Bubble Bobble, etc?

Game companies are rewarded for not having an end.

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